Excerpt from In the Midst of a Loneliness: The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions, Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument Historic Structure ReportCongress established Salinas National Monument to set apart and preserve for the benefit and enjoyment of the American people the ruins of prehistoric Indian pueblos and associated seventeenth century, Franciscan Spanish mission ruins. In order to preserve these ruins, an effective plan of stabilization and maintenance is needed. The trouble with the stabilization and maintenance of a ruin, however, is that it inevitably changes the nature of the ruin. The visible stonework gradually, through small steps of repointing, dismantling and rebuilding, and capping, becomes the product of a generalized National Park Service policy rather than the product of a particular people at a particular time in the past. To slow down this process of the loss of the original nature or cultural imprint of a ruin, a careful maintenance program that minimizes changes to the appearance of the building is necessary. The most important single document for planning such a program is the Historic Structure Report, that determines the original appearance of a building and the previous attempts at stabilizing it. After its preparation, interpreters frequently use the Historic Structure Reports as one of the sources of information in their effort to make a site more understandable to the park visitor.This Historic Structure Report was written with the needs of both managers and interpreters in mind. The narratives of design, construction, and change over time attempt to present the life and the mind behind the structure, as well as the material of which it was made. This approach has led to some surprising insights. Most-significant among these was the determination that the present church of Abo had been partially torn down and enlarged at one time, and that the church of San Buenaventura had never been completed. Equally important in the author's mind is the definition of the methods of construction, the human activity itself. The buildings did not simply grow like weeds, human hands placed each rock on top of the others, and lifted each beam into place.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.