FORT DAVIS Administrative History

The regional director's thoughts on the hospital prompted Superintendent Becker to begin a process of discussion about the facility that would endure for the next three decades at Fort Davis. He concurred in Beard's suggestion that the post hospital not receive such elaborate treatment as first planned. Funds saved from the hospital project should be redirected to the "restoration of the quartermaster corral," as this would generate storage and display space for the historic artifacts being acquired. The structures around the corrals would also "fit into the interpretive picture much better." Becker then turned to another building included in the master plan: the post chapel. "Since my arrival here," said the superintendent, "I have given considerable thought to the parade ground illusion of 1880, and while I did not feel at first that the chapel should be restored, I feel strongly, both from a local public relations standpoint and from the visitor's visual standpoint, that the chapel should be reconstructed." The superintendent wanted "essentially the same type of thing that we have on Officers' Row -- an exterior restoration only." Becker envisioned only rebuilding the four walls, which would not require "extreme expense." He also believed that "the visual picture would be improved a great deal if we were to do an exterior reconstruction." [23]

Nagging at Superintendent Becker in the winter of 1964-1965 was the sense that the original enthusiasm for rehabilitation at Fort Davis had slowed. On January 28, 1965, he and SWR historian William "Bill" Brown coauthored a memorandum to the regional director criticizing what they considered the "bogging down" of the five-year plan. Two factors contributed to this process of delay: "insistence by WODC that the strict letter of the Historic and Prehistoric Structures Handbook be followed without variation or reasonable compromise;" and the "assignment by WODC of the Fort Davis architect to other projects." Becker and Brown painted for the SWR director "a grave picture in terms of area development for visitor use and enjoyment, and a huge carryover of unobligated funds" resulting from the slowdown. As evidence they cited the inability of architect Crellin to complete his design for HB7, the commanding officer's quarters, which they described as "the key structure in Officers' Row, which, in turn, is the core of the site and the prime visitor attraction." Crellin had to spend two days per week at Big Bend National Park, and Fort Davis had other reports needed from Crellin prior to commencement of construction. Compounding this was WODC's demand that each structure have its own report prepared, despite the similarity of work planned for each building along Officers' Row. Becker and Brown predicted that, "in the long run, [this] would mean many years' delay in completing this superficial and simple job" of "installation of historic doors, windows, shutters, and porch railings." [24]

If the construction crews at Fort Davis had to halt their work on procedural grounds, Becker and Brown warned that visitors would see not "an operating historic site" but "one shambling indefinitely through the scrap-lumber of becoming." This would inevitably raise questions of expenditure of public funds. The report noted that Fort Davis had already fallen behind in fiscal year 1964 spending, leaving $35,000 in work undone. Should the NPS hold back construction work authorized for fiscal year 1966, Becker and Brown saw a new carryover of $70,000. "It is unnecessary to dwell on the evils of large unobligated balances," said the two officials, "except for this comment: Fort Davis will soon have passed through the new-area honeymoon." Failure to "get cracking" on the restoration program at the site suggested that "Congress might view [Fort Davis] with alarm, and shut off this rathole." They predicted that the historic site, begun with such fanfare, would become "a half-finished area struggling along for years toward a semblance of completion against the dual handicap of inadequate funds and deteriorating structures." Becker and Brown then concluded by requesting of SWR that WODC send immediately a full-time architect to complete plans for the visitors center, employee residences, and enlisted men's barracks (HB21); and to "allow the Park to prepare a special Part II [historic structures] report covering installation of historic doors, windows, shutters, and porch railings for all 13 structures on Officers' Row." [25]

