Ickes' directives put in motion a strategy of negotiation between the Interior and War departments that revealed the latter's commitment to national security versus the former's quest for historic preservation. E.T. Scoyen found it amusing that NPS headquarters had awarded $100 to a Mr. Joseph Stratton of the Chicago office for suggesting creation of the atomic monument. Scoyen noted that the first NPS employee to mention the concept was Johnwill Faris, and that his Santa Fe regional office had discussed the idea at length. More important was regional director Tolson's "adverse recommendation" of September 5. Publicity such as the Stratton award drew many curiosity-seekers to the Tularosa basin, and by October 11 Charles Richey reported that "quantities of the 'green glass' which supposedly lined the crater are being carried away." Within a month the Army had sealed off access to the Trinity Site, and even former NPS director Horace Albright could not gain permission to visit the prospective "monument."[1]
For the remainder of 1945, Johnwill Faris and his staff struggled with the past and future of White Sands. Large-circulation national magazines (Life and Look) sent photographers to prepare stories on the monument, and Harold Ickes asked the NPS to supply him with his own personal souvenirs of "trinitite." Regional director Tillotson had Faris collect specimens of the "green glass," along with a section of cable wire "that was actually used in transmitting the electric impulse which detonated the bomb." Tillotson warned that the souvenirs, while "tested for radioactivity," "should not be carried for any length of time in close proximity to the human skin." Secretary Ickes instead should keep the trinitite in "a glass or lucite container." Other applicants for atomic specimens were turned down, however, and NPS officials thus asked Faris to keep trinitite at White Sands for future display in the museum.[2]
Johnwill Faris closed the momentous year of 1945 by negotiating a second memorandum of understanding with the Army Engineers on the monument's relationship to the "Ordcit" project. The Army not only had no plans to permit creation of an atomic park; it also persisted in its request for "intermittent use of the lands included in the White Sands National Monument within the exterior boundaries of the Ordcit Project." This assumption that Ordict superseded the mandate of the park service became clear in the memorandum, as Faris agreed to remove all employees and close White Sands at the request of the War Department. In return, the Army would negotiate with all private grazing lease holders within the monument over the loss of access to their claims during
- ↑ Demaray to the Region III Director, September 14, 1945; Tillotson to Dempsey, September 14, 1945; Scoyen to Demaray, September 19, 1945, RG79, NPS, Atomic Bomb Monument File L-58, Denver NARA; Richey to the WHSA Custodian, October 11, 1945; Albright to Oscar L. Chapman, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, October 31, 1945; Chapman to Albright, November 14, 1945, Historical Files, Trinity Site (1940s), WHSA.
- ↑ Drury to the Region III Director, October 31, 1945; Drury to Dempsey, October 31, 1945; Tolson to the Region III Director, November 16, 1945; Tillotson to Demaray, November 5, 1945, RG79, NPS, Atomic Bomb Monument File L-58, Denver NARA; Faris to the Region III Director, November 12, 1945; Andrew H. Hepburn, Travel Editor, Look Magazine, New York, to George A. Grant, NPS, Santa Fe, November 13, 1945, RG79, NPS, WHSA Files, Denver FRC.
