FORT DAVIS Administrative History

The haste of rehabilitation work had left Frank Smith and the Fort Davis staff with little time to devote to the search for historical accuracy and detail. Less than two weeks after the dedication ceremonies of April 1966, Smith finally spoke out on the philosophical differences between the NPS architects and himself. Tom Crellin, praised by park service officials at the dedication for his use of hanging porches on the officers' row buildings, now wanted to replace the doors and windows of all structures on the post. Smith saw this gesture as unauthentic, as "I have taken . . . the level of work done on Officers' Row . . . to be the standard we are to follow." "Roofs and porches are to the minds of the staff here preservation, while further work would be hard for us to consider as less than restoration." In addition, the "expensive millwork items" suggested by Crellin "would add an estimated $9,700 or so to the cost of the contract, and this is money we do not have." Smith argued instead for door and window replacement only on the two-story officers' quarters under restoration, and treatment of the interior woodwork with wood preservative "to make sure that dry rot does not get into the woodwork." The superintendent already realized the need for cost consciousness at his "million-dollar" park, and he preferred "closing the openings [of the ruins] with hardware cloth rather than rebuilding," as this "keeps out the people without obscuring their close view of the interiors, and from a distance lends the effect of suspended deterioration which is a part of our approach." [52]

The regional office's response to Smith's appeal showed how the profile of Fort Davis still mattered at high levels of the Park Service, even as the reduction of operating costs altered the superintendent's vision of rehabilitation. By outlining the windows and doors for woodwork, said the Southwest Region, contractors would see the full plan for Fort Davis' work, even if current financial conditions mitigated against completion of such detail. Smith saw the logic behind this decision, but wanted the region to realize that "the funds for FY 1966 are not very large, and we have a number of other items also listed for the year's project money-- things which we desperately need and will be hard pressed to afford." The increase of costs for rehabilitation (such as the issue of doors and windows) had created the condition that "over the past three years, our total expenditure for Historic Reconstruction has exceeded our actual available funds by almost $10,000." This amount would have to be recaptured out of FY 1966 monies could force the park "to drop the progress on the refurnishing work, or to hurt our chances of completing the interior work on the two structures in the 1967 program." Only the "Magazine Door" should be included in the ongoing schedule of construction, said Smith, as it had "considerable interpretive value," and would be "a negligible expense compared to the other items." [53]

Smith's predictions came true as the strategies for fiscal year 1967 unfolded that winter. In February of that year, the regional office sent to Smith the plans for construction in 1968 and 1969, leaving Fort Davis without funding. The superintendent had hoped to "preserve the various standing walls of the area and protect them from further loss for the next ten years or so." Smith considered this unglamorous work as "mandatory," as it "carries, we feel, a much higher priority than the refurnishing developments for completion of our interpretive layout." In order to do so with existing monies, "the proposed excavation of the First Fort area must definitely be set aside." In addition, "the complete refurnishing of the Enlisted Men's barracks must be abandoned as an early objective;" a project that would not be completed for another two decades. As for the Commanding Officer's Quarters (COQ), which Nan Carson had studied two years earlier, its refurnishing "must be problematical rather than certain," and the "Quartermaster's Corral now belongs to the ages." Despite these delays, Smith and his staff needed the historic structures report underway in the San Francisco NPS office, so that Fort Davis could begin rudimentary construction with day labor, and continue to seek donations of furnishings awaiting the day when money again could be spent on the COQ. The superintendent wanted the Southwest Region to know that "this is no gripe about conditions--we have heard, finally, that there is a war on [Vietnam]." The Fort Davis staff conceded that they had been "exceptionally lucky to date, in completing the roofing projects and having a functioning Visitor Center less than four years after establishment." Aware that "many other areas, especially the new areas in the System, are in desperate straits," Smith asked if the WSC could "give us just a bit of their time we would like to close out all our construction accounts and get this work done if only to cut down everybody's paperwork on Fort Davis until 1970." [54]

