FORT DAVIS Administrative History

Historical programs by themselves could generate publicity and recognition for Fort Davis, but the staff also had to address the basic issues in 1988 of maintenance and personnel that sustain any park. Funds were made available to complete the historic tree management study, as well as the painting of exterior trim on the historic structures. Again, the Youth Conservation Corps helped in this regard. Public concern about handicapped issues resulted in Fort Davis conducting a "Self-Evaluation of Program and Facility Access and Handicapped Access Plan." Among the solutions addressed was use of the $2,000 Garrison Gold budget increase to purchase "a TDD-a memory printer telecommunications device for the deaf." For "visitors who cannot walk long distances," the park applied its new monies to an electric golf cart. All these activities proved useful in the face of a six percent increase in visitation (to 54,775), which the park attributed to the dedication of the enlisted men's barracks. Sales of SPMA items also advanced to record levels, up some 18 percent over 1987 with sales volume of $48,377.09. The staff also assisted local groups in the charting of their own course of history, as Mary Williams worked with the re-energized Fort Davis Historical Society to compile a history of Jeff Davis County. In addition, the visitor center housed a special exhibit, "Preserving Your Personal Heritage." This exhibit sought to offer "helpful suggestions for storing old photographs, wood objects and clothing items, and included samples of preservation materials." [54]

To the surprise of few people in the Southwest Region, the continued commitment of Fort Davis to visitor services earned the park in 1988 its second straight Garrison Gold award. Steve Miller had departed for his new position as superintendent of Fort Scott National Historic Site when Mary Williams prepared the park's nomination in November, but the teamwork that had brought success to Fort Davis a year earlier was apparent in her prose. One use of the 1987 Garrison Gold funds was the purchase of materials "to construct viewing areas in [the commanding officer's quarters and the kitchen and servant's quarters] . . . similar to [those] in the enlisted men's barracks." These glass panels, said Williams, "will allow visitors access to the buildings anytime the site is open," and "their installation will mark a milestone at Fort Davis in that all refurnished buildings will be open every day." The park staff encouraged local officials to declare the week of May 8-14 as "National Historic Preservation Week in Jeff Davis County," and April 15 was commemorated as national "Safety Awareness Day." Volunteers became more of a presence than ever, as the new barracks required much more interpretation of daily life for soldiers. The Friends of Fort Davis made their final accounting of their efforts on behalf of the barracks, listing some $135,000 in donations of cash and services. Among these items was $5,000 earned from the fifth annual Friends Restoration Festival. These ventures brought to Fort Davis another $1,000 in discretionary spending from the Southwest Regional Office, and another Pueblo storyteller figure to symbolize "the excellence of [the park's] interpretive program." [55]

Figure 49. Mary Williams and Superintendent Kevin Cheri holding Garrison Award and "Take Pride in America" Award (1989).
Courtesy Fort Davis NHS.

Figure 50. Friends, volunteers and staff pose for group portrait upon receipt of the 1988 "Garrison Gold" award.
Courtesy Fort Davis NHS.

The upward trajectory of Fort Davis in the 1980s would recede one day, as the momentum generated by the barracks restoration project and the national attention pursuant to that event faded. The continued depression of oil prices in west Texas, and the stagnation of the American economy in general, led Congress in the late 1980s and early 1990s to curtail NPS appropriations. Whomever would manage Fort Davis in this time of transition would manage Fort Davis in this time of transition would face conditions not unlike those of the 1970s, when similar problems of local and national economics and politics restricted the ambitions and potential of the park. Into this situation came Fort Davis' first black superintendent, Kevin Cheri, a native of New Orleans with 16 years' experience in the park service as a ranger at Carlsbad Caverns, Buffalo River in Arkansas, and most recently years as a district ranger at Canyonlands in Utah. A graduate in physical therapy from Xavier University in his hometown, Cheri represented not only a new generation of NPS leadership; he also brought Fort Davis full-circle to its roots as a black military post in the nineteenth century. What Frank Smith prophesied 20 years earlier had come to fruition, and the work of Cheri and his staff to consolidate the gains of the 1980s would rise or fall on the fortunes of park service support as much as on local and regional interest. [56]

