FORT DAVIS Administrative History

History and visitor services would be relegated to secondary concerns for Smith and his park staff in the spring of 1966, as the long-awaited dedication ceremonies gradually came into view. Discussions with local and state officials had begun during the fall of 1965, but the opening of the visitors center and closing of the parade grounds road had delayed completion of the "Advance Plan" until late January. Smith told his superiors in Santa Fe that "we have rounded up our supporters and feel that the matter is well in hand." He then suggested a completely contradictory mood at Fort Davis in the next sentence of his report: "Two things now hold us up . . . the date must be set and the principal speaker established before we can proceed." The Alpine and Marfa chambers of commerce had advised Smith that they only needed a few months of lead time for promotion of the event, so that "the time factor is now good." He informed the SWR director that with his experience of "roughly sixteen years of every style of National Park Service speaking assignment," the director could do no worse than to ask Smith himself to serve as master of ceremonies. But the political realities of Fort Davis, which Smith had quickly come to grasp, dictated that the NPS should invite Gene Hendryx. "The support of Mr. Hendryx will eventually be important, I am sure, to both the State Parks and the National Park Service," said the superintendent, and "apart from that, [the Alpine radio station owner] does a superb job in this sort of assignment." [76]

As to the issues of scheduling a date and principal speaker, Smith offered "a spring dedication, between Easter and the early part of May." The more significant dates for Fort Davis were July 4 ("Establishment Day") and October 23 (commemorating the creation in 1854 of the first fort). As the weather would affect either date, Smith preferred a time before the start of the "heavy travel season." He also canvassed the sponsors of the event for their advice on a speaker, and learned that their preference was none other than President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Democratic officials of Jeff Davis County cited as attractions for LBJ the fact that "he could use this as the beginning of a weekend at the Johnson Ranch [near Austin]," that "he is immensely popular with most of the West Texans, . . . and that his personal appearance in an election year would be of benefit to his friends here." Smith warned that "this has progressed to the point where quite honestly I fear that they will insist on inviting the Chief Executive, whether clearance from the [NPS] Washington Office and the Secretary [of the Interior] can be obtained or not." The superintendent thus characterized the LBJ groundswell as "a very difficult problem to control, and so I am forced to ask that permission be sought to invite the President." [77]

So that the regional office could grasp the scale of Smith's worries, he outlined the issue of security. "The president's appearance here could set off a reaction which would bring several times as many people as we could contain or control." Some two million people resided within one half-day's drive of Fort Davis ("from Alamogordo on the west to San Antonio on the east"), "and a President is a real attraction." Smith predicted that the upper limits of the park's capacity would be some 8,000 to 10,000 people, but that "a good spring weekend might bring in almost double that number." Smith personally preferred someone with slightly less drawing power, such as Interior secretary Stewart Udall, or "a military man, with the firm stamp of personal heroism upon him." This would allow the park service and local law enforcement authorities to handle the crowds themselves, resulting in less expense and strain upon the park's natural and historic resources. [78]

Smith's schedule for the ceremonies themselves was more mundane. He wanted the Saturday afternoon of April 30 to be the date, and the emphasis to be on "the commemoration of the Army of the West." Also recognized would be the park service s own golden anniversary, the achievements of the decade-old MISSION 66 program, and the labors of the local promoters of the park. After the dedication ceremonies themselves, Smith proposed a giant barbecue sponsored by local civic organizations, and costing a modest $1.50 per person. His rationale for this was the lack of restaurant services in town for such a crowd, and the distance that many guests would travel from home to attend the celebration. A similar problem would greet those seeking overnight accommodations, as the entire number of rooms in Fort Davis and the nearby Davis Mountain Lodge was a mere 200. "Most of the cost of the program," felt Smith, "can be covered by the sponsoring organizations, with Southwestern Monuments Association being stuck for a major portion of the bills." Smith also wished for good weather to accommodate the crowds, as "the largest indoor establishment in town," the gymnasium of the Fort Davis High School, seated only 300 people. [79]

For the next six weeks, Superintendent Smith and the Fort Davis staff had little idea of the final version of their dedication ceremonies. Correspondence with other NPS sites in the area reflected this, as Smith believed that he would need less than two dozen park service law enforcement personnel to handle the crowds. He also learned from the SWMA that they could not afford to spend upwards of $1,000 to subsidize the dedication activities. Then on March 10, while Smith was absent from the park, acting superintendent Bob Crisman discovered that the date had been advanced three weeks, to April 4 (itself a mere three weeks away). In addition, the speakers would include Secretary Udall and First Lady Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson. What ensued was later described by Smith in a 1994 interview as "a bloody madhouse," with Secret Service, NPS, and local political officials swarming over the Fort Davis grounds to assess the security risks and plan for Lady Bird's travel. Bob Crisman remembered attending these security sessions, and the heightened sense of anxiety coming less than three years after the assassination in Dallas of President John F. Kennedy. The Secret Service, said Crisman, was "tight-lipped," in part because of the decision by Governor John Connally, himself wounded in the Kennedy motorcade in November 1963, to come to Fort Davis with his wife. Plans were made to sweep the hillsides for snipers, and to guard against individuals climbing onto the roofs of the structures around the parade grounds. [80]

