Whtie Sands Administrative History

Once the new federal budget year began in July 1933, the park service decided upon a "temporary custodian" in charge of White Sands. Despite the appeals of Merchant and several other candidates, the NPS realized that Charles had the best credentials among local residents, to whom the service owed the creation of the monument. Unfortunately, the lack of funding for White Sands allowed Frank Pinkley to pay Charles only one dollar per month for his first year of service. Charles would also have to provide his own transportation over the fifteen miles of rutted dirt road to the dunes, and would have no office or supplies. Thus Charles' correspondence went out on stationery from his insurance company, or the Alamogordo chamber of commerce. [7]

Researchers working on the history of southwestern monuments have had the good fortune to read the "monthly reports" that Pinkley required of all his custodians. Hal Rothman and other students of the park service offer varying comments on the merits of these brief, sometimes colloquial statements that included visitation totals, lists of prominent visitors, commentary on the weather, and reports of construction. In Charles' case, his years as a journalist in Kansas, and later his free-lance articles promoting the Tularosa basin and the dunes, fitted him well to present his case to Pinkley for more staff and facilities. Visitation began with Charles' estimate of 16,540 for the month of August, a figure that stunned other SWNM custodians reading the monthly report. Charles could only count vehicles on Sundays (his day off from insurance work), and calculate the number of visitors daily by guesswork. He also spoke of the need for highway work, both in the monument and out from town, as he believed that his park service unit would host 500,000 people in its first twelve months. [8]

By Labor Day the SWNM superintendent had yet to arrive at White Sands, prompting Charles and his colleagues at the local chamber to plot their own strategy for construction work. The chamber had learned that Governor Arthur Seligman had appointed Jesse L. Nusbaum, former custodian at Mesa Verde National Park and by 1933 director of the Santa Fe-based Laboratory of Anthropology, to select twenty sites in New Mexico to receive work crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). This was the most popular of FDR's work-relief programs, as it removed young single males from urban areas and placed them at work in the countryside. The CCC also required no state matching funds; a factor critical in New Mexico, where the entire state budget that year stood at only $8 million.

By September the Alamogordo chamber had asked Nusbaum for a 200-member CCC camp to begin road work at White Sands. Pinkley agreed, noting that the moderate winter climate could expedite construction. Nusbaum had to deny the request, however, as CCC regulations at that time prohibited work on federal lands. Alamogordo then immediately petitioned another relief agency, the Emergency Conservation Work program (ECW), for one of its winter crews. The NPS learned in November that the newly created Civil Works Administration (CWA) would take over ECW projects, and that a crew could begin soon on access roads, a parking area, boundary surveys, and restrooms built in a style that the NPS described as "Navajo hogan character." [9]

At the end of 1933, Tom Charles could reflect upon a satisfactory year at White Sands. He had shepherded the monument through the labrynth of state and regional politics, and had begun the arduous task of linking NPS strategies with local desires for usage. The state land commissioner had asked for revocation of President Hoover's withdrawal order of 1930, which had limited the state's ability to lease acreage surrounding the dunes, or to transfer school lands within the monument for acreage outside its boundaries. President Roosevelt lifted the withdrawal by executive order on December 6, 1933, allowing NPS officials to initiate correspondence with state and private landowners and claimants that would give the service unified control of the park unit.

Frank Pinkley finally managed to visit White Sands that October, praising the beauty of the dunes and promising help for road construction. Tom Charles' only regret was that Pinkley warned against excessive use of the dunes by local visitors, who drove over them, burned fire rings in the gypsum for their cook-outs, left trash middens behind, and carried away buckets of gypsum for personal use. Charles wrote in his October report to Pinkley that nature restored itself at the monument. "Tonight's mountain breeze will heal today's most tragic scar," he said, and described NPS rules as "the cold policy of 'undisturbed.'" [10]

For the remainder of the winter of 1933-1934, Tom Charles shared his monument with the work crew from the Civil Works Administration. No sooner had the laborers begun to cut an eight-mile clay-based road into the dunes than did Charles receive word from Santa Fe that all CWA projects would be halted. CWA chief Harry Hopkins disliked the national pattern of project directors exceeding his limits on the category of expenditures called "other than labor" costs (overhead). FDR's relief programs had been intended to place as many unemployed workers in jobs as quickly as possible, with a minimum of cost overruns or budget shortages; the easier to blunt intense conservative criticism that characterized the New Deal as "make-work" artificial solutions better left to the free market. [11]

The Hopkins edict would be the first of many such "stop" orders to plague New Deal work crews at White Sands and elsewhere. This echoed the experimental nature of the president's relief efforts, and contributed to the peripatetic nature of NPS policy planning. For Tom Charles, however, the solution was simple: contact political officials responsible and ask for guidance. Again he wired Senator Cuttting, who suggested that he correspond with Margaret Reeves, state director of the CWA. Charles told Reeves that his road project, then 25 percent complete, required heavy non-labor costs because crews had to be transported daily to and from the monument a distance of thirty-plus miles. In addition, the road crews utilized 24 horses drawing repair wagons, with resultant costs for feed, stables, and transportation for the animals. Margaret Reeves then told Charles to contact the congressional delegation for further advice on restoring supplies and materials to the 104-member CWA unit. [12]

Chaos within the national CWA office prompted custodian Charles to draft more letters to state officials. Hopkins' order that laborers be reduced to fifteen-hour work weeks led Charles to write to Senator Carl Hatch, who called the CWA to register a direct complaint. Then the CWA ordered all NPS custodians to terminate existing employees by April 26. This would allow a new set of CWA projects to begin elsewhere, and also fulfill "the President's intention of dispersing the C.W.A. forces into private jobs." Superintendent Pinkley could offer little hope to Charles or his CWA workers, who had no alternative sources of employment in the Tularosa basin. All he could advise was that Charles write a new proposal for road work, as "I have the feeling that about the time our forces are cut down to the point of inefficiency they [FDR's staff] are going to turn loose a bunch of money for us." [13]