Such low-cost documentation began to surface in May 1967, when park historian Ben Levy prepared the Fort Davis "Historical Research Management Plan." Levy considered the post significant because it was a "commemorative symbol of the advance of the frontier across the American continent." As such, its ruins and structures "are a vibrant memorial to the bravery and gallantry of fighting men--white, Negro and Indian alike -- who struggled, in the case of the soldier, to extend a way of life, or in the case of the Indian, to preserve a way of life." Calling this a "relentless and, perhaps, inevitable conflict," the NPS historian called for completion of the excavation of the pre-Civil War post, as well as structures from the more famous second fort that remained unearthed. He noted that as of 1967, the NPS had restored HB-20, an enlisted men's barracks for administrative offices, the visitor center and museum. Partial restoration had occurred for the Officers' Quarters numbered HB-l through 14 and HB-18; and the Hospital (HB-46) and Magazine (HB-40). Despite Superintendent Smith's warning that the Quartermaster Corral would remain unfinished, Levy saw it as critical to a wholistic representation of military life "because it is located on and bears upon the Overland Trail, the existence of which is a basic condition for the establishment of the Post." The NPS historian then analyzed existing historical literature about Fort Davis, essentially that of Robert Utley and to a lesser extent Erwin Thompson. He suggested that, in order to accelerate the pace of scholarly work, the staff should "stimulate the interest of history faculty and graduate students, at colleges such as Sul Ross, to begin studies in the unresearched elements of far West Texas." Among these topics were "structural identities and configurations for both the First and Second Fort;" a "comprehensive and cohesive study of the military district of the Pecos;" and the "details and accoutrements of routine life at the Post." Acknowledging the lack of scholarly attention to the black soldier, Levy suggested that Fort Davis could initiate "a compilation, at least, and perhaps a broad study of the Negro in the service of the U.S. Armed forces should be undertaken, since this is a subject of vital interpretive potential which cannot remain ignored for long." [55]

Throughout the summer and fall of 1967, Frank Smith pressed the regional office in Santa Fe to release funds for both the refurnishing projects and stabilization work rejected in the appropriations given the Fort Davis. Local construction firms had agreed to conduct as much work as Smith could guarantee, and the impending completion of architect drawings for the COQ would indicate the best strategy to follow under the circumstances. In addition, the Fort Davis Historical Society extended their offer of $4,000, which was declined by the NPS. Locals offered to donate artifacts belonging to the most famous inhabitants of the COQ, Colonel Benjamin Grierson and his family. Smith put in his bid early. He told the Southwest Region, because he had learned that "the absolute requirement established by the Director that rehabilitation funds must be expended in this fiscal year or forfeited places us on a use it or lose it basis and makes immediate accomplishment mandatory." [56]

As the regional office planned to send Washington-based chief curator, Harold Peterson, to Fort Davis that winter, the NPS Southwest Archeological Center (SWAC) in Globe, Arizona, agreed to conduct a survey of the park under the guidance of Roland Richert, now chief of the "ruins stabilization unit." Frank Smith, said Richert, had lost his historic architect, Tom Crellin, to the Washington office, and "has thus been left to shift for himself." Richert found upon his visit that Smith "has things humming in great fashion," especially in light of the superintendent's joint service as "Key Man for the Chamizal [park] which takes a considerable amount of time." The ruins specialist also made notice upon arrival at Fort Davis on November 15, 1967, of the work crew of six to ten men under the "very competent leadership of Mr. Pablo Bencomo." The latter had assembled a group whose skills included "masonry, adobe work, carpentry, welding, etc." Richert also recognized the hand of Tom Crellin in training the crew, as Bencomo's charges "picked up many of the tricks of that trade involving the preservation of the buildings at Fort Davis that simply aren't learned in books or manuals. " The SWAC official wrote that Smith himself "is obviously doing a commendable job of managing and developing Fort Davis," as his staff "was cheerfully and efficiently carrying out [their] respective task." Richert then heaped additional praise on Pablo Bencomo, saying: "I was particularly impressed with Mr. Bencomo's ability to perform and direct wall repair work." "If each archeological and historic area had a man of his experience and motivation," said Richert, "the problem of properly handling recurring maintenance stabilization would be considerably simplified." [57]

