Big Bend Administrative History

Yet another management issue awaiting the new staff of Big Bend was congressional action to create the position of United States Commissioner for the new national park. C.M. Meadows, owner of the Meadows oil company of San Angelo (and a member of a prominent Texas family), had campaigned for the position with state officials. "I should like very much to have a part in the development of the park," Meadows informed Maxwell on October 30, 1943, "and would also enjoy living in the area." Yet the San Angelo businessman had learned that Everett Townsend also was being promoted for the position. "No other would be better qualified than he," Meadows wrote, "and I know of no one who has taken an keener interest in the development and promotion of the Park than Mr. Townsend." NPS officials reviewed Meadows' comments with some enthusiasm, but E.T. Scoyen, associate regional director, noted in the margin of Meadows' letter that "if there is any way to avoid it don't get a full time commissioner who will reside in the park." [52]

Meadows' endorsement of Townsend for the commissioner's post highlighted the regard that local officials and NPS personnel alike had for the "father of Big Bend." Tillotson wrote on November 10 to the NPS director to praise Townsend for "promoting and securing the passage of legislation providing for appropriation of funds by the State, and in the actual land acquisition program." The regional director believed that "I am safe in saying that there is no other individual who has taken such an active part in the entire program from its inception or who has been so helpful in every way throughout." Tillotson then advised the director of the need for a commissioner once the state ceded control of the land to the park service. "In spite of his years," Tillotson said of Townsend, "he is in excellent health and fully capable of carrying on the duties of such a position." Citing his service of more than 40 years with the Texas Rangers, the U.S. Customs Service, as sheriff of Brewster County, and in the state legislature, Tillotson suggested that "by experience and training he is well qualified for the position and he would certainly be most acceptable to Superintendent-designate Maxwell and to this office." The regional director then approached Townsend with the offer to "have you in such a position, " as he considered it "most appropriate and fitting as a climax to your long years of effort toward the establishment of the park." Tillotson's offer flattered Townsend greatly. "I shall be very glad to have it," said the longtime champion of Big Bend, as he had spent a good deal of time working with U.S. commissioners' courts. "I know that Maxwell and I can team it together," he concluded, and would "deeply feel the honor of being the first U.S. Commissioner in the Big Bend National Park." [53]

By the spring of 1944, the park service could envision an opening date for Big Bend that solved the problem of hiring a U.S. commissioner. On March 9, Assistant Secretary Oscar Chapman had awarded NPCI the concession for Big Bend. Tillotson then called upon the park service to locate the main visitors complex on the Rio Grande near Boquillas at the Daniels Ranch property. "Here there is ample room for development and expansion togethere with plenty of water for irrigation, operation of air conditioning system, etc." The regional director still held out for an architectural design "on the lines of an Old Mexican Hacienda and every effort should be made to maintain the Mexican atmosphere of the place." The Chisos basin, by comparison, would get only lodges for summer visitors. "This entire development," wrote Tillotson on March 29, "should maintain the general atmosphere of a typical old Texas ranch layout," with "corrals . . . provided as the starting point for saddle horse and pack trips." Campgrounds could be built in Pine Canyon, said the regional director, and at Castolon, Boquillas, Hot Springs, or San Vicente. When the NPS constructed its food-service facilities on the river, said Tillotson, they "should be in the form of a typical Mexican restaurant somewhat along the lines of that formerly operated at Boquillas by Maria Sada." Visitors also could avail themselves of souvenir shops within the park, said Tillotson, "especially those of Mexican manufacture," and "there should be no ban on the sale of such foreign made articles as are manufactured in Mexico." Presaging an idea promoted in the year 2000 by park superintendent Frank Deckert, Tillotson told NPS officials that "I can also foresee a large business to be done by the operator in articles of clothing typical of the country, such as cowboy boots, bright colored shirts and neckerchiefs, ten-gallon hats, Mexican sombreros, charro costumes, huarachos [sic], etc." [54]

Tillotson's admiration for the visitor services provided over the years by Maria Sada struck a chord among NPS officials designing concessions at Big Bend. One week after noting that Sada had left the area to run a restaurant in Del Rio, Texas, Tillotson reported to the NPS director that "she has now returned to the Big Bend in order to 'collect some accounts due her.'" Sada had taken up residence upriver at San Vicente, and wrote to Tillotson asking for permission "to reestablish her former location now owned by the Government at Boquillas." Tillotson told Drury that "since there is absolutely no other place in the area where a visitor can secure a meal, it seems to me that it would be a distinct advantage from our standpoint to have her provide such service." The regional director preferred Sada to be located on NPS property, and thus Tillotson advised her to reoccupy her old establishment. "Personally," wrote Tillotson to Drury, "I should like very much to see her remain in the area with her little store and eating place until such time as National Park Concessions takes over and thereafter have her remain as an employee of the company conducting a typical Mexican restaurant in keeping with the border atmosphere." Thus the regional director offered both Sada and W.A. Cooper special-use permits to allow them to provide visitor services when the park opened on July 1 to the public. [55]

