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[azcay]

THE BIG FLOOD OF 1868

We are very close to one year of the tragedy caused by the floods of Norbert.
I been told that Alamos has not completely healed but is on MUCH better shape and most likely the full healing process will take some years but the hope and can do spirit is all over the place and things are now looked at with a more positive light.

I remember that some of you sent some emails asking about the different time when Alamos suffered floods and similar natural disasters; in the heat of the moment I wrote on one of the postings an erroneous date, it is at minimum that I correct that date.
The correct date for the biggest flood Alamos has ever seen is October 17 and 18, 1868.

As some of you know by email exchange directly with me, one of my hobbies is history and one of my favorite topics is Alamos history, I particularly find a lot of satisfaction proving or disproving certain stories that sound some times quite incredible, but hey that has been part of the Magic of Alamos!

So back to the big flood of 1868, I will say that in registered history Alamos has never seen bigger flood than this one.
Before I start the small narration let me say that the bases for this are two books and narrative from a couple of my ancestors on my mother side that were kids and witnessed this flood.
The books for your reference are: “Alamos de Sonora” and “Alamos en la Época de la Reforma e Imperio”, both are in Spanish and most likely out of print.

When I found out about the correct date through several friends that are practically experts on Alamos history (they have asked me to keep them anonymous) they gave me the previous references for the date and one of them even wrote on a Spanish Language Blog a great synthesis that I am practically translating here to English.

The rain started on the night of the 17th of October and it did not stop until the 18th in the morning. With the rain a gigantic flood came from the mountains destroying the levee of the Chalatón wash. The washes of “la Aduana” and “Agua Escondida” overflowed and merged amplifying the already powerful effect of the rushing water and debris carried.
The people that survived recalleded that around 11:00 PM on the 17th they heard a strong noise “like when a damn wall breaks” and immediately after that the Flash Flood started to pour over Alamos, it had moved from the mountains and it was now directly over the town.
Many Houses were destroyed even a brand new house filled with fine furniture imported from Europe that belonged to Martín Salido  who was the diputado (Federal Representative) of Sonora at the time; this house was located where today’s “Súper Titos” on one side of the Alameda.
During the night of the 17 and the morning of the 18 the Military Forces under the command of  “Don Ángel Martínez” tried to help as much people as they could by throwing thick ropes to the water, those who were lucky and had the strength to hold the ropes and avoid the debris were rescued, but many more were not as lucky.
All the stores were completely destroyed, some of the witnesses recall that rolls of fabric were pushed by the current and the fabric would get tangled on trees and fallen walls.
During the ordeal the people that could move ran to the hill of “Doña Sabina” (Today known as cerro del Perico), they also ran towards the church, the Guadalupe hill and the crucecitas . Others in the downtown of Alamos found refugee with the owners of the houses that surround the church and other high areas.
On the morning of the 18 when the rain stopped you could only see people “running like chickens” looking for their loved ones, unfortunately in the most cases to find them dead.
The “barrios” of  “Macochín”, “Tacubaya”, “del Perico”, “La Capilla”,  “Hacienda Vieja” and “Churubusco” were literally flatten down to the ground (or like some people said, below ground)
According to the accounts written on the previously mentioned books nothing was left from the building that today houses the museum and beyond the Aduana wash.
The known number of human casualties was 50, many for the time (or any time).
Before starting the reconstruction after what was considered (and still is) the greatest documented natural disaster of Alamos the first thing the locals did was to rebuild and make sure that the Chalaton dike (or levee) was bigger and stronger, based on pictures that I have seen, the dike is still there even after Norbert. They also made sure to construct a higher dike (levee or wall) than the one that was before by the Aduana Wash, today you can see it behind the TBC buss station, and it is actually the foundation of many of today’s buildings on that side of the Alameda. So thanks to this big levee is that on the storms of later years Alamos was not devastated: 1947 and 1976 (Lisa Hurricane).
On 1868 the Mexican federal government was practically bankrupted and the only thing they could do to help Alamos was to exempt the whole Alamos population from paying any taxes for that year.