Richert also remarked upon the structural changes at Fort Davis since his visit there in June 1960 with Robert Utley and others of the "area investigation" team. Fortunately for Superintendent Smith, Richert judged the site to be quite similar to that found seven years earlier, and believed that continued application of NPS standards of preservation would keep the unit intact until additional funds became available. The SWAC official also took extensive photographs of the structures under discussion, which made easier the work of regional officials seeking to determine the best means to expedite the Fort Davis rehabilitation. Smith thanked Richert for his rapid response to the park's needs, and for his recommendations regardless of the potential for funding in the immediate future. The superintendent regretted that he would not be able to employ several of the work crew permanently, but without Richert's candid remarks, said Smith, "we would have almost certainly lost a sizeable portion of the structure concerned." [58]

Roland Richert's praise for the ruins stabilization work at Fort Davis had its parallel in the comments of Harold Peterson on the preservation of artifacts. Frank Smith and his staff had taken the NYC program and devoted it to working with the thousands of objects found on the site and donated by locals. Peterson, speaking from his vantage point in the NPS Washington headquarters, called this a "pioneer effort to use unskilled labor" that was "highly successful, and it strongly suggests that similar programs might well be of benefit elsewhere." Peterson had been invited to Fort Davis in January 1967 by Frank Smith to train the staff "in the treatment of simple stout specimens which existed in abundance among the recovered artifacts in the Fort collections." Upon returning ten months later, the WASO chief curator "was greatly pleased both with the quantity and quality of the work that has been accomplished." By hiring youth at $2.50 per hour, the cash-conscious park service was "getting a good amount of preservation work done at a fraction of the cost that would be involved if we use professional preservators." "Without a program such as this," Peterson believed, "it would have been impossible to do any preservation work for Fort Davis." The concept developed by Frank Smith, whom Peterson praised for his "initiative, interest and energy," "could well be made for other Service areas with similar large collections of stout metal artifacts." Among these Peterson cited "Fort Union, Bent's Old Fort, Fort Laramie and possibly Fort Clatsop." [59]

The WASO curator's kind words did little to assist Frank Smith in his quest for additional funds to advance the cause of historic preservation at Fort Davis. The superintendent noted in December 1967 that he would have 61 facilities completed and ready for maintenance by July 1968, requiring a transfer of his own workforce away from artifact cleaning to matters of structural preservation. Thus in January of that year, Smith defined as the goals of the park staff preparation for building maintenance, which he said would fall "primarily on the shoulders of Maintenance Foreman Bencomo and his crew. " This made more problematic the acquisition in February 1968 of several "historic vehicles," which Smith described as "for eventual use in our restored quartermaster corral and shops." The park needed information from WASO about "escort wagons of immediate post-Civil War days, through the 1880's models, and also . . . information as to the thread count of the various canvases used for ambulance covers and stretchers." Fort Davis had no money for researching these vehicles, but wanted an accurate depiction of their design and operation in time for summer display for visitors. [60]