Maria Sada's permit reflected one of the most enduring dichotomies of the creation of Big Bend: the NPS's desire to tell the border story accurately (along with the other features of natural and cultural resource management), and the pressures from local interests to avoid references to partnership with Mexico. The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, based in Washington, DC, called upon NPS director Drury in December 1943 to invite Mexican officials to any ceremony opening the national park. Mrs. Josue Picon, chair of the U.S. Section, Committee on the Americas, told Drury that such a gesture might "encourage our Mexican friends to hasten plans for the giving of a tract of land on their side opposite the Big Bend." Then in May 1944, Zonia Barber of Chicago wrote to Harold Ickes "to ascertain whether the contemplated Mexican Park on the other side of the Rio Grande is ready and willing to join the Big Bend Park in forming an International Park." Barber reminded Ickes that, "realizing the influence Symbols have on human action, as Chairman of the Peace Symbol Committee of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, I am urging that the new International Park be named 'Big Bend - (name of the Mexican Park) International Peace Park." Ickes should recall also, said Barber, that "each of us who has spent much or little time in Mexico realizes the necessity of using every available opportunity of expressing through action the 'Good Neighbor' policy" of President Roosevelt. [56]

While the operating permit for Maria Sada and the pleas of the Women's International League for a peace-park designation for Big Bend occupied the time of Minor Tillotson in the days prior to the opening of Big Bend, the more critical feature of border relations was the signing in May of the U.S.-Mexico treaty dividing the waters of the Rio Grande. Director Drury sent Arthur Demaray to a meeting in Washington on April 17, where the associate NPS director spoke with representatives of the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Office of Indian Affairs. These agencies negotiated their roles in any future use of Rio Grande waters pursuant to the clauses of the 1944 treaty. Demaray asked his colleagues to support "a provision in the supplementary legislation which would provide that no dam or other structure for the storage or transmission of water be authorized affecting lands within the Big Bend National Park without first securing specific authority of the Congress." [57]

The last issue of border relations to reach the desk of top-level NPS officials in May of 1944 was correspondence from Walter P. Taylor, unit leader of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's office at Texas A&M College, and author of the survey that spring of the ecology of Big Bend. Taylor wanted Hillory Tolson to inform his colleagues in the Chicago headquarters of the park service of an article appearing in the Chihuahua newspaper Tiempo by Glenn Burgess on the international park idea. "From a Rotary dinner held a short time ago in the city of Chihuahua," wrote the Alpine chamber of commerce manager, "came the idea of constructing a large international park within the limits of the states of Chihuahua and Coahuila, at the place where the Rio Grande River makes a rather big bend." Burgess told the Rotarians that the state of Texas stood ready to endorse the concept, and that "President Avila Camacho had accepted in principle the proposition of granting an equal amount of land by Mexico." The chamber manager conceded that "the idea of constructing the huge international park is nothing new," as "it dates from 1930, in which year was begun the construction of the highway" that ran from Dubuque, Iowa, southwest through Alpine and on to Presidio, Texas. Burgess suggested to the Chihuahuenses that "Mexico, in addition to contributing its share of land, should construct a road which starting from Ojinaga will pass through San Carlos (today, Manual [sic] Benavides), and will end in the city of Chihuahua." The benefit of such a route, said Burgess, would be "a circuit which will connect Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas, besides crossing the entire park on the North American side." Burgess speculated that no fewer than 400,000 tourists would come annually to Big Bend, "attracted by this new drive - very high mountain peaks, deep canyons, woods, forests, and water falls - all of it located in the most beautiful part of the Rio Grande River." [58]

This discussion of an international park for Big Bend took second stage on June 12, 1944, when Secretary Ickes accepted the deed to the park from Amon Carter. Befitting the circuitous journey that Big Bend had taken since Everett Townsend first called in 1933 for its creation, the park service had to cancel the ceremony planned at the White House six days earlier because ownership of mineral rights on two parcels of land remained in doubt. Yet the park service and local supporters of Texas's first NPS unit gave thanks for their success, and turned to the task of greeting the first officials visitors to Big Bend. The controversies stirred among local landowners would endure for decades, as would the divided thinking of the NPS about the proper image to project to visitors: wilderness and desolation, or tranquility and relaxation. Finally, the meaning of Mexico would echo for years, as evidenced by internal NPS memoranda pressing for border themes and symbols, even as park service press releases could not mention this theme. How all of these competing forces played out would define the history of America's 27th national park, and shape border relations as much as they influenced visitors' consciousness.

Figure 18:Castolon Cotton Fields