Readers of HISTARCH who worked in San Diego at the Royal Presidio with Jack  
Williams or on the Fort Guijarros project with Ron May will be saddened to 
learn  that C. Fred Buchanan passed away on March 12, 2007 and a memorial 
celebration  of his life will be held at his home tomorrow, Saturday, March 31 (email 
Ron May  at [log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask])  for the address). 
For  those who did not have the pleasure of meeting or knowing Fred, you can 
access  the San Diego State University Occasional Archaeology Papers at 
_www.SOAP.sdsu.edu_ (http://www.SOAP.sdsu.edu)  (see Part 3) and download  his article 
on reverse engineering of the 1796-1835 architectural ruins of the  Spanish 
shore battery and watercolor renderings of how Fred believed the fort  
appeared. Fred began his remarkable career as a farmer in Battlecreek, Michigan  and 
nearly finished an engineering program at the University of Michigan when  the 
United States Army drafted his entire class and shipped twenty-one of them  
off to participate in the China-Burma Campaign during World War II. While  
attempting to deliver a truckload of metal pipes for construction of water and  
fuel lines, Japanese artillery hit his position and his truck tumbled off the  
Burma Road toward enemy lines. Fred managed to escape, but lost his left eye in  
the process, and returned to duty to finish out the war. He returned in 1945 
to  complete his civil engineering degree and worked for the International 
Boundary  Commission and then the United States Navy, where he retired as 
Superintendent  of Public Works in San Diego. During those years, he was first on 
site when the  United States Army decommissioned Fort Rosecrans and managed to 
save all the  architectural and engineering drawings of the post that spanned 
back to 1872  (from being incinerated) and had them microfilmed and eventually 
shipped to the  U.S. National Archives. Fred also studied the Spanish tile 
rubble eroding out of  an earthen fill bank at Ballast Point, which the Navy 
developed as a submarine  base in the early 1960s. Fred joined the Fort Guijarros 
Archaeology Project in  1982 and took on the challenge of analyzing more than 
1,200 broken tiles,  hundreds of pounds of whitewashed stucco, mapped thousands 
of cobblestones, and  correlated the 1772 treatise on Spanish fortification 
with tiles from Fort  Guijarros to create drawings of portions of the walls, 
which led to the  watercolor paintings in the 1990s. Fred also helped design the 
adaptation  of the 1940 U.S. Army hospital morgue into a humidity and 
temperature  controlled artifact storage facility in which the entire collection of 
400 boxes  of tiles and Spanish artifacts are now preserved for scholarly 
research. Fred  analyzed all the architectural and general metal remains from the 
mid 19th  century Ballast Point whaling station and Chinese fishing camp and a 
20th  century Army quartermaster building, catalogued photographs and maps 
before  retiring from archaeology in 2005. He was an outstanding avocational  
archaeologist, good friend to all who worked on the project, and ended life  
knowing he made a difference in the lives of others, both now and in the future. 
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.



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