FORT DAVIS Administrative History

Money for guns at Fort Davis was easier to obtain than artifacts for the commanding officer's quarters. This was primarily because nothing had been done on the plans to restore and refurnish the building. In the late 1960s, the Fort Davis Historical Society purchased a Victorian set of bedroom furniture and a number of chairs for the quarters. This was done at the recommendation of Nan Carson Rickey, who had been designated to write the furnishing plan for the building. As no work was being done on the quarters, however, the furniture was placed in storage (in HB-3) at the fort. In fact, Mrs. Carson visited Fort Davis and accompanied by society members, including Mrs. Lucy Miller, went to the homes of a number of citizens who had pieces of furnishings appropriate for the refurnishing project.

In the early 1970s, some society members expressed concern as to whether or not the purchased furniture would ever be "used" or displayed. In the meantime, the fort had offers of donations for the quarters. One piece was a large walnut wardrobe owned by Mrs. Lucy Miller of Fort Davis and her son Clay Miller of Valentine. The piece had belonged to Colonel Grierson and his family and the Millers wanted it returned to "where it belonged." They were, however, reluctant to donate if they could not be assured that it would be displayed.

In the fall of 1971, park historian Nick Bleser, realizing that donations might be lost if the only thing the Park Service at Fort Davis could guarantee was storage space for items, suggested that the hallway and the north room of HB-2 could be "restored" and open to the public. Nothing was really done in the way of restoration except that the rooms were painted and the flooring stained. In June of 1972, half of the hallway and bedroom of HB-2 were open to the public. Volunteers and staff, dressed in some "not too authentic" 1880s dresses, maintained and interpreted the quarters. On display in the bedroom were the Grierson wardrobe donated by the Millers, the purchased set of bedroom furniture consisting of the bed, washstand, and dresser with mirror, and some of the purchased chairs. Many of the volunteers that summer were historical society members. Park historian Nick Bleser saved the day, said Hambly, when he "suggested an interim restoration of the hall and bedroom of another building." The superintendent reported to the Southwest Region that its decision to include the COQ in the restoration budget for the next two years would insure more such donations. Hambly then added: "The completion of the furnishing plan will give us a base to work from in obtaining many materials that are still in local hands." This in turn would lead to "actual restoration work [which] will see the culmination of what many local residents take [as] their historic heritage and serve as an added incentive for local participation in historical interpretation in cooperation with the Service." [67]

For the remainder of the 1970s, the Fort Davis staff and management sought funding of the COQ, and at times the regional office indicated a willingness to expedite this request. In May 1977, Douglas Ashley and Harold LaFleur, both historic architects from WASO, came to west Texas to examine the structure prior to writing "an Architectural Data Section of an Historic Structure Report." Ashley and LaFleur both echoed the thoughts of NPS staff dating from the park's inception, calling the COQ a building "of the first order of significance." They highlighted the consequence of delays in completing the work, as some 16 years after opening "the structure is barricaded to limit public entry due to unsafe conditions caused by some loose masonry, lack of flooring, and loose plasterwork." In 1964 the COQ had received, along with the other buildings along Officers' Row, its own porch and roof to prevent major deterioration. The window and door frames had remained intact, but the architects wrote that "all of the original flooring and floor structure is missing." Only the stone foundation remained of the detached adobe building that housed the commander's kitchen and servants' quarters. Ashley and LaFleur thus recommended that the NPS "examine the feasibility of a full restoration of the house proper, and a reconstruction of the various 'out' buildings." It was their hope that such a study could be completed by February 1978, with plans for actual construction to commence soon thereafter. [68]

The only substantial challenge to the plans outlined by the NPS historic architects came from F. Ross Holland, Jr., chief of the park service's cultural resources management division in Washington. In March 1978, Holland reviewed the work of Ashley and LaFleur, crediting them with thoroughness, but criticizing their recommendations for full restoration. Holland believed that the planned "restoration/reconstruction/refurnishing would detract from the overall ambience of Fort Davis today and that it would tend to distract the visitor from an appreciation of the fort's primary historical significance." The WASO chief liked how previous structural work at Fort Davis evoked "the passage of time and its effects," giving the historic site "a high degree of integrity as an ensemble having shared a common past down to the present." Holland argued that complete restoration work on the COQ "would constitute a jarring modern intervention and create a visual anachronism." He also was not convinced that the plan "would produce an interpretive gain in terms of greater visitor understanding of the significance of Fort Davis." More specifically, Holland noted that the design to rebuild the adobe servants' quarters "would cut across the foundation of the first fort." Unless the park service would restore all the outbuildings at the rear of Officers' Row, the COQ work would "be creating a visual impression that never existed as part of the historic scene." Instead the cultural resources chief voted for "Alternative C," in which the NPS provided merely "basic exterior restoration and interior preservation." This he concluded "would best foster public appreciation of the outstanding total resource that is Fort Davis today." [69]