Such promises neither built roads nor fed workers at White Sands. Tom Charles' February 1934 report noted that the CWA crew had to live in tents at the dunes, supplied with food and water until the resolution of the funding crisis. Senator Cutting then telegraphed Charles on March 7 with word that the CWA's Hopkins had released nearly $12,000 for White Sands work, primarily the overhead charges. Charles had solved his problem at the monument, but the directness of his appeals to Congress irritated NPS officials. A.E. Demaray, associate NPS director, wrote Pinkley that, while Charles had managed to gain the release of all statewide CWA monies for New Mexico ($200,000), "the correct procedure. . . would have been for you to take the matter up with [regional NPS authorities] and then report to this Office in case you were unable to secure action." Charles admitted "the mistake of wiring to Senator Cutting direct," saying "it was purely unintentional, of course." His only excuse was that "the local Chamber of Commerce was after me and threatened this and that." "I see now," he confessed, "that I should have let them handle the matter themselves." [14]

The strain of CWA funding took its toll on Charles and other NPS officials. The stipulation requiring 90 percent of workers to be unemployed limited the availability of skilled craftsmen. Then the CWA started shifting crews to other sites as warmer weather ensued. Crew members also had difficulty with the $6 per week wages, given the amount of time they spent away from their homes and families. Even the landscape architect employed at White Sands by the CWA, Laurence Cone, came in for criticism. He had devoted more time to discoveries of Indian artifacts and campsites than to advising the road crew on the proper route to cut through the dunes. Cone pleaded with Charles and Pinkley to spare his job, but the crew foreman, H.B. ("Hub") Chase, a son-in-law of Albert Fall, fired Cone on April 18, a week before completion of the project. Frank Kittredge, chief engineer for the NPS western office in San Francisco, visited the dunes in mid-April to examine the road situation. He attributed many of its problems to the haste with which it was planned. "It will be recalled that a special case was made of this project," said Kittredge, with "approval and authority to commence . . . granted . . ., based only upon a sketch map." The road was not in keeping with NPS standards of construction, through no fault of the CWA crew. Kittredge then learned of Charles' plans for a massive attendance on April 29 at the monument's dedication, and he urged the NPS to provide picnic shelters, restrooms, and parking facilities, and more staff (especially a full-time maintenance worker to clear the gypsum from the road). [15]

The CWA project ended just days prior to Tom Charles' planned gala dedication ceremonies. Several committees with prominent residents as members devised a host of welcoming activities. J.L. Lawson, a prominent lawyer and landowner who would later try to sell to the NPS his water rights to Dog Canyon ranch (the Oliver Lee property east of the dunes), served as chair of the "Old Settlers Day," where prizes would be awarded to the oldest and longest-resident Hispanic, Anglo, and Indian attendee. On the "reception" committee sat W.H. Mauldin, who had settled in 1882 in the nearby town of La Luz, and who was the father of the future Pulitzer prize-winning wartime cartoonist, Bill Mauldin. [16]

All who attended the day-long celebration realized the special nature of the event, and of the monument itself. Tom Charles estimated that 4,650 visitors arrived in 776 vehicles on the newly opened dunes road. During the afternoon the crowd cheered a baseball game played by two all-black teams, the Alamogordo Black Sox and the El Paso Monarchs. The Black Sox thrilled the "home-team" fans sitting on the dunes high above the playing field by winning 12-7, despite rumors that the Texas squad had utilized players from the Mesilla Valley. Then speakers addressed the throng on such topics as A.N. Blazer's "The Sands in the Seventies," George Coe's "Recollections of Billy the Kid," Harry L. Kent's "Origins of the White Sands," and Oliver Lee's "Early Days in New Mexico." [17]

The most touching moment at the opening ceremonies, all agreed, came when Albert Fall spoke on "Reminiscences of Early Days." Making his first public appearance since completion in 1932 of his five-year prison sentence, Fall brought tears to the eyes of his loyal partisans from west Texas and southern New Mexico. A reporter from the Alamogordo News noted Fall's infirmities (the reason for his early release from prison by President Hoover), and wrote that "it was indeed a pathetic sight to see that he had to be assisted from his car and supported during his talk." After a few remarks, Fall had to be seated, and the crowd strained to hear his voice. He thanked all who had come to hear him, and prophesied: "I suppose this is the last time I will meet the old-timers." Then, in a stunning reversal of form that few listeners could detect, Fall closed by praising the park service and local interests who had fought for White Sands. Said the reporter for the Alamogordo Advertiser: "He [Fail] told of various attempts to exploit the Sands commercially, all ending in futility, and stated his opinion that very appropriately they are now put to the best use possible, reserved for their scenic beauty and attractiveness." [18]

Although NPS records do not show it, attendance at White Sands' opening-day festivities had to catch the eye of public and private officials alike. Most units in the Southwest did not record 4,650 visitors in a whole year, and White Sands' distance from major population centers made the day all the more remarkable. In 1934 El Paso, one hundred thirty miles away by dirt roads, had 105,000 residents, and provided the bulk of out-of-town visitation. No other community within 200 miles had more than Albuquerque's 27,200, and Alamogordo's 3,100 people came often that summer. Indicative of the variety of visitors was the party from the New Mexico School for the Blind. Some 100 youths and staff members, including school board member Bula Charles, spent June 1 cavorting in the dunes. The school superintendent told Tom Charles that "no place else can the blind children turn themselves loose with such freedom." [19]