Dunes and Dreams: A History of White Sands National Monument/Chapter Three
Advocates of White Sands National Monument secured President Hoover's proclamation not a moment too soon. Unlike other units of the park service, White Sands did not face imminent danger from resource developers. Instead, the presence of a federal agency in the Tularosa basin dedicated to the preservation of natural wonders offered access to public spending at the lowest ebb of the Great Depression. This sense of urgency would persist throughout the years of the Roosevelt "New Deal," affecting all aspects of park service planning, policy, and program development. In this manner, White Sands offered a window not only on the complexity of NPS operations, but also shed much-needed light on the little-known dimensions of 1930s southern New Mexico.
The historian Gerald D. Nash, author of the path breaking The American West in the Twentieth Century (1977), described the impact of the Depression and New Deal on the region as if he were speaking of White Sands itself. Whether one analyzed variables of economics, politics, environmentalism, or cultural change, the afflictions facing the West surrounded the dunes in equal measure. "Everywhere western dreams for sustained economic growth lay shattered," said Nash, "victims of the national economic collapse." Farm and ranch income, dependent upon eastern and international markets, fell by more than 50 percent. So did resource extraction, especially petroleum, a blow to the oil fields of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas where prices dropped from $2.50 per barrel in 1929 to ten cents per barrel four years later. More ominous for the new park service unit, however, was the regional decline of tourism (by more than one-half), the source of visitations that could generate future federal spending at the dunes. The New Mexican per capita income stood in 1933 at $209, or 52 percent of the national average. There would be little discretionary income for local residents, making White Sands' free admission small consolation. [1]
In essence, the monument evolved in the same style of experimentation and uncertainty that marked the policies of the Roosevelt administration. Richard Lowitt, author of The New Deal and the West (1984), wrote that "depression, drought, and dust undermined dependence on the marketplace as an arbiter of activities." In its place were a myriad of federal rules, regulations, and employment agencies that removed control of economic life from county courthouses and state capitols to Washington, DC. For New Mexico and its Tularosa basin, however, public funding offered the only source of investment for private enterprise. Thus it was that local and state officials would devote considerable attention to the growth of the monument, both helping and hindering park service personnel charged with preserving the dunes and catering to a multiplicity of public tastes. [2]
At the close of the New Deal decade, NPS officials would have high praise for the consequences of planning and implementation of service policy. Hugh Miller, superintendent of the "Southwestern National Monuments [SWNM]," reported in September 1940: "White Sands has demonstrated its unquestioned standing as the most important southwestern monument from the standpoint of visitor interest." Within two years of its opening, the monument eclipsed all attendance records for the 23-unit SWNM system that encompassed the "Four Corners" states of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and southern Colorado. Yet no one connected to the park service could have prophesied the organizational debate that ensued in 1933 over the proper functions of the vast gypsum dunes. Some of this could be ascribed to the still-evolving corporate culture of the NPS, which along with other federal agencies had to learn hard lessons about western ecology, economics, and politics. It would not help, as Gerald Nash noted, that federal officials "often openly expressed contempt or hostility for western ways." Monument custodian Tom Charles, his contemporaries in Alamogordo, and the regional and national hierarchy in the park service thus spent seven years defining the standards that would guide White Sands for the remainder of the twentieth century. [3]
Within days of President Hoover's announcement, Tom Charles wrote to Horace Albright about the park service's strategy for assuming control of White Sands. Local civic boosters wished to celebrate their good fortune with a dedication ceremony that summer. Albright encouraged this as "a means of getting wide-spread publicity." The monument would come under the purview of NPS' s famed superintendent of southwestern monuments, Frank "Boss" Pinkley. Because Pinkley worked at the Casa Grande ruins south of Phoenix, Arizona, he doubted that he could travel to southern New Mexico before the spring of 1933. Albright further warned Charles that no congressional action on funding for White Sands could occur until that July. This did not stop Charles from seeking Pinkley's permission to take a highway grader out to the dunes to create an access road into the monument. Pinkley thus had to issue the first of many warnings to the exuberant Charles, asking him to wait until NPS personnel arrived to survey the new monument. [4]