Holland's caution about the architectural integrity of the COQ plan prompted the NPS to send additional experts to the west Texas site for additional opinions. In July 1978, the Harpers Ferry Center of the park service sent to Fort Davis David Wallace, whose task was to review the plans for refurnishing of buildings. Wallace noted "the care with which the Site staff have adapted the furnishings for the Commanding Officer's quarters to the somewhat smaller officer's quarters they presently occupy pending restoration of the CO's Quarters." Despite these limitations, Wallace found the work "one of the best documented officer's quarters projects I know of, thanks to the Grierson family's saving habits." The Harpers Ferry official hoped that "the building restoration can be undertaken soon, so that the project can be stepped-up and other extant Grierson furnishing acquired while still available." He further noted that the furnishing plan was "several years old," and that "the Kitchen of the CO's Quarters is not to be reconstructed." Wallace urged the staff to write similar reports for two additional historic structures: the commissary storehouse (1885-1891), and the enlisted men's barracks. He believed that these and other research tasks could be readily accomplished, as "Fort Davis has been blessed with imaginative, innovative, 'can-do' superintendents and staff who have done wonders with relatively little outside help." Wallace promised to expedite the furnishing program, but the staff could be excused for not embracing his words with the enthusiasm that first greeted Robert Utley, et al., when they walked the grounds of Fort Davis two decades earlier in search of an authentic western military experience. [70]

That dedication shown to David Wallace by the Fort Davis staff was most apparent to visitors in the interpretive programs developed under historians Nicholas Bleser, Mary Williams and Doug McChristian. From 1966-1980, this group and other NPS employees, in the words of Frank Smith, "never let the visitor know" about limitations on funding, or the vagaries of park service policy, that would constrain the program of historical representation at Fort Davis. This would eventually lead NPS officials to recognize the distinctiveness of the park's "living history" efforts, which along with the highly praised museum and visitor center, the scholarly work of staff members, and the outreach programs and volunteer organization of the staff, made the west Texas military post define itself as a hallmark of federal service to the American public.

Visitor service, including positive publicity, was easier to accomplish in the years after the gala dedication ceremonies than full rehabilitation of the park's historic structures. Frank Smith tried within weeks of the April 1966 event to capitalize on the media coverage of Lady Bird Johnson and the other dignitaries who came to Fort Davis. The superintendent thus wrote to Frank Hildebrand, executive director of the Texas Tourist Development Agency, to thank him for "the magnificent publicity given Fort Davis in the Texas Parade and the national coverage in the Readers' Digest." Smith then sought more recognition from the Texas state agency for the upcoming 50th anniversary of the creation of the park service. "Do you think that the excitement generated by the Guadalupe [Mountain National Park] proposals, Mrs. Johnson's trip, and the developments taking place at Padre Island, Sanford [Reservoir], and potential consideration of Big Thicket and other areas," said Smith, "would make the state government interested in such a designation?" If Texas would link its tourism promotion to the NPS's golden anniversary, "this could be used as a future publicity tie throughout the state or simply as a reminder to Texans that they don't need to spend the summer in Arizona or Colorado to develop a great vacation." [71]

Symptomatic of the challenges facing the Park Service in its efforts to publicize Fort Davis was the embarrassment registered by Frank Smith just weeks after his correspondence with Texas Tourism's Frank Hildebrand. Within days of opening the new museum's displays about black soldiers in the West, the Fort Davis staff began hearing comments from patrons about the remarkable likeness of one mannequin to the prominent black actor and comedian, Sammy Davis, Jr. While only a handful of adults remarked on the features of the black statue, "the recognition among school groups," Smith reported to the Southwest Region, "was 100%." School children, instead of being impressed with the grandeur and sweep of the Fort Davis story, and of the role of black soldiers therein, found the display amusing if not hilarious. "Grierson's heroic stand [at Quitman Canyon]," the superintendent bemoaned, "was completely forgotten" by the youth. Smith surmised that the NPS exhibit designers had sculpted one of the figures "to closely resemble the popular motion picture and television star." While the superintendent did not wish to criticize the Park Service professionals in the San Francisco museum laboratory, nonetheless he needed someone to come to Fort Davis immediately and "minimize the resemblance and correct this situation." [72]

