GUADALUPE MOUNTAINS An Administrative History

CHAPTER IV: LEGISLATIVE HISTORY (continued)

The McKittrick Canyon Access Road

In January 1975, Congressman Richard White introduced H. R. 1747, amending Section 2 of the 1966 Act that created Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The amendment provided for an exchange of land so that an access road to McKittrick Canyon could be built on Park Service land. When White defended the amendment before the House in December 1975, he pointed out that visitors had to use a privately owned ranch road to reach McKittrick Canyon. The owner of the road, Mrs. Fletcher Pratt, whose late husband was the son of Wallace Pratt, had limited public access to four cars on weekdays and 10 cars per day on weekends. White explained that visitors had to use the private road because engineers had determined that the land the Park Service originally intended to be used for the access road was too rough and was subject to flash floods. Mrs. Pratt had agreed to exchange her property for the right-of-way originally donated by the Pratt family. White informed the House members that the cost for the transaction was estimated to be $3,750. [55]

In June 1975 the Senate had passed S. 313, an identical bill to White's H. R. 1747. After hearing White's testimony, the House passed H.R. 1747, suspended the rules requiring committee consideration of S. 313, amended the Senate bill by using the wording of the House bill, and passed the Senate bill. The Senate concurred on the amendment on December 17, 1975. [56] The bill became Public Law 94-174 on December 23, 1975.

Wilderness Designation and Development Ceiling Increase

The Wilderness Act of 1964 required the Secretary of the Interior to review roadless areas of 5,000 acres or more within national parks and recommend whether such lands should be added to the National Wilderness Preservation System. In 1970, as the master planning process for Guadalupe Mountains began, the designation of wilderness areas within the park became a hotly debated issue.

By the time of the Master Plan hearings in November 1971, most of the battle was over. The real debate had begun on March 17, 1970, when a large group of interested persons met with the Park Service to voice their opinions about the park's proposed master plan and wilderness proposal. The wilderness proponents hoped that the park would not be developed in any way. Joseph Leach, regional chairman of the Sierra Club from El Paso, spoke for his organization, asking that the park be left entirely unchanged, with no roads to provide access for campers and trailers. Leach saw no harm, however, in the tramway which the Park Service proposed to build through Pine Springs Canyon. [57]

Clare Cranston of the U. S. Geological Services expressed a more development-oriented viewpoint, suggesting keeping people out of Guadalupe Mountains would be "discrimination of the worst kind . . . . against the bulk of our population." He asked a Sierra Club representative, "Do you mean that 10 years from now I will not be allowed to visit the park just because I would be physically unable to walk in?" Milo Conrad of the New Mexico Mountain Club responded, "Go in while you're young." [58]

R. W. Lee, an El Paso newspaper editor, attended the meeting. Viewing the heated arguments objectively, he told his readers that the overriding concern of everyone present was that the park should not be developed to such a point that preservation of its wilderness state, which they all seemed to value, would become impossible. [59]

In May the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to the master planning team for Guadalupe Mountains, expressing its belief that the majority of the travelling public would be barred from the park if it became a designated wilderness. The Chamber preferred to see development similar to that at Carlsbad Caverns. [60]

The stand of the Chamber drew a spate of letters to the editor of the Carlsbad newspaper in support of the wilderness designation. Also during this time, the National Speleological Society prepared its own proposal for the designation of 156,000 acres of wilderness in portions of Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns, and Lincoln National Forest, and submitted it to the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. [61]

The Carlsbad Current-Argus provided a forum for opinions about the park throughout the next year. The newspaper did a commendable job of presenting both sides of the issue and printing in-depth articles about the park and the planning process. The educational campaign carried out by the Current-Argus no doubt contributed to the spirit of compromise that led the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce to reverse its earlier opinion and announce in October 1971 its support for the Master Plan and Wilderness Proposal as developed by the Park Service. The membership of Superintendent Donald Dayton in the Chamber of Commerce and his active efforts to establish good relations with that organization and other civic groups also aided in obtaining the final support of the Chamber. [62]

Thus, the November 1971 hearings were not as heated as they might have been. Most speakers approved the Master Plan generally although they took exception to specific parts of it. Most attention was directed to the Pine Springs Canyon Tramway Proposal, not the Wilderness Proposal. [63]

In October 1972, President Richard M. Nixon submitted to Congress the Wilderness Proposal for Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The proposal recommended 46,850 acres of the 77,500-acre park be designated as wilderness and managed accordingly. [64] Six years later, as a part Title IV of the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978 (Public Law 95-625), the Guadalupe Mountains Wilderness became official (see Appendix A).

Another section of the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978 also affected Guadalupe Mountains. During the first five years after official establishment of the park, $7,462,000 of the park's $10,362,000 development ceiling had been spent, but little permanent development had taken place. While visitor facilities had been built, a visitor center, headquarters complex, employee housing, and roads and trails remained to be constructed. Most of the available funds had been spent on planning, setting up temporary administrative and public-use facilities, exploring for water sources, developing temporary water sources for the facilities, and stabilizing historic structures and ruins. The Interior Department requested the development ceiling be raised to $24,715,000. Guadalupe Mountains, however, was unique among the twenty-nine areas of the Park Service that were seeking increases in their development ceilings. The ceilings for the twenty-eight other areas were based on needs through 1981 only. The ceiling for Guadalupe Mountains covered the estimated cost of all future development. [65] On November 10, 1978, Title I of the National Parks and Recreation Act raised the development ceiling for the park to $24,715,000 (see Appendix A).

Legislation in 1987

In 1987 a Congressional "add-on" to the annual omnibus appropriation bill for the National Park Service included $3,650,000 for construction of the visitor center and operational headquarters facility for Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Texas Congressman Ron Coleman, who had succeeded Richard White as the Representative from the 16th District, sponsored the add-on legislation. In 1987 Coleman also indicated his willingness to sponsor legislation to add about 10,000 acres to the park. The boundary expansion would incorporate into the park the most significant portion of the red and white sand dunes immediately west of the park boundary. [66]

A Perspective on the Legislative History

When considering the legislative history of other parks, the supporters of Guadalupe Mountains National Park did not encounter unusual obstacles. Congress had wrestled with the issue of the value of such resources as minerals or timber many times in the past, such as when they authorized Isle Royale National Park , the Everglades National Park, Olympic National Park, and Cape Hatteras National Seashore and Recreation Area. During the 1940s and 1950s, formal establishment of Cape Hatteras and the Everglades were stalled for as long as twenty years while state governments negotiated the values of mineral rights and surface rights so that they could purchase the designated parklands and donate them to the national park system. By the 1960s, when Guadalupe Mountains was authorized, Congress had established the precedent of appropriating money to acquire privately held lands for park use. Considering that acquisition of the surface rights to Guadalupe Mountains National Park depended on the whims of Congressional appropriations committees at a time when the nation faced other strong financial commitments, the acquisition process took a relatively short period of time. [67]

Like all other parks, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, was created and developed by political action. The establishment of Guadalupe Mountains National Park required the sustained efforts of many politically adept and powerful people. Without the combined work of Pool, Foreman, Yarborough, and White, the park would not have been authorized. Private citizens used their political influence to get the Congressional hearings scheduled. Later, after authorization of the park, Yarborough's push for a different way to finance land acquisition, combined with White's support in the House, undoubtedly shortened the time required for that phase of park development. Finally, in 1987, the aggressive work of Ron Coleman brought about funding for the park's visitor center and operations headquarters, a project that had been financially stymied for a decade.

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