By the spring of 1965, the stalemate on historic structure design at Fort Davis had eased only somewhat. Thomas Crellin was asked by WODC to offer estimates on the amount of time necessary to complete plans and specifications on four buildings: HB14 and 15 (two-story officers quarters); HB 39 (the granary); and HB37 (the commissary). Crellin considered these buildings as "in the best condition for restorative effort," and he anticipated that he would need some 640 hours of work (or four months) for their design. He could not guarantee when he could address the hospital (upon which he had already spent four weeks), or the chapel, barracks, magazine, and quartermaster corral. Because of this time constraint, Crellin echoed the sentiments of Becker and Brown that the Officers' Row facilities be unified in their research and design. Even with this reduction in time, the structures would require some 1,000 hours of research and drafting of plans (or six months' labor) by the historic architect. "It should be recognized," said Crellin, "that the conversion of Fort Davis into a restored entity cannot be accomplished overnight." He reported that "much favorable comment has been offered regarding the degree of progress already made," and the completion later in 1965 of the barracks buildings would satisfy many critics. Crellin did warn his superiors: "That the historic structures program at Fort Davis may be a continuing thing for more than a generation is not unrealistic." It was his hope that "future generations may well feel that the history in our heritage is worthy of further development." Hence the NPS architect saw it as "incumbent on the present to record as faithfully and as completely as possible every detail that may be of value to the future." [26]

The historic architect had the opportunity to influence regional opinion on Fort Davis when in late May 1965 the next superintendent, Frank Smith, came to west Texas to observe his new post prior to leaving SWR as its curator of museums. Smith, an anthropologist and music lover from Pueblo, Colorado, and Crellin agreed that "there's [design] work for three or four men, and Tom has one body, one pair of arms, and can occupy only one location at a time." WODC decided to send to Fort Davis a supervisor for the ongoing contracts, plus a draftsman for future work, and SWR accepted Superintendent Becker's call for a joint historic structures report on Officers' Row. These agreements were prompted by regional director Daniel Beard's growing concern about the costs of work at Fort Davis. "I believe we may face a serious situation," he told the chief of WODC on May 27, 1965, "because Congress has indicated again and again that it does not want to spend much money on restorations." Beard called upon WODC to assist the region to stay on the five-year plan, and to "complete the next stages of the development rapidly and economically." [27]

No sooner had Beard and Becker established the working relationship that they hoped to pursue with WODC than did the San Francisco office challenge certain elements of the accelerated design program. Jerry Riddell of WODC saw shortcomings in the January 1963 "interpretive prospectus" drafted by Bob Utley; the document that had been the basis for Tom Crellin's planning. Frank Smith told Beard soon after his arrival at Fort Davis that "WODC (and specifically Charlie Pope, I guess) continue to scream about the combined reports on the officers' quarters." The new superintendent decided that it would not be worth the trouble to fight San Francisco, as he already had contractors at work on the quarters. Smith then addressed the controversy surrounding the post hospital and chapel. As to the former: "In spite of a firm conviction about the separation of Church and State, I agree with Mike [Becker] that we should revise the prospectus to include exterior reconstruction of the post Chapel." Smith also agreed that "WODC's feeling for the hospital is well based," and urged the SWR director to "meet [WODC] half way and let Crellin complete this report." [28]

Beyond the concerns that NPS officials had for the historic structures at Fort Davis, the second area of focus was the landscape planning and grounds maintenance. Pablo Bencomo remembered in 1995 how the old parade ground had been covered with yucca (soap tree cactus) because of the neglect over the years by the caretakers for the Simmons/Jackson family and the James family before them. Ralph Russell, principal of the Anderson elementary school next door, and a seasonal ranger intermittently from 1973-1988, also recalled that the grounds were infested with the "cat's claw" plant brought in by the grazing of sheep, and the cottonwood grove had become choked with underbrush in the dry years of the 1950s. Local children would play in the pools of rainwater that collected in Hospital Canyon after a storm, and they called the area the "Devil's Sinkhole" for the erosion along the streams. Russell, who would specialize in research on the plant life of the site while a summer hire at Fort Davis, told of the overgrazing that destroyed much of the native vegetation, and of efforts by the NPS staff to bring some of these plants back to life. [29]