After reading this history I started thinking to myself, what happened with Norbert? Why if the people of 1868 had built these huge protections for the Alamos water ways?
The answer came from a friend that has some documentation on how Alamos was built and it is a combination of two things (actually three, but I will leave this for the end of this posting)
1.   What today is “Calle Morelos” was known at the beginning of the 1900’s as “Calle de la industria” and previously was the riverbed of the seasonal river known as la Aduana! So yes the first settlers of Alamos decided to reroute the wash of la Aduana, if you see the contour of the previously mentioned dike (or levee) on google maps (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Alamos+Sonora+Mexico&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=45.553578,79.013672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=%C3%81lamos,+Sonora,+Mexico&ll=27.023874,-108.935527&spn=0.006289,0.009645&t=h&z=17) you will observe clearly that the wash was moved to a side surrounding part of Alamos, mainly by the north.
2.   With Time certain things and the dike have been eliminated from some areas, the latest was to favor the construction of a house so trucks could go with materials and also to allow an easier pass to the owner (and the water).
So as I am sure you by now are concluding the same thing I did:
Of course the Aduana wash will reclaim its old path when ever it can, especially since the protections to change its path have been weakened!
It may happen every 100 to 200 years? I really don’t know.
Honestly Norbert would of never caused the disaster that it did if the levee had been all in one piece like it still was back in the 1970’s, when the Lisa Storm passed through Alamos, which was MUCH stronger then Norbert (cat 4 and it came in as 5).

I have seen two pictures of the disaster in 1868, one of them at a private house of a friend of my father many years ago; you could see how the water got to the plaza in front of the church. The second one is in the museum of Alamos, I believe it was loaned to the museum so I am not sure if its still there, on that one you could see the sand mounds left and how nothing was left after the storm.

Before I close this brief historical post I will talk of the third point which is actually a personal conclusion:

3.   George Santayana said that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Hard to admit it but all those that have built by the “Aduana” wash and tore down parts of the dike basically did not ask or just did not stop to think: Why is that stone dike there? Is old and it must be there for some reason, what is it? Well the answer came on the form of flush flood and a deadly one. I think is clear what has to be done and repair the damage done to the dike or history will repeat itself sooner than we all may think. Meanwhile my advise to all my friends is to build on the high areas of Alamos.

Lastly I got to say that what I have written here took me a while to research and I got to thank my friends that helped in three places (they wish to remain anonymous) Alamos, Navojoa and Spain. You all know who you are and once again thanks!

Copy Right notice:
This is work Copy Righted by © Carlos Pratt and others. No part of this may be copied or redistributed without express written permission of the author.

[azcay]

On behalf of David McKay I am posting a very interesting reply that he did on my article.

As I told David I will answer his questions at a later time since they deserve good answers, of course assuming that I can get them. If not I will make it known here.

Best Regards and thanks for reading my humble article.

Hello Carlos!

 

Well done, thanks for sending along that  link, I found it to be very interesting and obviously well researched.  Refreshing to get some real news on Alamos news!  I just responded to you because I don’t really know how to respond to the website properly, maybe you could send this along for me if you see fit.

 

First of all I have to ask one uncomfortable question; I am curious why people would want to be anonymous in this process? It seems sort of silly and causes one (well me anyway) to read all that is written with just a bit of suspicion, of what I’m not sure, but I wonder if there is some lack of confidence in sources or what?  What is the big deal about sharing information and maybe possibly being wrong or learning something new along the way, or maybe even having a conflict of information?  I find this to be kind of strange.  In any case what I am writing is full of my opinions and some hard facts and a lot of knowledge acquired from hiking around in the hills above town over the past 16 years.  I am happy for folks to know that I wrote it and tell me what they know or think, and hopefully I will learn something too!  Maybe it is in response to the unproductive bantering that goes on frequently on “Alamos News” and the authors are gun shy of that;  understandable, but this subject hardly compares to those, this IS important stuff!