The issue of race at Fort Davis also surfaced in the summer of 1966 in the form of Hollywood feature filming. Duane Graf, Frank Smith's counterpart at Tuzigoot National Monument in Arizona, mailed the Fort Davis superintendent a news clipping from the Arizona Republic that identified a California film company as interested in making a picture entitled, "The Saga of the Tenth Cavalry." Smith sent a letter to his brother-in-law, Chan Thomas of Los Angeles, California, asking him to inquire about the willingness of the company to come to west Texas for authentic sites and historical accuracy. "The idea of a film on the Tenth Cavalry is extremely exciting to us," Smith told Thomas in June 1966, "because if the Tenth had a 'home post' during the Indian War period, it would have to be either Fort Sill [Oklahoma] or Fort Davis." The superintendent enclosed "a few quick polaroids [instant snapshot pictures]" of pertinent museum displays, and outlined the significant features of the historic site. He also noted with pride that the film star Elizabeth Taylor had recently visited nearby Marfa for production of the movie "Giant." Smith then offered to have his staff conduct the film producers, one of whom was the black actor and former professional football player, Woody Strode, around the Davis Mountains in search of suitable locations. [73]

Beyond the obvious attention that a Hollywood film would bring to Fort Davis, Superintendent Smith also campaigned with his brother-in-law to highlight the mistakes made by the film industry in depicting the West. "If for once a motion picture can be produced which shows a western fort without a palisade or wall around it," said the superintendent, "and have the troops in something which resembles the uniforms of the United States Army, all we history buffs would get just a bit excited." Because Hollywood offered inaccurate portrayals of military garb, visitors had difficulty accepting Fort Davis' interpretation of Army life. "Even though we have one of our rangers dressed in the outfit part of the time," Smith told Thomas, "people still can't believe that the outfit is for real." The superintendent hoped that Messrs. Strode et al., were "as sincere as they sound in their efforts for accuracy," as the "story of the Buffalo Soldiers is one that needs telling, and it's a real epic." Smith then targeted the harm that Hollywood had wrought on the viewing public by being its major source of information on the western military past. "Most historians," he concluded in his pitch to Woody Strode via Chan Thomas, "are thoroughly disgusted with the seventy year emphasis on the Seventh Cavalry as a typical Indian War outfit." The glamour associated with the doomed command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 1876) distorted the image received by audiences, and Smith wanted "to see a bit of attention given to the regiments that won fights instead of being half wiped out!" [74]

Woody Strode's film company decided to remain in the Los Angeles area that summer to complete their work on "The Saga of the 10th Cavalry;" a film that never appeared in movie houses. Nonetheless, the idea of movie production at Fort Davis appealed to Frank Smith, who asked the regional office for advice on supervision of film companies in the future. In August 1966, Smith received a memorandum from the Washington NPS office reiterating the policy in use at places like the Grand Canyon and Virgin Islands National Park, the most recent park service venues for film and television location shooting. The NPS was most concerned about "possible damage to park features and structures, the safety of visitors, and provisions for assuring that possible damage will be repaired and features restored at the expense of the producing company. ' Harthon L. Bill, NPS acting assistant director for operations, told Smith that he should prepare any permit for film production with an eye toward the "special features and values" of Fort Davis, along with "the kind of volume of visitor traffic, location of the main public use areas, whether sets are to be constructed, as well as the kind of footage the producing company wants." The park service would also agree to waive mention of itself in the credits of the film at "the discretion of the Superintendent, but the credit line is desirable if the production is a good one." [75]

Failure to secure the Strode production did not deter Frank Smith in his quest for publicity through Hollywood. In August 1968, Fort Davis hosted the famed western historian Dr. William Leckie, best known at that time for his book The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (1967). Then the vice president for academic affairs at the University of Toledo, Leckie had been interested in the black soldier since his days in the Army Air Corps, when he commanded a unit of 200 black airmen returning to the States at the close of World War II. "We have been assisting [Leckie] in his research work," Smith wrote to the regional director, "and he will be using a number of pictures, credited to the Service, in his new edition of the book next spring." More exciting for Smith and the staff was Leckie's sale of "the screen rights to 'Buffalo Soldiers' to MCA-Universal, one of the better financed Hollywood groups. " This international entertainment conglomerate had employed as producer Tom Laughlin, later to become famous as the director-star of the Billy Jack film series of the early 1970s. Laughlin's story would focus not only upon the "combat work of the Tenth Cavalry," but also on the "court martial of Lieutenant Henry Flipper, first negro graduate of West Point, which took place while Flipper was assigned at Davis with the Tenth." Smith described Leckie "as anti-Hollywood as anyone I know," but the Laughlin production had convinced him that "this will be a quality film, with the greatest drive towards authentic portrayal of any picture to date." The production staff mentioned as stars "Sidney Poitier to play Flipper, Burt Lancaster to play Grierson, and Paul Newman to portray Captain Louis Carpenter, whose prominence as an Indian fighter has been pretty well ignored by history." All three actors had won or would win Academy Awards for their work, which led the superintendent to proclaim: "While these people [the production staff] may be talking through their hats, and hoping instead of having commitments, the rumored high price of the screen rights indicates a serious investment and an urge to do an expensive and presumably quality job." [76]