The first year of park service management of the property taught valuable lessons to the staff about ecological change and continuity. In his monthly report for September 1963, Michael Becker noticed that "due to the numerous rains and no domestic stock grazing on the site we have an abundance of high grass." This plus the "lack of a sufficient water system to protect the shingled roofs which are now in place" threatened the park with an increased danger of fire. Then in March 1964, the high grass lured the sheep of Dude Sproul down from his leaseholdings in Hospital Canyon to graze along the boundaries of the historic site. Nonetheless, Pablo Bencomo, his maintenance crew, and the chief ranger addressed problems of tree removal, deposit of soil unearthed in the restoration of ruins and old buildings, planning for nature trails, and wildlife research and sightings. The alteration of the grounds (especially the turning of so much earth) tempted visitors to search for artifacts of the old military posts. Superintendent Becker thus reported in September 1963 that "the collection of artifacts and natural objects by visitors" constituted "our most prevalent offense." He believed that "an educational program should be intensified to help the public better understand why the Antiquities Act [of 1906] is enforced in areas of the National Park System." [30]

Another aspect of NPS concern about the environment of Fort Davis was the mandate for nature trails at park sites. In the spring of 1964, Pablo Bencomo and Bob Dunnagan designed and built a trail for visitors that ran along the north ridge of park property. They also utilized the services of Dr. Barton Warnock, chairman of the biology department at Sul Ross Teachers College, who identified some 30 plants along the trail. The following year the state of Texas division of parks approached Fort Davis with plans to link their hiking trails with the north ridge route. This enhanced the appeal of Fort Davis to the growing legions of outdoor recreation enthusiasts; a situation made even more attractive in the fall of 1965 when the park service agreed to close the "unhistoric parade ground road that formerly passed by the Nature Trail sign." Visitors now would leave their vehicles in the new parking lot, explore the grounds, and then have the opportunity to hike the hillsides around the fort without the intrusion of automobile traffic that detracted from the serenity that the park could offer. [31]

Figure 35. Construction of parking lot; Visitor Center on right (November 1965).
Courtesy Fort Davis NHS.

As Fort Davis neared completion of its first phase of historic structure research and planning, so too did the park face a growing need for accurate documentary research to prepare its museum exhibits and interpretive programs for visitors. Because the site commemorated the traditions of the frontier military, Robert Utley devoted much of his time to collecting documents and conducting interviews to make the park historically accurate in structure and interpretation. Utley saw in Fort Davis the opportunity to fulfill his own interest in the nineteenth century Indian-fighting army; a theme that had been ignored by his peers in the Southwest region, as they were influenced by the Santa Fe office's proximity to parks focusing upon precontact Native archeology, or upon Spanish colonial history. Utley also recounted in 1994 that few scholars in the 1950s showed much concern for the story of Fort Davis. Fortunately the attraction of the buildings, grounds, and ruins of the site drew to it top officials like Tom Crellin, Frank Smith, Utley himself, and Nan V. Carson, the furnishing specialist from the NPS' Midwest Regional Office in Omaha, Nebraska, who had researched the displays and exhibits at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. Then, too, Utley would suggest as hires for the position of park historian individuals who went on to prominent careers in the service, such as Jerry Rogers, first employed in 1964-1965 as a seasonal historian and who later became director of the NPS's historic preservation program in Washington, and in 1995 the director of the Southwest region; Ben Levy, historian at Fort Davis who also followed Utley to the Washington history office; Erwin Thompson, who left Fort Davis after two years as park historian (1963-1965) to work in Washington, and then went to Denver in 1972 to become part of the inaugural staff of the Denver Service Center (DSC); and David Clary, a seasonal employee at Fort Davis who went to Washington as a career historian. [32]

Figure 36. Completed parking lot of Fort Davis (April 1966).
Courtesy Fort Davis NHS.

The excitement of tracing the West's military past at Fort Davis thus served as a strong attraction for park service personnel, but interpreting that for the average visitor in the 1960s presented problems not unlike those surging through the nation's classrooms and media outlets. Issues like racial equality competed with the public desire for fond memories of the Old West; a situation compounding Fort Davis' multicultural history. The presence of women and families at the post in the nineteenth century would bring gender differences to the planning and research phases. Then too, the ongoing conflict in the jungles of Vietnam changed public attitudes about the military, polarizing opinion around the devastation that war brings to society. The isolation of Fort Davis, and its place in Texas frontier lore, spared it from the worst of the academic and popular debates about American racism and conquest, but the search for data on the story of the post would engage these questions nonetheless.