 

As one who lives in the Chalaton and lucky to still have my home and Business here (at least for now!), I have one thing to chime in one regarding the “dike” in the Chalaton.  Had that dike not been there (which is now all silted in, really just a waterfall) much of the area west of the Alameda, past the Bour’s Orchard wall and on to the Tecate expendio would have had a much better night on Oct 10 and 11 2008 than it did.   That completely filled in dike now does a great job of pushing the water over to the west side of the Chalaton drainage thus flooding the old arroyo behind Rancho Colorado.  That dike needs to be removed, it serves no practical purpose and with it there, subsequent floods will move the Chalaton drainage from “arroyo Escondido” back over to the drainage behind Rancho Colorado and right down the main entrance into town.    Without a series of dikes up the entire mountain (financially impossible);  the best strategy is no dikes in the middle of the channel at all!  Dikes could be used with some success in some areas along the banks of the arroyos for channeling purposed, but even this can be playing with fire.

 

I am surprised that there is nothing in this narrative regarding the negative effect that the car bridge (mostly its southern approach but also the ridiculous steel structure under it) had on the barrio of Guayparines.  Had that been a Vado without the tall bridge approach that acted like a diversion dam into the neighborhood, a huge portion of that part of town would have been spared the widespread damage it received.  I am afraid that they are going to rebuild that bridge in nearly the same place (except two lanes I hear), it should be a Vado with huge conduit tubes (4 or 5) running under it.  That way when the water reaches capacity in the tubes it can run over the top and not clog up some bridge with debris that will act as a dam and force water into the neighborhood, the reality is we don’t need a bridge there, it I expensive and it is only useful for about 24 hours a year.

 

I hiked up the mountain yesterday and came down the Chalaton arroyo through the park and beyond to Penies store.  The work on the arroyo from Olaf last week did a lot to stabilize the arroyo channel and moved a lot of the loose debris off of the old river bed.  Some of the Charcos are back and the river course has become more braided, which does a lot to slow the water down, very important.  Generally the drainage is reclaiming its-self and it looks better / safer.

 

About a month after Norbert two professors of “Geologic Wasting” from the U of A stayed with us and I was fortunate enough to tour them up the Chalaton and to other problem areas around Alamos.  Their first comment was amazement by how few people were killed.  They have studied this kind of debris flow all over the world (granitic mountains are far more prone to it than any others, you may remember some serious flooding in the Catalina’s in July of 2007), and have never seen a town so lucky!  They also told me that indeed there are things that can be done to minimize the effects of debris flows, but these vary from location to location and a full blown study of the soils and impacts of must be done first.  They mentioned cattle grazing and Clandestine agriculture as two probable abetting culprits, this was determined just by looking at how overgrazed the areas surrounding the Chalaton drainage are, and as we know this is widespread practice on Alamos mountain.  Mostly they were not too optimistic for Alamos.  The current and near future weather patterns look to be wetter with more violent storms.  The good news is that the arroyos are basically cleaned of all the trees and plants that with normal amounts of rain were very helpful in replenishing the aquifer but in a huge rain like Norbert proved to be very effective in creating debris dams where silly post supported foot bridges had been constructed.  The lack of plant life will be helpful to keep the water free flowing, but it could affect our water supply adversely and the clean arroyos move water a lot faster, not necessarily a good thing.

