Jesse L. Nusbaum Papers: Mesa Verde's Superintendent and His “Nut Files”

Among the papers of Jesse L. Nusbaum, Mesa Verde's longtime superintendent and the National Park Service's senior archeologist, are folders he called the "nut files": letters from people who wanted to share their beliefs with him, about a "mummifying zone" in New Mexico or an old prospector's "magic wands." The rest of the collection is the working record of the archeologist who enforced the Antiquities Act across the Southwest.

Superintendent Jesse L. Nusbaum at Mesa Verde National Park. Credit: NPS History Collection, HFCA 1607.

Jesse Logan Nusbaum

Nusbaum was born in Greeley, Colorado, on September 3, 1887, to Edward Moore and Agnes Strickland (Moodie) Nusbaum; his parents and maternal grandparents belonged to the original Greeley colony organized by Horace Greeley. He took a degree in pedagogy from the Colorado Teachers College in 1907 and taught science and manual arts at the New Mexico State Normal in Las Vegas.

At Mesa Verde, despite resistance from several Colorado politicians, he ended grazing, built a museum and started interpretive programs, especially ones explaining the Antiquities Act. In 1920 he married Aileen Baehrens O'Bryan, becoming stepfather to her son Deric; she crossed southern Utah with him by pack train to excavate a Basket Maker cave site, and in their first Mesa Verde winter they built their house and most of its furniture. She helped design park buildings and their furnishings, and she and Deric joined excavations. They divorced in 1939, and in 1947 he married Rosemary Lewis Rife, a nurse.

In the 1950s, as consulting archeologist for the Department of the Interior, he persuaded the El Paso Natural Gas Company to pay for excavations along its pipeline route from the Four Corners and West Texas to the West Coast. It was a major advance in salvage archeology, and he later helped the Canadian government and others adopt similar measures. He received an honorary doctorate from Colorado State in 1946, appeared in Who's Who in America from 1931 to 1960, and served many organizations, among them the Laboratory of Anthropology (trustee, 1923–1938), the State Park Commission of New Mexico (1933–1936), the Old Santa Fe Association (commissioner, 1946–1975) and the American Anthropological Association (vice president, 1935).

The collection

Correspondence, reports, research files, clippings and personal papers cover his archeology and his years at Mesa Verde. Key correspondents include NPS archeologist Jean Pinkley, Congressman Lewis Compton, Emil Haury and J. D. Rockefeller.

• Box 1 — Antiquities Act and archeology: director's permits, pipeline archeology, permits for paleontologists, violations at Chaco (1954–1958), Nusbaum's duties (1927–1956), ruin repair and stabilization surveys, and the Mancos Canyon project.
• Box 2 — Correspondence: the proposed Cliff Cities National Park (1921–1968), a congressional inspection committee, data for Freeman Tilden on Rockefeller, and letters with Haury, Pinkley, Compton and Rockefeller; day book, 1946.
• Boxes 3–4 — Day books, 1947–1958, then Mesa Verde clippings (1934–1970), correspondence, personnel and his early work there from 1911.
• Box 5 — Mesa Verde and the "nut files": porcupines, Soda Canyon roads, Ute land deals and Natural Bridges National Monument; nut files on Harry "Two-Guns" Miller, the South Dakota Black Hills and more; personal correspondence with Newton Drury and papers on the Laboratory of Anthropology.

To see it, contact the archivist of the NPS History Collection, Harpers Ferry Center, PO Box 50, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425. Related holdings include the Archeology Program Records and the Records of the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation.

Sources

Based on "Guide to Jesse L. Nusbaum Papers," NPS History Collection, National Park Service; the guide is in the public domain. See the NPS History Collection finding aids.