For Charles and his contemporaries, a better transportation network would ensue only if they collaborated closely with state highway officials. Thus by the late 1920s (when forty percent of the New Mexico state budget came from federal highway construction), Charles and the local chamber of commerce had convinced state planners to build the future U.S. Highway 70 from Las Cruces to Alamogordo, and past the dunes. Charles by 1928 would call this the "White Sands road," which upon completion was only gravel. At that point he felt ready to promote Numa Frenger's suggestion more forcefully. As a courtesy to Albert Fall, Charles wrote asking the former Cabinet secretary's advice. "We drove out over the new road to the White Sands last night," said Charles, "and are certainly delighted with it." The future monument custodian called the road "one of the prettiest that I have ever seen in New Mexico, or any place else for that matter." Charles then asked Fall for his "judgment of the possibilities along the line of having a section of the sands set aside," and confessed "my total ignorance of the first steps in the matter."[1]
Whether this latter remark was sincere or disingenuous, Charles knew of the problems facing Alamogordo as the Great Depression rolled over New Mexico, and may have requested the advice of Fall to determine the best technique for maneuvering the monument through the federal government. President Herbert Hoover in 1932 had granted Fall an early release from prison for reasons of health, and Charles also knew of Hoover's desire to expand the holdings of the NPS. This shift of emphasis heartened Charles, who also pressed the case for White Sands because homesteaders had been attracted to the dunes with the grading of the federal highway. The Alamogordo area needed another economic boost, as private enterprise had failed to provide the Las Cruces road with amenities for travelers (no gasoline stations the length of the highway from downtown Las Cruces to Alamogordo, a distance of eighty miles). Visitors thus had few incentives to return, and Tom Charles would have fewer customers for his insurance agency.[2]
One other factor influencing the campaign for creation of White Sands National Monument was passage in 1929 by the New Mexico legislature of "Joint Memorial No. 4." This measure asked Congress to lift the twenty-acre restriction on mining claims in the dunes, as this amount was not cost-effective for investors. The aging William Hawkins had read a feature story in the Alamogordo News late in 1929 where Senator Bratton had informed Tom Charles of his support for the monument. Hawkins complained to Bratton that such a facility would deprive the area of the resource potential at the dunes. The former railroad attorney also mentioned the possibility of transferring ownership of White Sands to the state, which could then lease or sell the lands and deposit the proceeds in the public school fund (at that time a major source of educational
- ↑ Charles to M.B. Stevens, Las Cruces, January 28, 1928; Charles to Fall, n.d., 1928 (?), Charles Family Papers, MS 18, File 1-7, NMSU.
- ↑ Schneider-Hector, White Sands, 78–79; George Keith Dodson, Topeka, KS, to Jim Thomson, Superintendent, White Sands National Monument (WHSA), October 8, 1975, Area History Folder, File 2, WHSA Library.