 

One other thing that I think needs mentioning in the Narrative is that Norbert was just the final drenching in a summer that saw our highest rainfall amount in decades, had it not been for all the previous summer rain, Norbert might just have been a nice hard addition to our wells.  I registered 43 inches from June 26th to October 11th  2008, that is 80 percent over the annual average rainfall for Alamos.  From Norbert I only got 8 inches of rain here in the Chalaton (certainly it could have been twice that or more on top of the mountain, and it came fast), but it think it is important to consider how darn saturated we were when Norbert hit!  We had already experienced the affects of two tropical storms that summer.  Henriette (12 inches of rain) and Lowell (10 inches of rain), plus a splattering of other summer monsoon storms that gave us another 13 inches of rain.  Saturated soil on top of Granite is ripe to slide with an intense storm such as Norbert was, it was the perfect storm if you will.  Add to this about 15 years of severe drought with no reduction in cattle grazing (cows eat and compact even more when there is less grass) and you can really start to understand why Norbert effected us as strongly as it did.

 

One more observation that you may find interesting (sorry for my stream of consciousness).  I have visited the Urrea ranch (La Huerta) half way up Alamos Mountain a few times since Norbert.  It was seriously damaged by Norbert.  The old ruin of the home was flooded badly and filled with a lot of debris, interestingly enough not from the arroyo that passes closely, but from a landslide.  The old dam is still there in parts but the center has been breached, and a lot of the terraced gardens were adversely affected by one major landslide.  It is nearly impossible to hike up the old road (trail) to the ranch as it was wiped out in a number of long sections, one must hike in the drainage to the west which as you might have guessed quite clear now!  Rather sad to see this neat piece of Alamos history returning to the earth, it has been a nice spot to rest on the way to the top.

 

I could likely go on for a long time on this subject, I am a bit of a climate and geology nut, but I will spare you.  A long the lines of this subject I am nearly ready to put my Alamos weather station online so that anyone can have real time weather reports that are actually from Alamos and weather history to look back on that is amazingly complete.  I have a digital wireless data collecting system that I have had for a couple years.  Now I am going to run it through a computer on to the web via www.wunderground.com .  I will send out an email when it is up and running, pretty much all I am waiting for is a 9 prong serial to USB cable that should be here Monday.

 

I have great Sunday and thanks again for the informative posting

 

Sincerely,

 

David MacKay

[azcay]

Hello David,
Interspersed throughout your email to me you will find my answers and observations to your note on blue to distinguish from your paragraphs.

Best Regards!

Carlos.

Hello Carlos!
 
Well done, thanks for sending along that link, I found it to be very interesting and obviously well researched.  Refreshing to get some real news on Alamos news!  I just responded to you because I don’t really know how to respond to the website properly, maybe you could send this along for me if you see fit.
Thanks for the remark and I already did, even before I replied to you.

First of all I have to ask one uncomfortable question; I am curious why people would want to be anonymous in this process? It seems sort of silly and causes one (well me anyway) to read all that is written with just a bit of suspicion, of what I’m not sure, but I wonder if there is some lack of confidence in sources or what?  What is the big deal about sharing information and maybe possibly being wrong or learning something new along the way, or maybe even having a conflict of information?  I find this to be kind of strange.  In any case what I am writing is full of my opinions and some hard facts and a lot of knowledge acquired from hiking around in the hills above town over the past 16 years.  I am happy for folks to know that I wrote it and tell me what they know or think, and hopefully I will learn something too!  Maybe it is in response to the unproductive bantering that goes on frequently on “Alamos News” and the authors are gun shy of that;  understandable, but this subject hardly compares to those, this IS important stuff!
Actually you got at least three questions that I will address here:
1. The anonymity is not of any Author, the posting has ONLY one author and that is ME.
2. The people that desire to be anonymous are the people I interviewed by phone, email etc. I respect that. It has nothing to do with confidence on the sources. They just want not to be mentioned in a public forum that they can’t read or understand (they don’t speak English)
3. I did mention three references; a blog in Spanish that coincidently talks about the same topic, the author uses the pseudo name of Guarijio and I have no idea who he is in real life, I will say that he used two of the same sources that I did and liked the form of presentation that is why I said “I am practically translating what he said”  the other two references are books, hard to find: one of them is “Alamos de Sonora” Author: Manuel Santiago Corbalá Acuña, Last print 1977. I also used “Alamos en la Epoca de la Reforma y el Imperio” This one is owned by a friend of mine that currently lives in Spain, I don’t recall the author for the moment but I will look and give you the reference if you want it..
If you want to challenge the historical research I welcome that but in the most academic way of doing things I want in equal manner see your references and historical validity.
In my research I can eliminate ALL of human interviews and solely base it on the books I mentioned. I spent almost a year looking for what was on the history of Alamos that I could share with all our American community. Any slight piece of information that had a doubtful source was eliminated from my posting.
Please note that by international, US and Mexico’s Law, I must respect the copyright of others when referencing them, that is why you see on my copyright Carlos Pratt and Others. That way I cover any thing it may result from my research.
Lastly, this is a hobby, my day job is entirely different and that takes priority “1”. If I had full time to do this research probably I would end up writing a book.
 
