Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation System, Building No. 15 (House), 30662 Wellton-Mohawk Drive, Wellton, Yuma County, AZ. Surveyed as HAER AZ-68-T, with a 1,120-word written history.
“Building 15, as part of the former Wellton Government Camp, is associated with the Wellton-Mohawk Division of the Gila Project.”
Written record, HAER AZ-68-T survey. Machine-read text.
Surveyed by the federal HAER program as HAER AZ-68-T · the record runs 1120 words · one of 36 surveyed structures published for this county.
Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AZ-68-T. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.
Wellton-Mohawk Drive, Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District (WMIDD) administrative complex, Wellton, Yuma County, Arizona. Building 15 is 1 of 22 residential buildings arranged in a horseshoe-shaped plan on Wellton-Mohawk Drive, located approximately one-half mile north of Interstate 8. The building lies within the N 1h of the NE 1/4 of Section 4, Township 9 South, Range 18 West, on the Wellton Mesa, Arizona, 7.5-minute U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) quadrangle (photorevised Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinates: Zone 11, N E
The headings the report itself prints. Each one jumps to where it begins.
Source document Quoted word for word from HAER AZ-68-T. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.
Building 15, as part of the former Wellton Government Camp, is associated with the Wellton-Mohawk Division of the Gila Project. Construction of the Wellton- Mohawk irrigation system began in and was essentially completed in With its completion, Colorado River water was delivered to previously arid lands in the lower Gila River valley. Concomitant to construction of the irrigation tem, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) built Wellton Government Camp to provide office space and housing for em- ployees engaged in fieldwork associated with the irrigation project. Today, the headquarters of the WMIDD stand on the site of the camp offices, and the houses serve as residences for WMIDD employees.
The WMIDD administrative com- plex is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places as a district under Criteria a and c (Thompson and Sterner The residential build- ings have retained their integrity and contribute to the significance of the head- quarters complex. Report Prepared by: Scott Thompson, Senior Historian Statistical Research, Inc. Tucson, Arizona Date: September Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation System, Building 15 (House) HAER No. AZ-68-T (page 2)
Physical History
See AZ-68-G for information pertaining to the physical history of the former Wellton Government Camp. II. BUILDING
Description
Building 15 (four-room residence, Type 5R) is a one-story, wood-frame, rectangular house with a front- gabled roof resting on a 6"-wide concrete foundation. Concrete piers set inside the foundation and spaced at intervals support the floor joists. The building is sheathed with horizontal wood siding. The roof is shingled and the rafter ends are exposed beneath the extended eaves. There is a foundation vent on the north facade. Louvered openings on the gables of the north and south facades provide ventilation for the attic space. The entrance on the south (front) facade is slightly off center. Building 15 has a shingled porch covering supported by four wood columns set on a stepped, concrete stoop.
Originally, the front entrance consisted of a wood stoop with simple, square, wood columns supporting the porch covering. Other Type 5R temporary residences (i.e., Buildings 7, 13, and 17) had original wood stoops and supports that were subsequently replaced with stepped, concrete stoops and thin, metal rods for supporting the porch overhangs (Pfaff Building 15 also has a stepped, concrete stoop that appears to have been constructed in two episodes. First, the original wood stoop and porch overhang supports were replaced. This stoop was later expanded to the east and west using 8"-high masonry blocks capped with a concrete pad. Four wood columns support the porch overhang.
In its current configuration, the front stoop mea- sures x The north (rear) entrance of the original building is hidden by a room addition. The addition is a one- story, wood-frame, rectangular plan with a shingled, front-gabled roof and a concrete-slab foundation. It is clad with sheet-wood siding. There is one window on the north facade of the addition. There are also two entrances-one on the east facade and one on the west facade. Each entrance has a concrete sill. Ac- cording to Bob Smith (personal communication WMIDD office manager, the addition was con- structed in August Building 15 measures x with an interior space of approximately 900 square feet. The room addition is x and approximately 375 square feet. A wood-frame screen door covers the south (front) entrance.
Currently, there are 12 windows on the main building's facades. All of the original 6/6 wood-sash, double-hung windows have been replaced with aluminum-frame windows. On the west elevation, one of the original windows has been replaced by a smaller, sliding window. One of the windows on the north (rear) facade has been covered by the room addition. Building 15 was originally equipped with an elevated evaporative-cooling unit that connected to a duct system on the north gable end. This has since been replaced by a ground-mounted air-conditioning unit and exterior ductwork on the north facade. Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation System, Building 15 (House) HAER No.
AZ-68-T (page 3) Building 15 was converted in from the barracks building sections moved from Yuma Army Air Field to the Wellton Government Camp site. Yuma Army Air Field was activated in as a train- ing base for aviation cadets. At the end of the war, the base was deactivated, and in Reclamation acquired both real and personal property at the inactive facility for use on its projects. Some of the build- ings were used in the construction of the government camp at Wellton (Reclamation 1949a:22-23). The Type 5R temporary residence consists of four rooms: a living room, two bedrooms, and a utility room. In addition, there is a kitchen and bath (Reclamation Documentation for this report did not include visual inspection of the building's interior.
Pfaff previously described the remodeled, temporary, four-room residence as having wood floors covered with salvaged linoleum, plasterboard interior walls, new linoleum countertops, Venetian blinds, and an evaporative-cooling system. The cost to move, set up, and convert Building 15 was (Pfaff The current condition of the building's exterior is fair. III. REFERENCES CITED Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) l 949a Annual Project History, Gila Project, Yuma, Arizona, Vol. XIV. U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Denver. On file, Bureau of Reclamation, Yuma Projects Office, Yuma, Arizona. Wellton Government Camp, temporary residence Type 5R. Drawing U.S. De- partment of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Yuma, Arizona.
Drawing on file, Record Group Project Reports, Box National Archives and Records Admin- istration, Rocky Mountain Region, Denver. Pfaff, Christine U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region: Historic Building Reconnaissance Survey. U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Technical Services Center, Denver. Thompson, Scott, and Matthew A. Sterner Inventory and Documentation of the Irrigation System of the Wellton-Mohawk Division of the Gila Project. Technical Report Statistical Research, Tucson.
| Wellton, Arizona | The place record: every map, photograph and survey of this town. |
| Yuma County, Arizona | 182 topographic sheets across the county. |
| Library of Congress record | The original filed report as the survey filed it. |
The federal surveyors worked through Wellton building by building. These are the other structures they measured and filed a report on, longest report first.
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