Throughout the year 1968, Superintendent Smith continued to receive reports from a variety of NPS personnel regarding historic preservation and refurnishing of facilities, despite the constraints on operating capital. Charles B. Voll, assistant chief of the ruins stabilization unit, devoted the month of May to excavation of some of the First Fort Davis. Voll, chief ranger Bob Crisman, and Pablo Bencomo's maintenance crew uncovered the sutler's store, a two-room adobe house behind that structure, "the stone blacksmith shop and bakery, fragments of three of the four 1856 warehouses . . . part of the temporary first Second Fort hospital, the Second Fort Hospital Laundry, two First Fort Jacal Officers' Quarters, a stone wall and a square post hole." Ernest Allen Connally, chief of the NPS Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, read and commented upon Ben Levy's COQ furnishing study; the document that specified 1884 as the date for selection of artifacts. Levy's rationale was that "landscaping in front of the [COQ] and in front of the other officers' quarters at Fort Davis was accomplished in early October 1884." Connally noted that some within the park service had preferred representing Fort Davis earlier than this, seeking to "reflect a rougher and more primitive, and perhaps unkempt, appearance to the Fort, in order to carry it back closer in point of time to the last important Indian campaign in which the garrison of Fort Davis participated." Frank Smith was one of the adherents to an earlier depiction of officers' life at the post, but historian Levy countered with the argument that "the record is too clear that the Grierson household, especially at Fort Davis, was intended as a comfortable, even luxurious, home." Levy saw the Griersons' lavishness as a good counterpoint to the life of the average officer, and encouraged Smith: "If the itinerant character of the officer and his household is a theme that needs telling, then a simply furnished officer's quarters may be the answer." Furnishings specialist Nan Carson Rickey echoed Levy's sentiments, viewing Grierson not as the dashing hero of 1880s Indian campaigns, but as "a mature man, experienced now in business as well as war," and as a senior officer entering "the time of reward for service rendered--an all-too-brief time for most [officers], when [he] could enjoy and profit from the land and the peace [he] had wrought." [61]

While the issue of dating the refurnishing of the COQ might seem petty compared to the struggle to create Fort Davis and rehabilitate its structures, Superintendent Smith saw the comments of Ben Levy and Nan Rickey as challenging his own vision of the history of the park. "We have assumed," Smith told the SWR director, "that the object [of refurnishing] was to show the area as close to the time of maximum historic significance as possible." This meant "the use of Grierson as the occupant of the CO's Quarters on the basis of his overall prominence and the fact that he was commander of the [Pecos] District during the years of the greatest activity." Smith and his staff had identified this period as the late 1870s and early 1880s, just before completion of the Grierson expansion of facilities at Fort Davis; an expansion, incidentally, that could proceed because of the commander's clout within the service, and the general lack of Indian resistance that would not delay construction. The Fort Davis staff also took exception to Nan Rickey's suggestion that Grierson was "an 'aging hero'." Smith characterized the commander as in the prime of life, both professionally and personally. "We find no evidence," said the superintendent, "that [Grierson] was resigning himself to the command of a 'so-so' post at this time." Smith stood firm for 1883 as the date for calculating the COQ refurnishing project, and advised the SWR director: "Let other areas tell the story of the economic effects of retiring army officers--Fort Davis was established and maintained as a fighting post, and other approaches do not meet the requirements of the Interpretive Prospectus nor the approach we have been emphasizing, and shall continue to use." [62]

Little did Superintendent Smith and the Fort Davis staff realize that it would not be until 1981 that the Grierson home would be completed and opened to the visiting public. Where generous funding of the structural rehabilitation of the post from 1961-1966 had resulted in rapid progress, the dearth of capital funds thereafter at Fort Davis caused Smith, his successor Derek Hambly, and the employees of the historic site to engage in a circuitous journey to fill the rooms of the COQ and bring the commander's world to life. This process began in 1968, when Nan Rickey traveled to Los Angeles to meet with the two surviving Grierson granddaughters, Alice and Joy. Rickey spent two days with the elderly sisters, neither of whom had been born or raised at Fort Davis (Alice was born in 1892 at Fort Custer, Joy in 1894 at Fort Keogh). They discussed family history, and perused "a sizable collection of manuscripts and photographs for research use and ultimate deposit at Fort Davis." The lack of Grierson personal property, however, was not the fault of the granddaughters, and in studying its whereabouts, said Rickey, was "increasingly complex, difficult to understand, and (in some instances) unsavory." The vast majority of the commander's possessions, Rickey surmised, "must be assumed to be dispersed in the vicinity of Fort Davis." Alice and Joy Grierson had in their possession "only two classes of objects that once belonged to their grandfather: oriental rugs and books." The women also had a substantial collection of family heirlooms gathered from the East and West Coasts throughout the nineteenth century. As the Grierson granddaughters had no heirs, Rickey "suggested that some of this material might find good and appropriate use at Fort Davis, even though it does not have Grierson provenance." [63]