As one who lives in the Chalaton and lucky to still have my home and Business here (at least for now!), I have one thing to chime in one regarding the “dike” in the Chalaton.  Had that dike not been there (which is now all silted in, really just a waterfall) much of the area west of the Alameda, past the Bour’s Orchard wall and on to the Tecate expendio would have had a much better night on Oct 10 and 11 2008 than it did.   That completely filled in dike now does a great job of pushing the water over to the west side of the Chalaton drainage thus flooding the old arroyo behind Rancho Colorado.  That dike needs to be removed, it serves no practical purpose and with it there, subsequent floods will move the Chalaton drainage from “arroyo Escondido” back over to the drainage behind Rancho Colorado and right down the main entrance into town.    Without a series of dikes up the entire mountain (financially impossible);  the best strategy is no dikes in the middle of the channel at all!  Dikes could be used with some success in some areas along the banks of the arroyos for channeling purposed, but even this can be playing with fire.
If you have done the historical research of the area where you live, you will see that the original use of the dike was to reroute the water of the wash and collect it on two reservoirs that used to be there and were completely destroyed on the flood of 1868.
After that flood the dike was rebuilt just to reroute the river and let it go by the west side of Alamos.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s the people that were building beyond the Dolisa Motel were warned by the old-timers NOT to build by the way of the “Arroyo” and not to destroy de dikes of the area, which they did … As I said before those who don’t learn from History…
The different dikes that channeled the waters existed starting precisely at “el chalaton” and were not continuous, following the technology that the Spaniards brought in the early 1700’s they would just “push” the water away, then let the water take a new course, if the water took a path that did not disturb the area they were interested in then nothing else was built until next storm or flood changed things, then the process was repeated, evidence of this can be found on “Archivo General de la Nación” old files (Mexico City), “Archivo de Indias” (Seville Spain) and several Museums throughout Europe and Latin America.
I believe that the original dike that was washed out on the flood of 1868 was over a hundred years old (I have not found proof of this, it is just a conjecture based on my findings but I am still looking and asking people that I know may have documents).
The biggest continuous dike that still survives is the one I mention that is visible behind the TBC buss station; that entire wall was built and made higher than the previous one. If there was no dike at all as you suggest, the Alameda, municipal market and all the constructions from there to the north would be condemned to disappear next time the Arroyo of the Aduana Flows (just imagine an overflow).
By the way I used to play around the chalatón when I was a kid in Alamos many years before you and your family arrived. Belive me I used to know that area very well.
 