The Kevin Cheri years at Fort Davis (December 1988-July 1992) were marked both by expansion upon the base created by his predecessors, and by tragedy and trauma. Upon arriving at the park, Cheri faced two crises of significant proportions: the arsenic poisoning of his chief of maintenance, Dale Scheier, and the highly contentious "Davis Mountains Resource Study." As a new superintendent in an area that had not seen black authority figures, Cheri had to question his own personnel and residents of Fort Davis about very personal matters involving Scheier and his family. His inquiries could not isolate the cause of the poisoning on the job or in the housing compound where the maintenance chief lived. Such speculation had the potential to ruin relations between the park and the surrounding community. Cheri thus had to devote a good deal of his early weeks at Fort Davis on maintaining the park's reputation as a good neighbor as well as a source of employment, civic pride, and tourism. [57]

Compounding the new superintendent's work in the community was the shock generated by the Davis Mountains Resource Study. As he traveled from southeastern Utah to his new assignment in far west Texas, Cheri stopped in the Southwest Regional Office to discuss Fort Davis with regional director John Cook. For the first time, Cheri learned that the U.S. representative for the Trans-Pecos area, Ronald Coleman of El Paso, had attached an amendment to an Interior department bill authorizing the expenditure of $100,000 to determine the feasibility of creating a vast national park in the Davis Mountains. Cheri also heard that Coleman had been approached by several local ranchers whose properties were about to be sold for taxes, and they had hoped that the park service could pay them the full market value for their land while still retaining the rural character of the Davis Mountains. Thomas B. Carroll, a park planner in the region's division of planning, design and environmental coordination, spoke for many NPS personnel when he told his superiors in December 1988: "As we may be talking of 500,000 to 900,000 acres of land it is evident that the data needed at this stage of planning should be general in nature." That vagueness, plus the longstanding Texas opposition to large federal landownership in the state, and the local ranchers' pride in their self-sufficiency, planted the seeds of discord and suspicion that caught all NPS officials involved by surprise. This in turn presaged the more strident, and at times violent, western resistance movement of the 1990s wherein private landowners fought federal land agency rules, regulations, and personnel over matters such as the Davis Mountains study. [58]

Figure 51. Fort Davis staff, volunteers, and friends at Take Pride in America Award, White House Lawn, Washington, D.C., July 1969.
Courtesy Fort Davis NHS.

In order for Superintendent Cheri to gain additional insight into the complexity of the Davis Mountains study issue, he sent to Santa Fe his supervisory ranger, John Sutton, to attend a December 1988 meeting with regional and Denver Service Center personnel. The Davis Mountains concept was part of a larger agenda of NPS initiatives that included the Mimbres Culture Study of the Gila Cliff Dwellings area of southwestern New Mexico, the Coronado Trail study of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, and the "Spanish Colonization Study;" an activity promoted by Joseph Sanchez. Ranger Sutton reported to Kevin Cheri that "there is no written legislative direction for the Davis Mountains Study," but that the Coleman had voiced concern to NPS director William Penn Mott that "future development in the mountains will create light pollution which will adversely [a]ffect the McDonald Observatory," as well as "disrupt the present land use in the mountains." The El Paso Democrat thus requested of the NPS "a broad range of management options to preserve the 'dark sky' for the Observatory and to preserve the present land use." [59]

Because of his knowledge of the Davis Mountains, John Sutton felt obligated to caution regional and DSC staff about the problems such an initiative could cause for his park. After presenting a slide show of the area, Sutton warned the attendees that a lack of prescribed study boundaries "could mean a park as large as 1.5 million acres." Further discussion indicated "some concern whether or not the Davis Mountains would meet National Park criteria," with park service officials agreeing that the area had only "regional significance." As Representative Coleman wanted the report completed before the close of the 1989 fiscal year, the attendees agreed to create a team of NPS and private individuals to divide the workload, led by Larry Beal of the DSC planning office. Sutton then asked the group to keep Fort Davis informed of all aspects of the study process, as "we would be answering questions by area residents over the proposal." The DSC offered to announce the initiation of the study, and to coordinate all public comment and meetings, thus freeing Fort Davis of the local logistics that its small staff might find overwhelming. [60]

