FORT DAVIS Administrative History

Readers of The Romance of Davis Mountains and Big Bend Country thus encountered well-known images of noble Spaniards, free-market cattlemen, and Mexicans whose only place was subservient to the Texas master class. What reinforced Raht's rhetorical style was the banditry of the Southwestern border, popularized in March 1916 by the raid of the Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa on Columbus, New Mexico, a small border town west of El Paso. Raht emphasized the violence and retaliation on the part of American forces (both Texas Rangers and U.S. Army), which brought wartime conditions to the border that contrasted with the relative tranquility experienced throughout World War I by other parts of the country.

Ignoring the contributions that Hispanics had made to the ranching economy of the region, not to mention the intermarriage of prominent Anglo ranchers and Hispanic women, Raht told his readers: "More often than not the good little blood the peon [Mexican] may have in his veins is contaminated with disease, and, from the mother stock, he rightfully inherits the bloodthirstiness of his Indian forebears." Raht further believed that the Hispanic, "like the Indian, is constitutionally opposed to labor." Referring to the stereotype of the Mexican peasant, Raht declared: "So fixed has become the habit of obtaining a livelihood without work and so in keeping with their natural tendencies, that it is doubtful whether our Southern border will ever be safe, except it be by force of arms." Then in a disjointed conclusion, Raht (whose knowledge of the area extended only to his childhood visits and study at Austin) informed his readers:

"Despite all these obstacles, the West-of-the-Pecos country has grown and prospered. Nowhere in the world will be found a higher type of citizenship . . . . The final settlement of the troubles in Mexico and along the border will insure the future of this great country." [23]

Raht's judgments, which he crafted in his journeys through the Davis Mountains with Barry Scobee, emanated from the stories told to him by the Anglo ranchers and citizens of Fort Davis. Confirming Raht's viewpoint was the segregation of the races in the Fort Davis area; part of the effort of Anglo townspeople to present a homogeneous face to the outside world of investors, tourists, and potential residents. Jacobsen and Nored wrote of earlier racial divisions in town: "There are stories of bodies, mostly children, along the east slope of Sleeping Lion [Mountain]. This area was probably cluttered during the 1870s with the shacks of the families or camp followers of the black soldiers[,] and babies and children who died were simply buried behind the hovels where their parents lived." A "colored school" operated in town from 1888-1895, and Hispanics who did attend school were routed towards the "Mexican school" on the north side of town (the current site of the Dirks-Anderson elementary school just south of the park boundary). White children, by comparison, went to the "American" school on the south side of town (the site of the modern-day Fort Davis High School). [24]

In the early 1900s, Texas state laws separating students by race were applied throughout the town, and children of "mixed blood" (primarily black and Hispanic) were sent to the "Mexican" school. The legacy of this segregation, said Jacobsen and Nored, was that "after adoption of these new rules, the number of Hispanic children enrolled in school dropped dramatically. Until the late 1920s, education opportunities for Hispanics in Fort Davis [were] minimal at best," with the first Hispanic graduate of Fort Davis High School (Tommy Morales) receiving a diploma in 1939 (this in a county that had been predominantly Hispanic from its inception). The first chief of maintenance at Fort Davis National Historic Site, Pablo Bencomo, would speak of this inequity in 1995 when he remembered how his father, a ranch hand without education himself, came to the "Mexican" school when Pablo was twelve and removed him from class. "My father told me that there was no more need for me to go to school," said Bencomo, and the young man recalled crying at the cattle ranch because he missed the camaraderie and intellectual challenge of his education, even though it was in a segregated setting (his teacher had been John Prude, from a prominent ranching family, who spoke Spanish to the students). [25]

Just as the ethnic and economic realities of Jeff Davis County crystallized in the mid-twentieth century, the boosterism of the Fort Davis business elite and the romanticization of Carl Raht and Barry Scobee brought travelers to the region in larger numbers that ever before. The need for services, such as lodging, dining, recreation, and entertainment, required a different strategy than that employed by the ranchers, whose goal had been maintenance of their economic well-being in an uncertain and highly competitive world of investment and finance. The tourism business was something new to most parts of the West, and local boosters sought to understand not only the tastes of the visitor, but also the potential of the Davis Mountains to bring in revenue and taxes that would anchor the next generation of economic development. The consumerism of the 1920s created middle-class expectations of access to the same amenities as the wealthy had known prior to World War I. Those individuals and communities that could determine the best strategies for luring and retaining the affluent visitor might benefit in the highly competitive business atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties, while those unable to fathom the "leisure economy" growing amidst a society of hardworking people would suffer.