I am surprised that there is nothing in this narrative regarding the negative effect that the car bridge (mostly its southern approach but also the ridiculous steel structure under it) had on the barrio of Guayparines.  Had that been a Vado without the tall bridge approach that acted like a diversion dam into the neighborhood, a huge portion of that part of town would have been spared the widespread damage it received.  I am afraid that they are going to rebuild that bridge in nearly the same place (except two lanes I hear), it should be a Vado with huge conduit tubes (4 or 5) running under it.  That way when the water reaches capacity in the tubes it can run over the top and not clog up some bridge with debris that will act as a dam and force water into the neighborhood, the reality is we don’t need a bridge there, it I expensive and it is only useful for about 24 hours a year.
Please understand that my motivation was not to see what is there today, it was a historical account. Not a current Assay of civil engineering on what is wrong with the Alamos water ways.
And about the bridge I think the answer is already as part of my conclusion on my article. There used to be some portion of Dikes there many years ago, but yes, modern people know better and they replaced part of the wall with a bridge and as I said before changed the path of the Aduana. On this one you are preaching to the choir.
 
I hiked up the mountain yesterday and came down the Chalaton arroyo through the park and beyond to Penies store.  The work on the arroyo from Olaf last week did a lot to stabilize the arroyo channel and moved a lot of the loose debris off of the old river bed.  Some of the Charcos are back and the river course has become more braided, which does a lot to slow the water down, very important.  Generally the drainage is reclaiming its-self and it looks better / safer.
This is Good and probably what the first settlers observed when first arrived  to the Alamos region.
Probably and this is PURE speculation, they saw sometime in the 1700s that there was a way of reclaiming land to the Aduana Wash instead of heaving it go through the middle of the town.
Just keep in mind that the Spaniards of the time were always looking for areas where they could settle for long time so they needed water and where to grow crops and raise cattle. So in the late 1600s when Alamos was founded the Spaniards had to have a good reason to decide to stay there. The rest is history.
 
About a month after Norbert two professors of “Geologic Wasting” from the U of A stayed with us and I was fortunate enough to tour them up the Chalaton and to other problem areas around Alamos.  Their first comment was amazement by how few people were killed.  They have studied this kind of debris flow all over the world (granitic mountains are far more prone to it than any others, you may remember some serious flooding in the Catalina’s in July of 2007), and have never seen a town so lucky!  They also told me that indeed there are things that can be done to minimize the effects of debris flows, but these vary from location to location and a full blown study of the soils and impacts of must be done first.  They mentioned cattle grazing and Clandestine agriculture as two probable abetting culprits, this was determined just by looking at how overgrazed the areas surrounding the Chalaton drainage are, and as we know this is widespread practice on Alamos mountain.  Mostly they were not too optimistic for Alamos.  The current and near future weather patterns look to be wetter with more violent storms.  The good news is that the arroyos are basically cleaned of all the trees and plants that with normal amounts of rain were very helpful in replenishing the aquifer but in a huge rain like Norbert proved to be very effective in creating debris dams where silly post supported foot bridges had been constructed.  The lack of plant life will be helpful to keep the water free flowing, but it could affect our water supply adversely and the clean arroyos move water a lot faster, not necessarily a good thing. 

Several things here:
I have been working in research for the last 13 years.
I find very adventurous form these Doctors to give a judgment just by looking at things and without a formal study.
I happen to be friends with the person that used to be in charge of the design of the Tucson water ways (rain drainage and wash control) after the floods of the mid 1980s, according to him just a study for water effect on the soil and geological effects takes at least 4 years for an area like Tucson was at that time (much smaller than it is today).
I don’t doubt the credentials of these doctors, but I think is irresponsible at the very minimum not substantiating their claims with some research.
From my little knowledge:
The first thing I would ask, were they aware of the original path of the wash? I can almost bet NOT.
The second thing I would ask, have the soil hydraulics (or however is called that science) of Alamos been studied by them? I bet not.
I can go on, but this is not my specialty and for sure they know more than I do…
 