Fort Davis and its legendary black troopers never received the glamorous treatment that Frank Smith envisioned in the late 1960s. The park instead settled for a worthwhile four-part Public Broadcasting System (PBS) series made in 1968 for $200,000 by the Nebraska Educational Television Network, entitled "The Black Frontier." The prospectus written by the NETN stated that it would highlight the "little-known and undocumented area of American history" occupied by the "Negro on the Great Plains." Not knowing of the historical work done at Fort Davis by the NPS, John Flower, special projects coordinator for NETN wrote to the Fort Davis Historical Society seeking all manner of research documents and materials pertinent to the black soldiers' story. The society wisely handed Flower's letter to Frank Smith, who informed NETN that "we have little on the Negro frontiersman and settler, but a great deal on the Negro soldier." While the park library held but a dozen books on the black units, Smith and his staff had augmented these with "quite a few of the lesser known biographies and personal reminiscences of various officers." Smith also suggested to the Nebraska station that the microfilmed papers of Colonel Grierson would be helpful, as would the Leckie study of the black soldier. As an added attraction for NETN, the superintendent recommended the "'Brevet' Tenth Cavalry, a group in Los Angeles who have appeared on television on several recent occasions." NETN took Smith up on his offer of research and location assistance, and the success of "The Black Frontier" in 1970 led PBS to fund a three-part series on the life of Lieutenant Flipper. [77]

Public Broadcasting may have given Fort Davis its most accurate representation of the black soldier's story for general audiences, but its reach in the early 1970s was quite modest in comparison to that of Hollywood. Unfortunately, Frank Smith and the park staff faced a far more difficult task in working with the producers of a commercial film on the Tenth Cavalry. The saga began in September 1969, when Harry Weed of Santa Monica, California, wrote to Smith seeking a permit to film at Fort Davis. Weed claimed to be developing a "documentary" about the black horse soldiers. Smith at first believed that Weed intended to produce a show not unlike NETN' s "The Black Frontier," and he accordingly obliged the Californian with advice on locations, story lines, and research documentation. Thus it came as somewhat of a surprise to Smith that Weed represented an organization named "Dakota Productions, Inc.," which the superintendent described to the Southwest Regional Director as "simply not professional." Smith asked NETN for their opinion of Dakota's work, and the latter company shared space at Fort Davis in February 1970 to prepare its "documentary." "Realistically," the superintendent informed the regional director, "the staff here, and the historians connected with the University [of Nebraska] project agree that there is little chance of the Dakota Production being accepted by any theater chain, or being shown in any wide areas." The park service, said Smith, should take care to gain "control on use of stock footage . . . which will be the only salable material Dakota Productions will have." [78]

