Whtie Sands Administrative History

The same features of national security that stimulated military and NASA encroachment onto White Sands also hindered a generation's efforts to create a monument at nearby Trinity Site to the first testing of nuclear weaponry. This proved to be less contentious than missile impacts, but no less frustrating for NPS officials eager to meet public demand after 1945 for access to "Ground Zero." Interest in the site, proposed in the 1940s as the "Atomic Bomb National Monument," the "Trinity Atomic National Monument" in the early 1950s, and finally in the 1960s as "Trinity National Historic Site," ebbed and flowed according to organizational dictates. Yet the journey of this historical location mirrored challenges facing White Sands National Monument: eagerness of local boosters to acquire another federally funded tourist attraction; NPS officials divided on the historic merits of the site; ecological constraints typical of the Tularosa basin; and national security policies at odds with the preservation ethic of the park service.

Once the Interior secretary, Harold Ickes, had made known his desire to create the atomic monument in late 1945, local interests approached New Mexico's political leadership for help. Clinton Anderson, then-secretary of Agriculture (1945-1948), wrote to Oscar L. Chapman, assistant secretary of the Interior, in January 1946 to include in the plans for the monument the B-29 bomber that had flown over Hiroshima; Governor John J. Dempsey further promoted the concept, agreeing to release whatever rights-of way that the park service needed across state lands in the basin to provide access to the park. NPS officials were less eager to include the George McDonald ranch house, where J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Manhattan Project colleagues had assembled the final version of the atomic device prior to its July 16, 1945, explosion.

The War Department signaled its support for these efforts in 1946, but wanted to use the B-29 bomber in atomic testing at the Pacific Ocean site of Bikini Atoll. Thus the legislation introduced in the Senate by New Mexico's Carl Hatch (S. 2054) to display the bomber near Alamogordo received no support from the Army. [59]

A series of meetings took place between officials of the NPS, Army, state of New Mexico, and the recently created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to negotiate the terms of the atomic monument's creation. By May 1946, the El Paso Herald-Post reported: "Park officials say the site in Southern New Mexico may be opened to public inspection within a year." More reason for optimism came in June, when Secretary of War Robert Patterson named Major General Leslie A. Groves as his representative to the interagency monument committee. Groves' stature as military director of the Manhattan Project lent credibility to the park service plan, given the rumors already circulating that the Army would invoke national security as its rationale for refusal to release the land to the NPS . Groves himself could not attend committee meetings , but informed regional officials that his representative, Colonel Lyle E. Seeman, would "extend to you the full cooperation of the Manhattan Project in the establishment of this National Monument." [60]

General Groves' endorsement of the park did not reflect the thinking of the Los Alamos staff who met on July 31, 1946 with NPS officials from Santa Fe. The concerns of the Army would persist throughout the Cold War, primarily because of its desire to restrict access to the Tularosa basin indefinitely. Regional director Tillotson learned at that meeting that the Army had already ordered "that all of the reinforcing steel and steel supports remaining from the tower which supported the bomb have been removed and destroyed." The Army feared "that someone would chip off portions of the radio-active steel and suffer harm thereby." Tillotson, in a reaction that would occur often in military relations with White Sands, surmised that "certainly one of the most spectacular exhibits in connection with the explosion has already been lost." [61]

Even as the NPS worried about gaining access to restricted military land, it also unwittingly faced the moral dilemma of the nuclear age: Should the nation commemorate the destruction of innocent Japanese civilians following nuclear testing at Trinity? C. Edward Graves, of Carmel, California, wrote to the NPS headquarters (still housed in its wartime offices in Chicago) to question "whether you have given thorough consideration to the controversial nature of this action." Graves cited unnamed citizens , "some of the top men in the Navy and Army, who consider the dropping of the bombs on the Japanese cities a national disgrace." Predicting the ambiguous future that nuclear energy and weapons would have, Graves concluded: "Personally, in view of the world tragedy that may develop from the use of atomic power, I should have no feeling of pride, or even of curiosity, in visiting such a spot." Hillory Tolson, acting NPS director , replied that the park service wished only to "emphasize in contrast to [the bomb's] . . . destructive potentialities . . . the medical and other constructive gains which atomic energy makes possible." Tolson also hoped that Graves would believe that the monument "will determine mankind to use atomic power only for peaceful ends." [62]

The opinions of antinuclear critics like Edward Graves had less impact on the progress of the monument than did military control of Trinity Site. In January 1947, park service officials had identified an area of roughly 4,500 acres that they asked President Truman to proclaim the "Atomic Bomb National Monument." Authority for such a declaration came from the Antiquities Act (1906), but President Roosevelt's Executive Order No. 9029 (January 1942) creating the Alamogordo bombing range stood in the way. Truman thus failed to sign the proclamation as drafted, and the War Department further clouded title to the land by transferring Trinity Site on January 1, 1947, to the AEC. Then the military's demand for 3.5 million acres for the Ordcit Project cast a pall not only over White Sands, but also over the NPS planners who believed that the AEC would release Trinity by the end of 1948. [63]