Pinkley's word of caution bothered Charles not a bit, as he believed that the real power in the federal government resided in Congress, not in the park service. He soon wrote to White Sands' benefactor, Bronson Cutting, asking his help in bringing highway construction to the monument. He told New Mexico's senior senator of the "desperate straits" facing Otero County, and wondered if President Roosevelt's "reforestation program" could be stretched to include roads out of the Lincoln National Forest to the dunes. Because the matter involved a powerful senator (to whom FDR had offered the position of Interior secretary that winter), acting NPS director A.E. Demaray had to reply to Charles gently that "there has been some little misunderstanding" on the part of local interests, and that "without doubt Senator Cutting will take this matter up with the proper authorities." [5]
The Cutting-Charles correspondence signalled a wave of politically tinged negotiations between White Sands' boosters and the NPS. Job-seekers like C.C. Merchant of Alamogordo wrote to Senator Sam Bratton asking for information on applying for the position of "caretaker." Merchant knew Bratton only slightly, had never met Cutting and knew little of Congressman Dennis Chavez. More telling was the direct appeal of Emma Fall, wife of the former Interior secretary, to Horace Albright. Her family had come upon hard times during Albert Fall's lengthy legal proceedings and five-year prison term for the Teapot Dome scandal. The depression had wiped out the family investments in real estate, but Emma had opened in El Paso a "Spanish cafe," with a Mexican woman in charge. Local residents and tourists alike praised her cuisine and the cafe received good notices in travel literature. Mrs. Fall wanted the NPS to grant her a concession at White Sands for a branch of her "Amigo Cafe," with perhaps another license at Carlsbad Caverns. Horace Albright had to decline her offer, since plans had yet to be drafted for White Sands, and the caverns had a concessionaire that "up to the present time has not yet earned an adequate income." [6]
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]
Both the park service and local boosters agreed that White Sands should be promoted advantageously, so that attendance would generate financial support from the FDR administration. The New York Times on May 15 carried an NPS press release on the dunes that caught the attention of Frederick A. Blossom, librarian at the Huntington Free Library in New York City. The park service's own film maker, Paul Wilkerson, came to White Sands in October to prepare a newsreel for distribution in the nation's movie houses. Then in November the National Geographic Magazine accepted Tom Charles' invitation to visit the dunes and craft a photographic essay. The chief NPS photographer, George Grant, spent several days in the Tularosa basin and surrounding mountains seeking unusual stories. He found most appealing the proximity of the dunes to the Lincoln County War. "Every school boy wishes to know about Billy the Kid," said Grant. As there was "no place where this information is available, all in one spot," and that this was "the first time perhaps that the Billy the Kid story has entered the National Park Service picture," Grant urged Charles to develop such a connection for the "transcontinental travel" about to come to the monument. [20]
Increased visitation and publicity for White Sands also attracted Governor Andrew Hockenhull, who had been approached by organizers of the 1934 Chicago "Century of Progress" exposition. Hockenhull wanted New Mexico to fill its building at this "world's fair" with outstanding examples of the state's charm and exotica. He asked Tom Charles in May to chair the Otero County fund-raising campaign, seeking $300 for the building. Charles energized his diverse community by planning a series of dinners and dances for the Anglo, Hispanic, and "colored" population of Alamogordo. The black "colony" in town had never been asked to join in a community-wide program, and thus could not accommodate Charles' request on such short notice. The Anglo and Hispanic venues, however, raised $324, allowing Charles to make White Sands the centerpiece of the New Mexico building. The floor of the building was covered with gypsum, and NPS officials received many compliments from the thousands who visited the Chicago exhibit. [21]