What distinguished the post-World War I focus upon travel and tourism was not merely the appeal of escape and climate, but also the use of history as a lure. Michael Kammen, author of Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991), has written of the surge of interest in the 1920s and 1930s about America's historic past, and of the methods applied by enterprising souls to bring in tourists and visitors seeking connections to the culture and heritage of a nation that until recently had only looked forward for guidance. Kammen linked this new fascination with history to the fact that "during the later nineteenth century . . . Americans of all sorts had to confront a new economic order with a stock of assumptions deeply rooted in preindustrial society." By seeking a more pastoral, agrarian world within the confines of urban-industrial life, Americans would become more nostalgic and sensitive to the past, even if this distorted both the present and the past that gave rise to the history being admired. Americans, like their European counterparts, were unfazed by this contradiction. Kammen thus noted that "another general characteristic that is commonly shared by tradition-oriented cultures, including the United States after 1870, is the use of monuments, architecture, and other works of art as a means of demonstrating a sense of continuity or allegiance to the past." [26]

Three forces thus converged in the Davis Mountains in the interwar years (1920-1940) to advance the story of the region, and by extension the desire of a small group of locals to create a park at old Fort Davis. Providing services to visitors not only generated income and attention. It also brought public spending by the state and federal governments for transportation and communications networks that could increase the ability of the cattle ranchers to compete in the national marketplace. In addition, the declining local economy in the Great Depression could benefit from New Deal social welfare programs that required little contribution from locals (as they did not rely upon property taxes from the county). Finally, the rise of the western myth in film and literature after 1920 solidified a "tradition" in west Texas that made sense to locals, whether on the ranch or in town. Efforts to tell the Davis Mountains story would thus combine plans for publicly funded recreation, highway construction, and private initiatives to graft the national nostalgia for the "old" West onto an area that still echoed the nineteenth century.

Michael Kammen noted the irony of this national mood in the 1920s, saying that the decade "marked a pivotal moment in the self-aware marketing of regional traditions:

rodeos, mock cowboy fights, roped-off business districts, and so on." A second phenomenon of the age was the "determination to democratize tradition" via the automobile. Henry Ford contributed to both movements (modernization and nostalgia) by mass-producing inexpensive cars, then preserving the world that mobility threatened in his "Dearborn Village" outside of Detroit, Michigan. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the son of the Standard Oil magnate most often linked to the Gilded Age's industrial capitalists, or "Robber Barons," likewise invested in the rehabilitation of colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, reproducing the eighteenth century "lost world" of Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers. Traveling to historic sites became fashionable, and Kammen stated that "some roads were constructed or proposed for the exclusive purpose of facilitating nationalism and tourism." The result of this for America, said Kammen, would be within a generation the "commercialization of tradition and the modernization of national memory." [27]

Residents of the Davis Mountains had not been strangers to national celebrations, with the tradition of the Independence Day festivities dating to the nineteenth-century garrison. Jacobsen and Nored recounted stories of townspeople gathering at the abandoned post hospital, "using the high porch as a table for the tons of food the ladies provided." Hispanic citizens from the nearby neighborhood of Chihuahua came to the post in the late nineteenth century to commemorate the Mexican holidays of "Cinco de Mayo" (Fifth of May), and "Diez y Seis de Septiembre" (Sixteenth of September). The former recalled the 1862 defeat of the invading French army under their leader Maximilian, while the latter marked the end of the Mexican revolution (1810-1821). "There were parades at the old fort," said Jacobsen and Nored, "and one or two seem to have been through the streets of Chihuahua. Bailes [dances] generally followed in the evening." The Anglo population also used the old fort grounds for "community Faster egg hunts," while plays were given in the cottonwood grove east of the fort "to take advantage of the tourist dollar and to offer entertainment to the summer visitors." One such performance, remembered Ellen Yarbro Bailey, was "a Hiawatha pageant . . . probably in the late teens or early 20s." The authors saw nothing inconsistent about this highly romanticized story of Indian life that had been written in nineteenth-century New England by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, presented at a site (Fort Davis) dedicated to the defeat and removal of Indians in west Texas. [28]

