area would be 'blown to Hell' if I reported the case." Upon complaint filed with Ross' superiors, the Army asked Faris not to press charges if Ross were prohibited from returning to the dunes. The superintendent relented, not wishing to expose Ross to a court-martial, and concluded: "I believe the action taken certainly made it clear that such incidents would not be tolerated and I dare say the entire camp [WSMR] knows by now that bluffs and threats do not scare us one bit."[1]
Sergeant Ross' comment about "blowing" the monument "to Hell" had a faint ring of truth to it. As tensions escalated worldwide between the client states of the Soviets and Americans, weapons testing grew more frantic. By August 1947, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, through their district office in Albuquerque, had drawn a map of the Tularosa basin in which White Sands National Monument would be surrounded by the missile range. The Engineers' property division had "acquired the fee simple title to all private owned lands within the Fort Bliss Anti-Aircraft Range, has the exclusive use of all private lands and interests within the Alamogordo Bombing Range until 1967, and co-use of all other private lands and interests within the area for the duration of the National Emergency and six months thereafter." Secretary of War Kenneth C. Royall thus wrote to Julius Krug, Secretary of the Interior, to explain the need for all public domain acreage in the basin not already covered by permit. Royall also wanted a twenty-year (not six-month) extension of his department's co-use MOU with White Sands. The secretary believed that no public hearing was needed on this massive land transfer, since "the area in question, except for the proposed extension to the north, has been used by the War Department for several years." Royall would, however, send representatives to such a hearing if Krug considered this "necessary."[2]
Johnwill Faris and his staff thus faced a turning point in park service relations with the military. The 1946 MOU was ignored with impunity, as shells dropped on the monument with increasing frequency (one in December 1948 left fragments "the size of a desk top" one-quarter mile from the residential compound). Then for the first time in September 1947, Faris learned why the dunes had to be included in the test firings. Colonel Pitcher of the WSPG came to the park to inform Faris of the status of the land acquisitions, and to explain why the Army had built another utility line across White Sands without NPS permission. "They mentioned the fact that it would mess up certain calculations" if missiles could not travel north to south in the basin; "all of which," said Faris, "may or may not be true." The superintendent, as he would do so often for the next decade, "clearly stated … that the same Congress … that charged them with protection of our country, charged us with keeping that portion of the country within our
- ↑ SWNM Monthly Report, July 1947; "Statement of E. Ray Schaffner," WHSA Ranger, June 29, 1947; Faris, "Statement of Incident," June 29, 1947; Memorandum of Faris to the Region Three Director, July 1, 1947, RG79, NPS, WHSA Files, Denver FRC.
- ↑ Kenneth C. Royall, Secretary of War, to the Secretary of the Interior, August 5, 1947, RG79, NPS, WHSA Files, Denver FRC. For an analysis of the Army land transfer controversy in the Tularosa basin, see Welsh, Albuquerque District, 93–108.