For Robert Utley, the most critical feature of historical research was its application to the proposed visitor center and museum. Thus in December 1962, SWR director Thomas Allen wrote to the Western Museum Laboratory in Berkeley, California, to ask that Utley be included on the design team for Fort Davis. "The master plan and historic structures report," Allen told the chief of the NPS laboratory, "propose telling the story of Fort Davis' role in frontier defense in a museum in a barracks that will be restored for visitor center purposes and setting forth the story of life at Fort Davis in a restored squad room, officer's quarters, and hospital." Because of the heavy emphasis on historical accuracy, Allen argued that "approval of the master plan should precede any serious museum planning, for disapproval would mean a fundamental revision of present museum thinking." The regional director also noted that "there is the question of when the rehabilitation of the barracks for visitor center purposes will be completed." To that end, Utley's presence on any museum design team would help the region meet its own agenda for Fort Davis, which was influenced in great measure by the scale of restoration work on site and political interest in the overall project. [33]

By working with the museum staff of the park service, Utley could advance his own research and writing of the Handbook of Fort Davis, which appeared in draft form in June 1963. The regional historian wrote widely to archives, museums, and private individuals in search of materials that fit both the museum's needs and his scholarship. The most logical target for material collection was Colonel Benjamin Grierson, commander of the post in the 1880s who secured the appropriations to build the facilities that endured long after abandonment of the fort. Utley learned that Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, had microfilmed all 2,800 pages of the Grierson collection that had been housed originally in the Illinois State Historical Library. Utley also took interest in the most important of the campaigns based at Fort Davis: Grierson's search in the summer of 1880 for the Warm Springs and Mescalero Apache bands under the leadership of Victorio. He thus wrote to Ralph Smith, history professor at Texas Tech, in April 1963 to solicit information about the death of Victorio at Tres Castillos, Mexico. The regional historian wanted to depict the Grierson campaigns in the new Fort Davis museum, and asked Smith how he could contact Mexican historical agencies about Colonel Joaquin Terrazas, commander of the forces that killed Victorio. Utley also needed advice on creating an exhibit on "an Apache attack on a Mexican hacienda of the period around 1850, plus or minus fifteen years or so," and acquisition of "a detailed map [that] will show West Texas travel routes of the 1850s and 1860s." [34]

While Utley wanted to recount the military campaigns on the Texas frontier, he was also dedicated to historical accuracy that ran counter to the ethnocentric assumptions of many Americans. The regional historian and his associates at Fort Davis learned this early when in the spring of 1963 Utley started collecting information about the black cavalry and infantry units that comprised the bulk of the troops stationed at the post. He did not seek to cause controversy, as his letter of April 19, 1963 to the chief of military history in Washington indicated. Utley wanted only to have "color reproductions of the regimental crests of the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry" from the period of 1867-1880. Utley had no plans to depict daily life as experienced by young black males on the far western frontier, the racial tensions that their presence caused, the interaction between blacks, Indians, Hispanics, and Anglos, or of the denial of the historical reality of black defenders of the West in the nation's textbooks, films, artwork, or historical memory. [35]

None of this mattered to some visitors more comfortable with the racial separations prevalent in Texas or the nation prior to the turbulent civil rights era of the 1960s. T.E. Fehrenbach wrote in Lone Star that "in Texas, the black man faced a combination of class disadvantage, differentiation, and imposed caste." Unlike the rest of the American South (and more like northern cities), blacks in Texas lived in urban areas in segregated neighborhoods. What shocked many white people in the Lone Star state was the level of black frustration expressed on television news stories from big cities like Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and others. This did not echo down to Texas, which Fehrenbach said had "a generally clear understanding between both black and white communities that the Texas economic and political power structure would not tolerate civic disorder." [36]