These local gatherings were not the sort of historical focus envisioned by the business community of Fort Davis in the years between the world wars. They preferred to emulate the successes of other towns and cities that parlayed private and public funding to enhance their economic well-being. The grounds at Fort Davis had not been a moneymaker for anyone owning them since the departure of the Army, and local boosters wondered how they could utilize this new-found interest in history to their benefit. On December 17, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt had signed an executive order giving roughly 300 acres of the Fort Davis lands to the General Land Office (GLO), the precursor in the Interior department to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Charged with promotion of public land sales to generate revenue for the government, the GLO leased the site to J.L. Jones of Fort Davis until his death in 1907, whereupon local rancher Frank P. Sproul became "custodian" of the site "without pay." He leased four acres to a tenant farmer, and hoped to receive one-third of the crop as payment. [29]

Two years later the GLO sent William B. Douglass, examiner of surveys, to appraise the land at Fort Davis for subdivision and sale to the public. Accompanied by Jacob P. Weatherby, described as "the present County Judge and a successful merchant," and Charles Mulhern, "one of the wealthiest ranchers . . . and a practical farmer (as is also Judge Weatherby)," Douglass elected to carve out of the fort grounds 29 lots of 9.56 acres each, and one lot of 12.83 acres. This land lay to the east of the actual site of the buildings, which Douglass hoped could be used for grazing. The acreage lacked suitable surface or underground water for irrigation, and also had "volcanic gravel . . . under which . . . is a soft limestone." The GLO report conceded that wells could be drilled to a depth of 10-40 feet, allowing agriculture on the properties, but the appraisal described the area as mostly "third rate" and "fourth rate" investments. Douglass believed that the government could expect no more than five to seven dollars per acre. He then described the potential site for prospective buyers, saying that the town had about 600 people, "half of whom are Mexican." Fort Davis had good wagon connections to the railroad at Marfa, as well as daily mail service, "several good stores," and was "reputed to be the healthiest in the state of Texas." [30]

Upon completion of the survey and filing of the notice of sale, the GLO on November 21, 1910, sent James W. Witten to supervise the auction of the thirty lots comprising the "old Fort Davis abandoned military reservation." Witten received bids on twenty-two lots, covering 213.61 acres, and collected checks for a total of $2,272.50. The highest bid for the 9.56-acre parcels was $150, with Mrs. Susan M. Janes, Mr. T.H. Brown, Jr. (who bought two such lots), William J. Ward, and Theodore J. Dumble, all of Fort Davis, acquiring property at this quote. Three Hispanics (Pedro Herrera, Alejandro Olivas, and Jose A. Contreras of Fort Davis) also purchased lots, as did Anton Aggerman, a veteran of duty at the old fort, and Benjamin H. Grierson, Jr. and George M. Grierson, sons of the famed post commander and owners of a local ranch. Only one bidder came from out of town: Allen Mills of Marquez, Texas, who purchased four lots. Wiggins then reported to his superiors in the GLO's Washington headquarters that eight lots remained unsold, and recommended "that no action be taken looking to their reoffering until such time as changed circumstances have created a demand sufficient to justify the expense of further sale." [31]

That moment would not arrive for another 27 years, when in 1937 the GLO divested itself of the eight parcels. By then the status of the land had faded in local people's memory, as in October 1923, R.S. Sproul of Fort Davis wrote to the GLO asking to be made "custodian" of whatever lands remained under federal jurisdiction. This forced the GLO to research its records, and report that only 76.48 acres belonged in the public domain, worth some $720. Because there were no structures standing on the properties, the GLO decided not to accept Sproul's offer, as his "appointment would vest the right in the appointee to use the lands in the said reservation for grazing or other purposes to the exclusion of all others." In addition, the congressional act of July 5, 1884 that governed disbursal of abandoned military lands left no provision for leasing. The GLO was to survey and sell all such lands for no less than $1.25 per acre. William Spry, GLO commissioner, did promise Sproul that the Fort Davis properties would be released when "there is sufficient evidence to show that the lands will be sold." [32]

While the public portion of old Fort Davis appealed only to ranchers, the privately held acreage that contained the facilities abandoned by the U.S. Army faced a different future after World War I. The Army had established in 1917 Camp Marfa, as much for protection against Mexican border raids as for preparation for war in Europe. After the war, the Army renamed the facility Fort D.A. Russell (itself the name of a post near Cheyenne, Wyoming in the nineteenth century), and sent troops marching north on occasion to the old Fort Davis grounds for field training. For the next 20 years the South Texas military posts of Forts Clark, Brown and Bliss also utilized the open space at Fort Davis and the surrounding area. But the most active proposals for the post came from local businessmen in search of the economic stimulus of tourism. As early as 1921, a group of Fort Davis civic officials petitioned the Texas legislature to set aside lands in the Davis Mountains for some sort of state park. The following year a banker from Chicago, Harry G. Hershenson, wrote directly to Arno B. Cammerer, acting director of the National Park Service, to seek federal creation of a Davis Mountains park. Hershenson, who may have been a summer visitor to the area, believed that NPS plans were already underway to include the Davis Mountains in the fledgling national park system. Cammerer wrote in response: "As far as we in the Park Service know, no movement has been set on foot to establish such a Park." The major hurdle facing the Davis Mountains was the fact that "Texas has no nationally owned public lands." Locals would have to purchase the desired property and donate it to the government, as "Congress has never yet made an appropriation for the purpose of buying lands to establish a national park." Cammerer wondered if Hershenson had confused the NPS with the Texas state park system, which now had five units, "each of which is governed by a separate commission." [33]