All this notoriety would be in vain, however, if Tom Charles could not improve transportation to the dunes. In March word filtered out of Washington that New Mexico would receive $6 million in new federal highway construction funds. State engineer G. D. "Buck" Macy informed Charles that he would authorize grading and oiling of the fifteen miles of State Highway 3 to the dunes, at a cost of $300,000-400,000. "Boy, how the crowds will pour in," said Charles, as the Tularosa basin would now be linked to the national highway network from North Carolina to Los Angeles, which Charles described as "over 90% completed." [22]
Unfortunately for White Sands, plans for the road had also interested others, including Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ridinger, who built a gasoline station and small motel at the "Point of Sands," one mile southwest of the White Sands turnoff, and also the "Southern Dusting Company" of Tallulah, Louisiana. The latter was merely the latest in a series of speculative mining ventures in the dunes. The company had leases around Lake Lucero, and wanted to drill for sodium compounds. They also wished to cut a road to the lake bed along the western boundary of the monument. Tom Charles feared that he could not police the area, especially if auto racing took place on the long stretches of alkali east of Lake Lucero (later to be known as the "Alkali Flats"). [23]
Less easy to dismiss was the presence of the Ridinger family. Frank Ridinger, a veteran of World War I, his wife Hazel, and their three daughters had obtained a lease from the state land office prior to 1930 to build their small way station on the Alamogordo-Las Cruces highway. In the spring of 1934 they became irritated at the presence of Tom Charles in the monument area, whom they believed sought the termination of their lease. Then in April the Ridingers asked the park service for permission to manage a concession at the opening ceremonies, only to be rebuffed. Hazel Ridinger wrote a strong letter of protest to Frank Pinkley, accusing Charles of distorting the truth. "We have ignored his [Charles"] petty prissy tooting" that he was a "government man," said Ridinger, and claimed that "T[.] Charles['] one interest in the Sand is and has been personal publicity." She claimed that her family had "ten local friends to [Charles'] one," and asked the SWNM superintendent to visit the dunes to verify their claims. [24]
For the rest of the summer, Tom Charles and the park service pressed for closure of the Ridinger affair. The custodian denied infringing upon the Ridingers' business, nor that he wanted them removed before completion of the U.S. Highway 70 project. Pinkley did not see this incident at first as serious, in that he had several similar "young feuds on our hands at other points in the [SWNM] system." He informed Mrs. Ridinger that she had "ascribed to personal animosity on Mr. Charles' part what was in fact only enthusiasm for the monument." But the Ridingers remained unmollified, and in September Pinkley asked his assistant superintendent, Robert H. Rose, to contact the New Mexico state land office to terminate the Ridinger lease when it became eligible for renewal in October. Rose volunteered to spend a night at the motel to verify charges that the Ridingers were rude to monument visitors, and also because Tom Charles had learned that Frank Vesely, state land commissioner, would accede to the NPS's wishes if they wanted the Ridingers gone. Vesely made good on his promise, and the Ridingers turned to the politically connected Judge J.L. Lawson for help. Lawson, most recently a participant in the White Sands opening ceremonies, asked Vesely to let the Ridingers at least sell the lease to earn some income for their troubles. [25]
The Ridinger case remained a disappointment for Charles, but the NPS had to address other land-use issues generated in the Tularosa basin. The Alamogordo chamber of commerce had asked Senator Hatch to petition the park service to purchase timber lands near Cloudcroft for inclusion in a national park. The impetus came from passage in Congress that year of legislation that permitted purchase of "submarginal lands" to remove them from cultivation or harvest. Conrad Wirth, assistant NPS director, informed Hatch that the service "could not consider this area . . . unless it was an outstanding example of a major type of American scenery." The park service did, however, advise President Roosevelt to release on November 28 Proclamation No. 2108, expanding White Sands by 158.91 acres. The New Mexico state highway department had redesigned U.S. 70, and the NPS needed this acreage just south of the monument boundary to guard against future commercial development. Tom Charles had learned that "one of the leading boot-leggers [vendors of illegal liquor] of the community has an idea of homesteading it for business purposes." Then late in 1934, local civic officials mounted a campaign to have the NPS purchase as a "wildlife refuge" the lake and well of L.L. Garton. Frank Pinkley doubted whether the "lake" could be of significant value to White Sands, but promised to explore these petitions in the near future. [26]
Figure 7. Frank and Hazel Ridinger's White Sands Motel (1930s).