Smith did not realize that Dakota Productions understood better how to market western history on the silver screen. Dakota was replaced in May 1970 by "HJS Productions," whose "production and location staff' Smith described as "largely different" than Dakota, as they "seem to be highly cooperative." "Regrettably," Smith had to report, "the script is virtually unchanged, and presents a picture of the frontier military which is largely erroneous." This paled in comparison to Smith's discovery that "the inclusion of a number of scenes (not to be filmed at Fort Davis) which involve nudity and sexual intercourse, would be guaranteed to bring down the wrath of the more prudish of the Congressional critics on us." In addition, "the use of several scenes of somewhat gratuitous violence will be guaranteed to bring down criticism from the other end of the spectrum." For these reasons, the superintendent saw "no possibility of permitting use of the Service acknowledgement or area acknowledgement in the film." Smith also learned a lesson from the disastrous experience of park staff at nearly Carlsbad Caverns. "We have attached a rider concerning any 'stock footage' which might be developed from the film taken here," said the superintendent, "to be sure that a repeat of the use of Carlsbad Caverns footage for a number of subnormal horror films will not occur." All Smith could hope for was that "the apparent success of the [PBS] documentary filmed earlier may more than make up for this distressing production." Especially distressing to a history buff like Smith was the "continuing undercurrent of disgust with regard to the script on the part of many of the actors, black and white." The film script had been written by the wife of the director, Stan Thorne, whom Smith recalled twenty-four years later as having no knowledge of history, but possessed of a "bleeding heart" for what she perceived was the victimization of the Indians and the sexual prowess of black men . The film had to be released four times under different titles to try to recapture the original investment: "Men of the Tenth," "Red, White, and Black," "Fort Davis Bugle," and lastly "Soul Soldier." Whatever its incarnation, park historian Nick Bleser wrote to Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Michl of Decatur, Illinois: "As a history of the 10th Cavalry it is a complete abomination and we cringe every time Fort Davis is mentioned in connection with it, for it seems to be merely an attempt to cash in on the current trends with a cheap, sexy, black Western." [79]

Blame for public confusion about the story of the westward movement in general, and Fort Davis in particular, could not be laid at the feet of the park staff, who devoted much of their time in the late 1960s and 1970s to efforts at educating visitors and local residents alike. This quest for new knowledge took two forms: public school programs on issues of the moment like environmental protection; and the "living history" agenda that swept the NPS in these years as a means of bringing the past to life for those visitors whose tastes ran to the conventional, or whose time was of the essence. In each case, the work of the Fort Davis employees helped those who sought new information and perspectives on the history of far west Texas, both ecological and cultural, and prepared the park for its next round of historic structure development in the decade of the 1980s.

Fort Davis' support of NPS initiatives on environmental education benefitted, as did its work on issues of race and ethnicity, from the work of Superintendent Frank Smith. In 1968, prior to the major national impetus for ecological sensitivity, Smith used his relationship with the Mountain-Plains Museums Association (MPMA) to make presentations to his colleagues on the Park Service's "Environmental Study Area" (ESA) program. This concept had students of communities surrounding national parks use the facilities as living laboratories, taking field trips to the NPS units that welcomed youthful curiosity about the workings of nature. The success of one such appearance by Smith at the September 1968 MPMA meeting in Boulder, Colorado, led friends of the Fort Davis superintendent to suggest that he write articles on the ESA program for the Museum News, the newsletter of the American Association of Museums (AAM). Smith also sought to expose the general public to environmental issues via television, considering a weekly series on an Odessa station, and use of such programs at college campuses like Sul Ross. Then in 1969, Fort Davis agreed to a full ESA component on site, with a section of the park library dedicated to environmental study materials, training given to all employees to make them more aware of the place of ecology in their lives, inclusion of these themes in the nightly campfire talks given at the nearby Davis Mountains State Parks, and development of a section of the "First Fort Canyon" and the North Ridge Nature Trail for student field observations. Fort Davis began this latter program with the fifth grade class of the neighboring Anderson elementary school, with hopes of expanding the concept to other levels in the future. [80]

Environmentalism proved to be more than a passing fad of the radical 1960s and 1970s, and the same could be said for Fort Davis's embrace of the living history concept that arose at the same time. Doug McChristian came to Fort Davis in 1972 as part of his goal of working at each of the NPS's Indian wars parks, and as part of his determination to incorporate the benefits of reenacting history for visitors. He recalled in a 1994 interview that the Park Service by the early 1970s had become "hooked" on physical demonstrations of the life of the people who inhabited an historic site. He found at Fort Davis a park where "the principal justification . . . was its structural preservation." What better place to make history come alive than a setting where the Park Service had rendered the inert structures alive, thought McChristian, who had a bachelor's degree in history from Fort Hays State College and experience in the living history program at Fort Larned in his home state of Kansas. The only drawback, he remembered, was that Fort Davis had little enthusiasm for "telling the larger story" of the frontier West, nor were local residents eager to address the place of the black soldier on the parade grounds and in the barracks. [81]

Between its dedication and the close of the 1970s, the Fort Davis Story had come into view. Plans for building restoration had given way to historical and cultural research on furnishings and interpretive services. All that remained would be for the staff and management to implement an idea that had achieved prominence in the "public history", field in the 1970s: the concept of "living history." Resulting from the previous decades fascination with the stories of average people and their everyday lives, the Fort Davis living history initiative would complete the first generation of planning and development at the premier historical attraction of far west Texas.