As the Fort Davis staff prepared to receive the donations of the Grierson family, they also discovered that they might benefit from a raid by the Internal Revenue Service in El Paso on the Munoz-Sun Hardware store. The courts had ruled that this company would have to forfeit its inventory to the IRS for failure to pay back taxes. Among the items seized by the agents were antique weapons that Frank Smith believed could augment the Fort Davis collections. In discussions with the IRS officials, Smith learned that the agency "had begun to worry about the public relations and unfavorable publicity which would attend a major arms auction, even of historic guns, so soon after passage of a series of firearms control bills." This last reference was to the spate of violent incidents occurring elsewhere across America in the spring and summer of 1968, in which the famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in April in Memphis, Tennessee, followed in June by U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles while campaigning for president. As Congress had moved quickly to establish controls on weapons sales and distribution, the IRS decided that "such pieces [as the Munoz collection] as may be desirable for use by government agencies for museum use may be transferred to these agencies." Smith agreed to the appraisal value set by the IRS, and prepared a list of appropriate weapons that he believed the Southwest Region should purchase for the sum of $2,000. This culminated two years of negotiations between Smith and the El Paso IRS office, and the Fort Davis superintendent urged his superiors: "In this case, and in view of the quality of some of the items, and the difficulty of acquiring them at a precise moment, it would be cheaper in both manpower and money to proceed." [64]

Smith's request appealed to the NPS at a time when money was in short supply for such activities as artifact acquisition. Frank Kowski, Southwest Regional Director, asked the Park Service's Washington office of interpretation for their approval, as "we gather that IRS is a little spooky of a public gun sale at this particular time in view of the [Johnson] Administration's interest in side arms legislation." Kowski also cited Frank Smith's research into the broader applicability of the Munoz collection, stating: "Many of these items would be wonderfully suitable for displays at Fort Laramie, Fort Union, Fort Davis, or Civil War areas and possibly the Defense Department project of the Army-Navy Museum." Smith had also learned that the preliminary value of the entire collection, which included period swords, was some $66,000, validating Kowski's contention that "in these austere days we can't let an opportunity like this go by without making some effort at fulfilling our needs." [65]

Negotiations with the IRS culminated in the spring of 1970 with sale of the "Sun Hardware collection" to the NPS, with final appraisal set at $37,223. In order to protect the collection, Frank Smith had arranged to display only one item, "a $3,500 third model Colt's Dragoon pistol." The other weapons of high value would be "placed temporarily in a bank vault at the First National Bank of Alpine," as they offered "twenty-four hour security," while the remainder would be housed at the park, which Smith described as "in spite of occasional false alarms, . . . secure from all but the most professional and sophisticated intruders." Smith then had to plan for the weapons' cleaning and cataloguing. Realizing that his staff needed additional training in weapons curation, the superintendent arranged for a return visit to Fort Davis by NPS chief curator Harold Peterson and regional curator Jean Swearingen to teach the staff how to organize the Sun Hardware collection. Smith also offered advice to the Southwest Region on controversial issues connected to the publicity of this purchase. "In view of the delicacy of the public relations in this area," the IRS had asked "that they be given time to clear [the press release] with their Austin Regional Office." Another unforseen obstacle, said Smith, was that "since local gun collectors may well be up in arms about the removal of this collection from commercial channels, we will face a problem, which would not be as fiery in Santa Fe as in the local and more personal contacts." Finally, Smith warned that for security reasons the NPS press release should not identify Fort Davis as the site for curation and processing of the weapons. He did want his superiors to recognize the teamwork undertaken since 1965 to bring the historic weapons collection into the park service, and invited the regional director to Fort Davis to "get a look at it before it is transferred to the various receiving areas." [66]