(Courtesy White Sands National Monument)
The Garton well issue would mature the following year (1935), as would plans drafted in November 1934 by Robert Rose for a museum at White Sands. For the next six years the park service would design, construct, and outfit a museum and visitors center at the dunes that park officials would consider one of the best in the system. Pinkley's assistant superintendent predicted that the facility, which Rose wanted built in the shape of a cross (with a lobby in the center and exhibit space on the wings), would address three themes: high visitation; the need to explain simply the dunes' complex ecosystem; and the real probability of expansion in the future. "Here in the White Sands," said Rose, "we have one of the finest places in the National Park Service system to teach that principle of 'Adaptation to Environment."' Just one year earlier, the NPS had released a study by George M. Wright, et al., Fauna of the National Parks of the United States (1933). The authors called upon the park service and Congress, in the words of Alfred Runte, to "round out the parks as effective biological units." The monument may have been reduced in size because of commercial and political pressures, but Rose believed that enough remained of the dunes "to satisfy that intellectual curiosity by bringing people in contact with the natural wonder or scientific feature itself." [27]
Rose's recommendations became the baseline data for the next six years of museum planning and construction. The facility itself would not open to the public until 1938. Yet his idea to emphasize natural history over that of humans was in keeping with NPS logic to present the story that the park itself revealed. Rose did, however, cite the need to embrace more fully the life of the nearby Mescalero Apaches. A young anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Moms Opler, had researched the Mescaleros and other bands of Apaches in the 1930s Southwest, and spoke in September 1933 at the dunes to a group of Alamogordo Rotarians about "the habits of the Mescalero." Rose knew of local interest in these native people, and reported to the NPS: "Unless some archeological national monument reasonably close to the Mescalero Reservation can lay stronger claim to a full and complete treatment of the Mescalero Apache, these modern Indians should be made the subject of exhibits" at White Sands. [28]
The theories of Robert Rose had a basis in fact, as White Sands would count 34,000 visitors in both 1934 and 1935. Tom Charles constructed a registration box at the park entrance, asking patrons to indicate their hometowns and size of party. He did so only after Superintendent Pinkley requested "a detailed report of the contact which I [Charles] make about the White Sands;" a condition he considered "too big an order at the present salary [$1 per month]." Charles would make an average of three trips per week to the dunes, stopping cars of picnickers to inquire about their well-being. Charles also met a steady stream of visitors in his Alamogordo insurance office, and handled all correspondence, publicity, and report-writing there. Among the less pleasant aspects of Charles' custodial work were the appeals of the unemployed for work. One such individual was W.A. Warford, a 48-year old San Franciscan who had not worked for four years. Needing to support his wife and five young children, Warford wrote to Charles seeking a position as a foreman in a White Sands CCC camp (which unfortunately did not exist). [29]
For every W.A. Warford, however, there were other information-seekers more interested in the growing publicity around the dunes. The newly elected governor of New Mexico, Clyde A. Tingley, would make tourism promotion a critical feature of his economic program. The first liberal Democrat to sit in the governor's office in the 1930s, Tingley assiduously cultivated President Roosevelt and his New Deal officers, often joining FDR when the polio-stricken president spent time in the nearby Hot Springs/Elephant Butte area. Tingley would also apply for every conceivable federal grant, and work with the state's congressional delegation to receive dispensations from matching-funds regulations (by 1938 New Mexico ranked last nationally in its share of state matching funds; three-quarters of one percent). This would benefit the Tularosa basin and White Sands financially, but would also intensify the political influence of the Democratic party, which had not been able to overcome the power of the Republican/Bronson Cutting network (to which Tom Charles belonged). [30]
The state's initiative in tourism promotion found an eager participant in Charles. As the "temporary" custodian learned more about the growing national fascination with the dunes, he developed new plans for maximizing publicity. The photographs and text of the July 1935 National Geographic Magazine story pleased Charles when he saw an advance copy. "We will make any sacrifice to get a good spread in the National Geographic," Charles told NPS photographer George Grant. Friends wrote Charles when they read the story, such as W.D. Bryars, one of the early promoters of the monument. "It is a master stroke and means a very great deal," said the Santa Fe judge, who concluded: "The people of [southern New Mexico] and of the entire state are eternally in your debt." [31]
The National Geographic article triggered a substantial increase in visitation and out-of-state inquiries to the New Mexico state tourism office. Charles furthered this effort with inauguration in early May of "Play Day," a gathering of Otero County school children, their teachers and parents. Building upon the success the previous year with the dedication ceremonies, Charles saw Play Day as an excellent opportunity to reward the citizens of the Tularosa basin for their support. More than 3,500 people gathered for a picnic, concert, and games at the dunes. Among the attendees were 35 children from the Mescalero Apache reservation school; a sign of Tom Charles' continuing commitment to incorporate them into the monument. Play Day thus became the centerpiece of White Sands' activities, expanding within a few years to include schoolchildren and college students from west Texas and southern New Mexico. [32]
Its success, and that of the park service at the dunes, also impressed Thomas Boles, superintendent at the nearby Carlsbad Caverns. Boles, whose lukewarm endorsement of the creation of White Sands had required the second opinion of Roger Toll, had reason within four years to change his mind. "I have always felt," said Boles, "that the Caverns' biggest competitor in the Southwest was the Grand Canyon." After the summer travel season of 1935, however, "the showing made by the White Sands" led Boles to realize that "perhaps my real competitor is much closer," a situation that would become even more apparent when "you [Charles] get a paved highway between Alamogordo and Las Cruces." [33]
Figure 8. Roadside Sign for White Sands West of Alamogordo (1930s).
(Courtesy White Sands National Monument)
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