One other thing that I think needs mentioning in the Narrative is that Norbert was just the final drenching in a summer that saw our highest rainfall amount in decades, had it not been for all the previous summer rain, Norbert might just have been a nice hard addition to our wells.  I registered 43 inches from June 26th to October 11th  2008, that is 80 percent over the annual average rainfall for Alamos.  From Norbert I only got 8 inches of rain here in the Chalaton (certainly it could have been twice that or more on top of the mountain, and it came fast), but it think it is important to consider how darn saturated we were when Norbert hit!  We had already experienced the affects of two tropical storms that summer.  Henriette (12 inches of rain) and Lowell (10 inches of rain), plus a splattering of other summer monsoon storms that gave us another 13 inches of rain.  Saturated soil on top of Granite is ripe to slide with an intense storm such as Norbert was, it was the perfect storm if you will.  Add to this about 15 years of severe drought with no reduction in cattle grazing (cows eat and compact even more when there is less grass) and you can really start to understand why Norbert effected us as strongly as it did.
Once again, let me repeat: Mine is a historical recount, not a meteorological log for the recent years.
Now you mention that last year was the highest rainfall amount in decades just before Norbert, OK, let me ask then, what year is when you start counting for the average?
Is it the Big hurricanes of 1947 (which name I don’t remember) and of 1976 (Lisa) considered in those averages? For one I can tell you if the Lisa hurricane was considered then I suggest you check the data.  That Hurricane makes look Norbert like a baby and it was also at the end of a very heavy rainy season. And by the way on that year most of the dikes were still up and strong and although there was a lot of debris and water rushing down the arroyos, for the exception of some people that were not to intelligent and tried to go across the Arroyo on a truck by the area where it gets close to the “Cerro del Perico”, there were no human casualties! A lot of destruction yes, especially on the ranches and most “sierra” crops were also lost, just like with Norbert.
 
One more observation that you may find interesting (sorry for my stream of consciousness).  I have visited the Urrea ranch (La Huerta) half way up Alamos Mountain a few times since Norbert.  It was seriously damaged by Norbert.  The old ruin of the home was flooded badly and filled with a lot of debris, interestingly enough not from the arroyo that passes closely, but from a landslide.  The old dam is still there in parts but the center has been breached, and a lot of the terraced gardens were adversely affected by one major landslide.  It is nearly impossible to hike up the old road (trail) to the ranch as it was wiped out in a number of long sections, one must hike in the drainage to the west which as you might have guessed quite clear now!  Rather sad to see this neat piece of Alamos history returning to the earth, it has been a nice spot to rest on the way to the top.
This makes me REALLY SAD! As a kid I used to go there with friends. Some peach trees still were there at the time and I loved to go there and climb the trees and get some “wild” peaches. If I remember well, the last time I was around that area was 24 years ago. Unfortunately my every day work (on a chair in front of a computer or in an R&D lab) has my physical condition much less than optimal. You just gave me a motivator to get fit and do that hike one of these days when I go to Alamos before the ruins completely disappear.
 
I could likely go on for a long time on this subject, I am a bit of a climate and geology nut, but I will spare you.  A long the lines of this subject I am nearly ready to put my Alamos weather station online so that anyone can have real time weather reports that are actually from Alamos and weather history to look back on that is amazingly complete.  I have a digital wireless data collecting system that I have had for a couple years.  Now I am going to run it through a computer on to the web via www.wunderground.com .  I will send out an email when it is up and running, pretty much all I am waiting for is a 9 prong serial to USB cable that should be here Monday. 
Congratulations!!!
I find climate fascinating (geology not so much), especially since I had to learn a good deal of weather on a project we did with NOAA about 5 years ago. I am sure you are aware that the current administration is planning to cut funds for them … Oh Well, who cares for weather? (Sorry need to make my cynical remark).
And yep the weather underground is also a site I like to check for weather.
Is the station that you are setting up going to monitor a single area of Alamos? Or are you going to do Multiples? If I am not mistaken for best results on a location like Alamos is recommended to have at least 4 to 5 sampling zones. But one is better than zero!
Do you know what happen to the weather station that was located at the air strip?
I recall that in the mid 80s was functional, old but working. I guess that if its working you could tap in to its data too.

 
I have great Sunday and thanks again for the informative posting
 
Sincerely,
 
David MacKay