Soon thereafter the park received the official itinerary of Mrs. Johnson and her party. She would depart Washington on Saturday, April 2, for the Alpine airport, and would spend that day at Big Bend National Park, dedicating that NPS unit some 22 years after its creation. Then on Sunday the 3rd, the Johnson entourage would take a raft trip down the Rio Grande through scenic Mariscal Canyon. From there the Johnson party would travel by bus to Fort Davis on the morning of Monday, April 4, arriving at the park by 10:30AM. There she would be welcomed by the NPS director, George Hartzog, and would be preceded in her remarks by Secretary Udall. Her last official duty would be to unveil a bronze plaque at the visitor center, and then depart for the Alpine airport for the return trip to Austin. A large delegation from the Washington NPS office would coordinate logistics and publicity, said Cornelius Heine, NPS chief of information, and the Western Museum Laboratory "has already been instructed to expedite the exhibits for the Visitor Center," while the Eastern Museum Laboratory was to "rush the diorama scheduled for the Visitor Center. [81]

Figure 37. Crowd in attendance at Dedication Ceremonies, April 4, 1966.
Courtesy Fort Davis NHS.

The scale of the Johnson visit, and the haste with which the park service had to move to accommodate her party, left Superintendent Smith and the staff with little time for any other duties in late March. The security detail expanded quickly to a total of 74 uniformed officers from local, state, and federal agencies (including some 30 park rangers) from as far away as the Grand Canyon's Albright Training Center. The parks supplying law enforcement and dignitaries also asked for additional travel monies, as their own budgets could not support such costs. Cornelius Heine solicited the attendance of the U.S. Army band from Fort Bliss, appealing to the military with the promise that "this event will be one of the most important ceremonies to be held in western Texas," as well as "the first time in recent years that the First Lady has dedicated a national historic site." For good measure, the celebration "in large part, pays tribute to the Army," and Heine hoped that this would convince the military to absorb the costs of transporting the band the two hundred miles east to the park. [82]

The Army did indeed respond to the park service's call for help, as did all groups needed to make the dedication ceremonies a success. Monday, April 4, 1966 dawned cool but clear in the high altitude of the Davis Mountains. By 10:00AM, nearly 7,000 guests had worked their way through town to the old army post, sitting on the parade ground in anticipation of the First Lady's appearance. Music was performed by high school bands from the surrounding towns of Marfa, Alpine, Marathon and Pecos, and the Reverend Hugh Stiles of the First Baptist Church of Fort Davis gave the invocation. State representative Gene Hendryx then read the list of distinguished guests, and surrendered the podium to Superintendent Frank Smith for the "welcome to Fort Davis." George Hartzog then offered his thoughts on the meaning of the park to the nation, praising "this interpretive program at Fort Davis [as] the first of its kind in the National Park System." The NPS unit allowed visitors to "encounter a phantom of life as it existed in the 1870's, including sounds of old garrison bugle calls and retreats wafting across parade grounds like echoes from the past." This the NPS director reminded the audience was "one of the prime mandates of the National Park Service -- preserving the historic objects of our heritage for the use and enjoyment of the American people." [83]

Hartzog's remarks were aimed not only at the general interests of the attendees, but also at the presence of U.S. Representative Richard White, a Democrat of El Paso, and Stewart Udall, both of whom spoke after the NPS director about the importance of Fort Davis and the park system to the nation. Hartzog introduced the former Arizona congressman as "an outstanding conservationist" who had "led the way in developing a program of expansion and improvement of your National Park System." The Interior secretary then linked the significance of Fort Davis' dedication to America's "continuing engagement with destiny." Quoting the philosopher Matthew Arnold, Udall saw in the park service a means to fulfill the nation's "endless expansion of its powers, [its] endless growth, [its] wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the human race finds [as] its ideal." Catching his audience by surprise, the secretary then announced that he was awarding the first grant from the newly created "Land and Water Conservation Fund" in the amount of $515,000, to match the state of Texas appropriation for Davis Mountain State Park. Udall next turned to the guest of honor, whom he described as "one individual with us today who leads a nationwide program to retain and improve the beauty of America;" a reference to Lady Bird Johnson's campaign to remove unsightly billboards from America's highways. He then asked Mrs. Johnson to offer her remarks, which united old Fort Davis and far west Texas to the sweep of national history that she and her husband found so invigorating and worthy of remembrance. [84]

