Whtie Sands Administrative History

Perhaps Albert Fall would have succeeded with his All-Year park had he not coupled the measure with another initiative close to the hearts of many New Mexico land speculators and developers: the Bursum bill" to quiet title to Pueblo Indian land claims. In the early 1920s, some Progressive reformers had tired of their exercises on behalf of urban social change, and looked about for new, less-taxing causes. One area of their interest was the American West, appealing for its beauty, tranquility, and exotic Native cultures. In this regard they joined forces with the artistic communities forming in California and New Mexico (especially the Santa Fe and Taos art colonies), where members of the postwar "Lost Generation" of disaffected urbanites gathered to paint, write, sculpt, and photograph the otherworldliness of the Southwest's lands and people. [23]

Ironically, the defenders of Native land rights had jousted with Albert Fall in 1916, only to see his proposal return with a vengeance. In so doing, Fall and Bursum carefully crafted language that made it difficult for the Mescaleros to resist, and for non-Indian support groups like the "Indian Rights Association [IRA]" to mount an effective campaign of criticism. Fall knew that the Mescalero reservation had been created not by treaty negotiation (and hence Senate ratification), but by the more expeditious process of "executive order." As such, the reservation could be altered or abolished by subsequent presidential decrees. Mindful of the 1920s sentiments in favor of Indian rights, Fall sent Interior officials to meet with the Mescalero tribal council, even though the federal government (in the person of the Interior secretary) had final authority in Indian affairs. Fall's agents offered to protect the remaining acreage of the reservation by statute if the council released the 2,000-acre section coveted by Fall as "land conspicuous for beauty of scenery or adapted for summer camps." The tribe would then be given inducements such as sawmills to harvest timber, control of non-Indian grazing leases, and employment preference in any Park Service venues on the reservation. Preliminary tribal resistance did not deter Fall, who edited the council minutes to delete unfavorable commentary and reported to Congress a "90 percent approval" from all Mescalero adults. [24]

The historian Lawrence Kelly contended that non-Indian support groups had shown less enthusiasm for the Mescalero cause than they did for the more ominous "Bursum bill." Robert Sterling Yard, however, wrote in November 1922 that the AYNP bill was a combination of two outrages: abuse of Indian sovereignty and disdain for the integrity of the Park Service. Yet Kelly did note that Yard met with the most vocal critic of the Bursum bill, John Collier, and advised the erstwhile New York Progressive reformer to link the Pueblo lands bill with Fall's park plans. If Fall could become the target of national opprobrium, thought Yard, enough support would ensue for the Mescaleros and the NPS to override the Secretary's considerable power and ambition. [25]

This strategy of linkage began in July 1922, when Bursum and Fall rushed the AYNP bill through the Senate in seven days. S. 3519, said the NPA, would establish a dangerous precedent for the Park Service by permitting irrigation, hydroelectric power generation, hunting, mining, grazing, and timber cutting on park lands. In addition, the Secretary of the Interior could authorize such intrusions without congressional approval or oversight. The NPA scoffed at the absurd distances park visitors would travel to the All-Year park's units. Using the Mescalero land as a base, the Malpais lava beds were forty miles northeast; the "White Sands or Gypsum Hills of Otero County" were thirty-eight miles southwest; and Elephant Butte was ninety miles due west of the reservation. There were no paved roads connecting these units; the bill contained no surveys or studies of their feasibility; and it made no provisions for funding the establishment or maintenance of such a park. [26]

Secretary Fall and Senator Bursum, on the other hand, believed that the NPA was of no consequence, a theory seemingly vindicated by the speed with which S. 3519 moved through the Senate. On July 7, Bursum asked the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to consider the measure, with neither reading nor discussion of the bill's contents. Distracted by a lengthy debate on tariff rates, the senators approved the measure unanimously, accepting Bursum's logic that the bill was now "purely local in character and affected only New Mexico," as well as extending a courtesy to a former Senate member (Fall). By sending the bill to Indian Affairs, Fall had bypassed the Public Lands Committee, the normal deliberative body for national parks. He also promised the Indian Affairs senators that the AYNP bill "will be more for the interests of the Mescaleros than any other legislation of recent years concerning other reservation Indians and their properties." [27]

Logic and procedure such as this gave Robert Sterling Yard and John Collier the leverage they needed to defeat Fall's park bill and Pueblo lands legislation. For the remainder of 1922 the NPA and Collier's Indian Rights Association (IRA) campaigned in Washington for rejection of Fall's agenda, with contributions pouring in from wealthy benefactors. As the pressure mounted, Fall slowly retreated from his measures, though not without vehement denials of charges of conflict of interest. On January 3, 1923, while Congress still debated the AYNP, Fall tendered his resignation as Secretary of the Interior. By year's end he would be implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal, Warren Harding would die of mysterious causes just as the scale of the "Harding scandals" became public knowledge, Vice-President Calvin Coolidge would promise vigorous prosecution of officials like Fail, and John Collier would become the premier advocate of Indian policy reform. [28]

Local sponsors of White Sands knew of the bitterness engendered in Congress by Albert Fall's scheme, and plotted their strategy accordingly. In the mid-1920s the U. S. Forest Service discussed a program of increased usage of the Lincoln National Forest, including recreation and logging. This would also bring more federal spending to the Tularosa basin, as would talk of new reclamation projects for southern New Mexico. The Republican State Central Committee wrote to party members in the area to enlist support for Senator Bursum, who promised as part of his re-election campaign to increase federal spending in the state. Louis W. Galles, state director of the party's "Coolidge and Dawes Clubs," named for the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates for 1924, wrote to L.O. Piersol of Alamogordo stating that Bursum's access to the federal treasury meant everything to New Mexico. "Don't forget," said Galles, member of a prominent Albuquerque family that operated a large Chevrolet dealership, "that for every thousand dollars that New Mexico receives, she pays back to the [U. S.] Treasury through the Internal Revenue Service only about $1.00." Galles took pride in New Mexico's cleverness, claiming that "we profit by federal aid," with "the burden of taxes . . . laid upon the wealth of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California." [29]

This apparent inconsistency (conservative officials seeking federal investment when the free market failed) followed a pattern evident in New Mexico and the West throughout the twentieth century. Once private investors entered a region like the Tularosa basin, they quickly ascertained the prospects for future gains. Indicators such as population growth and income levels dictated investment decisions; hence the preference for capitalization of projects in the Rio Grande valley from El Paso to Santa Fe. By 1910 Alamogordo's population had stabilized at some 3,000 residents, a number that would change only imperceptibly over the next twenty years (3,224 by 1930). This modest advance (seven percent) stood in contrast to New Mexico's overall increase of twenty four percent for the years 1910-1930. The state's economy also did not perform well in these years, with forty percent of all chartered banks failing between 1920-1924. Personal income stagnated in the bottom ten percent of states (even before the Depression), and by 1933 New Mexicans earned on average only fifty-four percent of their fellow citizens nationwide. [30]