Figure 4. Fort D.A. Russell Maneuvers, A Fifth Cavalry (c. 1922).
Courtesy of Fort Davis NHS.

Hershenson's inquiry signaled a dual track being pursued by local Fort Davis merchants to bring business to their vicinity. Cammerer' s reply suggesting the involvement of the state of Texas in the Davis Mountains was met in 1923 by a letter from another Chicago businessman, William Havens, secretary/treasurer of the American Motor Freight Company. Writing generically to the "United States Government Bureau of Parks," Havens asked for information "as to the state of Texas and the U.S. Government going to have a National Park near Pecos Texas comprising of 300,000 acres on the foot of the Davis Mountains." Havens told the federal government: "I expect to buy some property out that way and would like to know whether this park is even going to exist." He had learned from local sources that the "state of Texas has made no appropriation for the Park," even though he had been led to believe that both the state and federal governments would purchase the lands in Reeves and Pecos counties for such a park. [34]

Coming so closely on the heels of the Hershenson letter, Haven's correspondence did not indicate to the park service the extent of the promotional campaign by Fort Davis boosters to bring public funding to the Davis Mountains. B.L. Vipond, acting director of the NPS, wrote to Havens a note almost identical to that sent by Cammerer to Hershenson. Then on May 13, 1924, the NPS learned that Representative Claude Hudspeth of Texas had introduced in Congress HR 9193, "A Bill to establish a national park in the state of Texas." This appears to be the first official request to the NPS for such a facility in Texas, and it called upon the Secretary of the Interior "to purchase at least five thousand acres of land in Jeff Davis County . . . to be a national park and dedicated as a public park for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of the United States." Even as the NPS told Hershenson and Havens that Congress had never considered purchase of private land to create park units, the Hudspeth measure stated:

"That the sum of $100,000 is hereby authorized to be appropriated, out of any moneys in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, for the purchase of said land and for other purposes incidental to the creation of said park." Hudspeth did allow for donations of "lands, easements, buildings, and moneys" to the Davis Mountains project, and declared the authority to do so rested in the enabling legislation of 1916 that formed the National Park Service. [35]

Although the Hudspeth proposal died in the House, its existence suggested the problems that the park service would have for the next 35 years in creating an NPS unit in the Davis Mountains. Local promoters did not know of the constraints placed by Congress upon the NPS, yet they would champion park status with visitors who then solicited help on their own. In addition, the local boosters saw more value in the 1920s in preservation of natural beauty than historic property. This fit the pattern of conservationist thinking outlined by historian Alfred Runte in his book, National Parks: The American Experience (1978). Runte coined the phrase, "the worthless lands thesis," to describe the rationale of the NPS for setting aside vast amounts of public land in the West. "The great majority of Americans took pride in the inventiveness and material progress of the nation," said Runte. Thus the need to develop natural resources drove much public policy well into the twentieth century. For that reason, said Runte, "only the high, rugged, spectacular landforms of the West" were considered for inclusion in the NPS system, and "inevitably park boundaries conformed to economic rather than ecological dictates." [36]

Because this strategy relied upon the grandeur of nature to convince private landowners, resource companies, and their legislators to concede private property to the park service, Runte labeled this process "monumentalism." Future parks would be measured against the beauty and scale of such units as Yellowstone in Wyoming, Grand Canyon in Arizona, and Yosemite in California. Early twentieth century efforts at conservation of natural resources (part of the Progressive era's quest for "efficiency and economy" in government and business) required places like the Davis Mountains to demonstrate how parks "could pay dividends to the national purse," instead of merely relying upon aesthetic appeal or romantic charm. One way that smaller parks could be created after World War I was what Runte called the "embrace of the automobile," linked to the "See America First" campaign conducted during the war to encourage wealthy travelers to avoid the dangers of ocean crossing to Europe, and also to spend their money at home. [37]