How all this would affect the Park Service in its efforts to interpret the realities of Fort Davis became quite clear within six months of opening its doors. Superintendent Becker wrote in his monthly report for June 1963 that an "indignant lady visitor" approached one of the staff to declare: "You mean they're [the park service historians] going to make a shrine out of this nigger place!" Either this woman or someone else then voiced similar disgust at the Fort Davis Drug Store. Said Becker: "This party complained to the people that run the drug store . . . , that there were colored soldiers stationed at [Fort Davis] and this information was not included on our entrance sign, so that this particular party could by-pass this contaminated area." That same month, Becker was asked by Barry Scobee if the park service would accept a Texas state historical marker commemorating "the outstanding Confederate historical figure" for Jeff Davis County. The old judge had no more room on the courthouse lawn for this state-mandated marker because of "the great increase in historical interest generated in the last year or so." Masking his dislike for the intrusion of rebel history on federal property, Becker told regional officials that he had "registered neither strong approval nor disapproval, particularly since there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it unless we work with the State Highway Department." [37]

Park service officials tried to accommodate what they saw as a parochial vision of history by using the Fort Davis museum as a source of information that few visitors (or locals) had encountered. One technique attempted was "the feasibility and desirability of using direct quotations for much of the [label copy] text and in printing them on antique type face." Assistant SWR director George W. Miller believed that "these labels will thus become a minor design motif," and the "labels themselves will take on something of the quality of specimens." His goal was to retain as much of the story of Fort Davis as possible, even though Western Museum Laboratory specialists warned that "most visitors stubbornly resist reading." "So be it," said Miller, as he declared: "For once, let us consider the literate as well as the uninterested; this is a cheap way to do it." The assistant director planned to utilize the talents of Santa Fe-based publisher Jack Rittenhouse, former editor of the University of New Mexico Press, to print these labels in nineteenth-century cursive script, and then to work with Robert Utley and Frank Smith on completing the exhibit text in June 1963. [38]

Throughout the spring and summer of that year, Bob Utley and his associates on site and in Santa Fe worked to represent the Fort Davis story in as complete and interesting a fashion as possible. Jackson E. Price, assistant NPS director for conservation, interpretation and use, wrote to the SWR director on April 18, 1963 to praise the work of Utley, and to express Washington's appreciation for the challenges that Fort Davis posed. "Experience in other parks where historic buildings are being used as Visitors Centers," said Price, "has amply illustrated the difficulty in minimizing limitations imposed by structures originally designed for quite different purposes." To that end, Price suggested that in converting HB20 (barracks) into the Fort Davis visitors center the regional office should note that "the complete absence of AV [audio-visual] interpretive devices is conspicuous when the Fort Davis Prospectus is compared with other current ones." Price wondered if such equipment "might be helpful in presenting the general background story of the fort," and that "perhaps the possibilities of a few audio stations along the tour route have been fully considered." [39]

Turning to the historic structures and their interpretation, Price agreed with regional and park opinion that the post hospital "does not appear to outweigh in relative importance other ruined structures in the fort complex not recommended for restoration," as the "essential aspects of the story associated with the hospital could be presented by other means." The assistant NPS director for conservation was less sanguine about the museum design to "place formal exhibits in refurnished historic structures." Price considered this request to be "contrary to practices well established both within and outside the Service." Citing as his evidence the National Park Service Field Manual for Museums, Price warned that "the undesirability of attempting this in the barracks squad room, commanding officer's quarters or the hospital, if it were restored, will become apparent when furnishing plans are developed." The conservation director preferred that Utley and the museum laboratory "include these [exhibits] in the Visitor Center or provide for them in other space distinct from the refurnished quarters." Price thus paid close attention to the label copy for the museum, as he saw this location as the primary focus of interpretation for visitors to Fort Davis. This in turn led him to apologize for allocating too little money in the fiscal year 1963 budget for exhibit construction; a situation that would have to be corrected the following year. [40]