Speaking some five years after President John F. Kennedy had signed into law legislation creating Fort Davis National Historic Site, Mrs. Johnson linked the abandoned military post to the pioneer experiences that shaped so much of the Lone Star State and the American West. "Historic Fort Davis," she told the attentive audience, "guarded the Trans-Pecos Trails by which civilization advanced beyond the frontiers of Texas to the Rio Grande, and beyond to California." Evoking memories of romance and nostalgia, the First Lady asked her listeners in her twenty minute speech: "What better place to find out 'the nature and experiences of the men - and women - who traveled' this road?" At Fort Davis, she replied, one could find a place where those brave ancestors of Texans like herself had "found haven," where "soldiers rallied for chase and glory," and "where Kiplingesque campaigns finally ended the scourge of bold raiders out of mountain and plain." [85]

Lady Bird Johnson's reference to the nineteenth-century British novelist Rudyard Kipling in many ways symbolized both the fort that the visitors had come to commemorate, and the facility that the National Park Service had labored to bring back to life. "Re-created here at Fort Davis," said Mrs. Johnson, "is the physical and spiritual silhouette of an age, a place, a people." The Park Service had spent over one million dollars from 1961-1966 to create a park where "we can see where those people lived and worked;" where one could "understand - through exhibits, tours, and expert commentary - what drove them to wrest civilization from wilderness;" and in an indirect reference to the Native societies that had inhabited the Trans-Pecos "on the other side, to fight to the last against the conquering march." [86]

The First Lady then turned to recognize the many groups and individuals which had contributed to the creation and restoration of that history: her husband, the powerful Texas senator, Vice-President, and then President whose clout loomed over the process of park-building; the national impulse to start the Park Service 50 years earlier; and the local sponsors the Mile High Club, the Fort Davis Historical Society, and Barry Scobee, whose faith in the past had at last been rewarded. Mrs. Johnson could not ignore the larger context of Fort Davis history, given the ongoing conflict half-a-world away in the jungles of Vietnam. But the unpleasantness of that engagement was as distant as the memories of the frontier wars fought by units of the U.S. Army in far west Texas a century and more ago, and the First Lady could note with pride that the park "is a classic example of cooperation between State and Federal agencies." Davis Mountain State Park and Fort Davis had joined to "take best advantage of the resources of their neighboring parks," through a series of "interlocking trails and interpretive programs." Mrs. Johnson, aware of the awkward relationship between her fellow native Texans and the stewardship of government, closed her comments by offering Fort Davis as "a model to be emulated wherever the joining of park and recreation resources can better serve the growing needs of our growing population." [87]

As the ceremonies neared their end, those in attendance realized that they had witnessed some history of their own. There had never been a gathering of that size in the town of Fort Davis (nor would there be for the next three decades), and the efforts of the NPS to orchestrate such a crowd paralleled the exertions to bring the fort back to life. Mrs. Johnson was so taken by the charm and character of the post that she delayed the ceremonies some 25 minutes so that she could read all the label copy in the new museum (called the "instant museum" because it had been completed only the night before her arrival). Frank Smith led Mrs. Johnson through the facility, and later gave Governor and Mrs. Connally a private tour. SWR director Daniel Beard reported the next day that the whole affair had been "flawless," and that "no doubt about it, the museum was a hit." He also wished to thank the Western Museum Laboratory for their design of the exhibits, and said that "Bob Utley should receive a great deal of credit" for the accuracy of his historical research. To F.H. "Pat" Ryan, Jr., of the Marfa Chamber of Commerce, Beard offered his thanks and a comment: "I have attended many dedication ceremonies at units of the [NPS] throughout the United States, but I have never attended one that was more carefully planned and gracefully executed than your ceremonies at Fort Davis." Ryan in turn congratulated the star attraction at the event, Mrs. Johnson, by noting that "your charming presence and your wonderful remarks were the high point of the program, and it made the day one of the most memorable of recent years for us". [88]

Figure 38. Mrs. Lady Bird Johnson addresses Dedication Ceremony audience (April 4, 1966).
Courtesy Fort Davis NHS.

Lady Bird's thoughts on the meaning of Fort Davis also touched the heart of the longtime champion of its park status, Barry Scobee, whose contributions to the ceremony did not go unnoticed. Five decades earlier, he and Carl Raht had suspected that the Davis Mountains contained a story that had national appeal, and the county justice of the peace often wondered what it would take to have such a day as that he witnessed on the first Monday in April, 1966. Scobee wrote an account of his experiences at the celebration, where Mrs. Johnson singled him out for his efforts on behalf of the park. "You are to be congratulated on all the research required to present to posterity so valuable a book on the history of this area," the president's wife told him personally, and she reminded the audience to credit "Judge Scobee, who had so much to do in getting this old fort made an historical site." The attention that he finally received from prominent officials like NPS director George Hartzog and Interior secretary Udall flattered Scobee, who closed his reminiscence with a typically self-deprecating story. His wife Katherine learned from a friend in Alpine that a young Hispanic woman had attended the ceremony, and had listened to Lady Bird speak of a judge who was instrumental in the success of Fort Davis. "I didn't hear his name," the woman said; "Who was he?" [89]