What convinced park service personnel to pursue the Garton property was the potential to develop the lake's water resources for visitor use at the adjacent monument, and the applicability of construction funds from the Resettlement Administration's "submarginal lands" program. This agency was part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's efforts to restore lands no longer of value to farmers and ranchers. Tom Charles had tapped the water supply at the dunes, providing visitors with a highly alkaline but drinkable source of water. Yet he and his superiors knew that a better supply, with much greater volume, had to be identified soon. Garton's well needed to be tested for its feasibility, and NPS officials in the regional office in Oklahoma City began the paperwork for purchase that summer.[1]
The Garton case then entered the complicated network of New Deal/park service collaboration, setting a pattern that persisted for the remainder of the decade. In early August a sixty-year-old man from Marshall, Texas, came to Tom Charles' office, identifying himself as John Happer, "manager" for the Garton project. Charles had no advance notice of Happer's work, and hastily wrote Pinkley that "this is all Greek to me." The SWNM superintendent concurred, asking western NPS staff for an explanation. Frank Kittredge of San Francisco complained: "There appears to be quite a duplication and lack of information on the part of the Park Service in this matter." Then John H. Diehl, SWNM engineer, went to White Sands to investigate. He learned that Happer had been sent by L. Vernon Randau, the NPS official in Oklahoma City in charge of "Recreational Demonstration Projects [RDP]." Happer was not needed for at least thirty days, said Diehl, as no surveys had yet been conducted nor leases signed.[2]
The Happer incident was not the first instance of New Deal problems at White Sands, but it did echo the ambiguities of the monument's early years. Without the large amounts of non-NPS funds for land acquisition and facilities construction, White Sands may have remained as Tom Charles found it in 1933. Yet the lack of park service control led to strained relations with nascent agencies like the Resettlement Administration, and its successor the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Such bodies had no permanence like the NPS, no clear mission beyond relief employment, and no stable chain of command. For these reasons the RDP and the WPA work at White Sands could be vulnerable to political intervention at all levels (local, state, and federal), further irritating career park service employees who had their doubts about the proper path for White Sands to take.
To make himself useful, John Happer traveled around the Tularosa basin inquiring about the need for his services. Charles and Pinkley exchanged bemused letters about Happer's frenetic pace, with Pinkley sarcastically noting that "Happer is sort of out on a limb … and is afraid some one will come along and catch him doing nothing and fire him." In September Pinkley received unofficial notice that the Garton project would
