Day disaster struck as "there was a constant waiting line of from five to twenty women" to use the crudely built, temporary toilets in the dunes. The expensive ($500 each) lavatories built in the "Navajo hogan" style at the park entrance, five-and-one-half miles away, went unused, and Charles questioned the logic of NPS designers and consultants who never attended his ceremonies nor asked local residents their opinion of the monument. "I have had severe criticism on this subject" from civic leaders in town, said Charles, and the custodian told Pinkley that he could no longer "hold my tongue."[1]
Charles' dialogue with his superiors developed simultaneously with the grandiose plans of local and regional interests for White Sands. As Charles requested better picnic facilities, J.B. Willis of El Paso asked the NPS for a lease to construct "a large bathing beach, dance pavilion, and other accommodations for the visiting public." Then Pinkley learned that Alamogordo officials envisioned a permanent baseball field, swimming pool, horse track and fairgrounds for the dunes. What ensued was a flurry of memoranda that revealed not only the difference between NPS policy and local ambition, but the distinctiveness of White Sands within SWNM.[2]
The essential problem of White Sands for NPS personnel was the intensely local character of visitation and promotion. Tom Charles' superiors sat in offices in Washington, San Francisco, Casa Grande, and Oklahoma City, and traveled constantly to dozens of park units. From this came a decidedly national perspective on park management, linked to classic Progressive concepts of aesthetics and preservation. To Charles and his peers, the dunes remained what they had always been: a place for recreation. "As I see this," said Charles, "it is not a matter of what the Monument was created for." The park service needed to remember that "we have … to take care of the actual needs of the people who visit here." Pinkley became quite sarcastic at Charles' reading of public service, charging: "Where is your authority there for making a Southern New Mexico playground?" The local chamber then decided to approach Governor Tingley and the state's U.S. senators to bring pressure on the NPS, leading Pinkley to demand rhetorically: "How are you going to make sure the local Chambers of Commerce won't try to make a young Coney Island out of the White Sands at the expense of the United States Government?"[3]
As long as the debate over facilities remained within park service channels, the issue of competing philosophies rarely surfaced. It was when civic leaders protested directly to Washington that the larger implications of the Charles-Pinkley correspondence
- ↑ Charles to Pinkley, February 18, April 29, 1935, RG79, NPS, WHSA Files, Denver FRC; Charles to Pinkley, May 6, 1935, Historical Files, WHSA (1935), January 1–July 31, 1935.
- ↑ G.A. Moskey, Assistant NPS Director, to J.B. Willis, El Paso, May 7, 1935, Historical Files, WHSA (1935), January 1–July 31, 1935; Pinkley to Charles, May 9, 1935, RG79, NPS, WHSA Files, Denver FRC. Tom Charles had first irritated Pinkley in December 1933 with a scheme to dredge an artificial "lake" in the dunes, as the wate table lay close to the surface and visitors preferred an aquatic setting to neutralize desert conditions. [Schneider-Hector, White Sands, 106]
- ↑ Charles to Pinkley, May 11, 29, 1935; Pinkley to Charles, May 14, 16, 1935, RG79, NPS, WHSA Files, Denver FRC.