While the NPS tried to comprehend the dimensions of Ronald Coleman's order, the congressman corresponded with park service director Mott about the larger implications of the study. Coleman had hoped that the language inserted in HR 4867 to "earmark" $100,000 for the project could "afford the Park Service discretion in the formulation of a general plan." The representative also wanted the NPS to "articulate appropriate alternatives for restricting land development and off-road access through central and southern Jeff Davis County." Coleman had included reference to the McDonald Observatory because the world-famous facility had recently been "nominated for designation as a National Historic Landmark." "In giving me the benefit of informal comments on any eventual proposal to create either a National Park or a National Wilderness Area in the range," Coleman informed Mott, "the University of Texas [owner of the observatory] has indicated that it would remain neutral on the question--and in fact would hope that land use would continue as practiced by the present high mountain ranch owners." Coleman's stated purpose was "not to contemplate usurpation of the ranches or private recreational land in the range by the federal government." Instead the Davis Mountains study should "plan a means of maintaining the area as presently used, enjoyed and worked." He then identified as threats not only the loss of McDonald's "dark sky," but also "the imminent potential for subdividing property in the region and because of speculation regarding the construction of a resort community in the immediate vicinity of the areas now under federal and state authority." Unaware that similar logic had moved Judge D.A. Simmons some 40 years earlier to purchase the grounds of Fort Davis, Coleman told director Mott: "I am aware that the Park Service maintains responsibility for parks, monuments, scenic areas, recreation areas, scenic parkways and National Trails, any of which may prove to be a designation which would respond to the concerns of the residents of the Davis Mountains, scientific researchers and preservationists." He asked Mott to "consider the advisability and feasibility of pursuing these options within the scope of the study," and hoped "that you not hesitate to share with me any impressions generated by the Park Service's attention to the area." [61]

Coleman's last sentence to Mott would prove prophetic, as local reaction began building the moment that the park service mentioned the scale and scope of the Davis Mountains initiative. Residents corresponded immediately with the El Paso congressman, leading him to assure them, as he told Doug Faris, chief of the regional planning division, that "the Park Service will assuredly hold a public meeting before proceeding in any detail with the study." In order to protect the NPS and himself from accusations of being "outsiders," Coleman accepted the offer of assistance from a local real estate appraiser, Roy Scudday, whom the congressman recommended to Faris "without hesitation as an individual whose knowledge of the area would undoubtedly prove helpful in moving forward with any sort of study." Scudday's resume included years of experience as an appraiser and real estate broker, as chief appraisal officer for Hudspeth County (whose county seat was Sierra Blanca), as a field supervisor for the Texas General Land Office, and as a consultant to several federal farm credit programs in the Lone Star State. It did not hurt Scudday's chances that he was the husband of Ann Scudday, county judge for Jeff Davis County who had worked with the park in years past on issues of historic preservation and the landfill problem of the early 1980s. John Cook had his staff prepare correspondence to Judge Scudday to solicit her support for the Davis Mountains study, which he promised would be "to generally inventory the resources from currently existing records, to make a preliminary assessment of significance of the identified resources, and to develop a range of protection alternatives, including a 'No Action' alternative." Judge Scudday's "participation in the planning effort," said Cook, "will be greatly appreciated and valued," and he agreed to keep her informed via a newsletter that the NPS would issue "to explain the resource study and to invite public participation." For her part, Judge Scudday hosted a meeting in her chambers with Larry Beal and the DSC personnel on February 23, 1989, at which time the critical question for locals was "if the National Park Service has been approached by any Jeff Davis County landowners with offers to sell land." The regional office responded that no such inquiries had surfaced, and that the NPS "does not have Congressional authorization to negotiate for nor to acquire any lands in the Davis Mountains." [62]

Working with the Scuddays did not protect the NPS from local criticism, as hoped by Ronald Coleman. He could have learned a lesson from Barry Scobee, who faced similar opposition in 1961 when community members expressed opposition to the modest transaction of 460 acres acquired by the federal government for the Fort Davis National Historic Site. The Alpine Avalanche ran an NPS press release about the impending study in late December, and the following week (January 5) had to provide more extensive details in response to readers' inquiries. "We certainly have no pre-conceived ideas or pre-drawn conclusions on what we'll find or hope to find," said Faris to the Avalanche. Representative Coleman's office agreed, saying that "there was no hidden agenda, merely the desire on the part of individuals, governmental agencies and non-government organizations to protect the uniqueness of the area." Doug Faris did recall that the park service had "looked at the area 20 or 30 years ago, but nothing came of it at the time." Perhaps thinking of the 1930s studies, the regional planning chief said that "for a long, long time various people have expressed an interest in the future of the area," some of whom "have included some of the large landowners." Faris promised to incorporate the thoughts of as many parties as wished to participate in the study, and that "one focus I think we might want to pursue is limiting the role of the NPS, and still keep the large ranches." [63]

These comments from someone as closely connected to the Davis Mountains study as Doug Faris indicated the high degree of doubt and uncertainty about the motives of the park service and of Representative Coleman. Thus the NPS had to conduct a "reconnaissance study," consisting of data about the area's historical and natural resource potential, with its own DSC, rather than using a private contractor to achieve a quicker response time. For that reason the DSC and regional office turned to the staff of Fort Davis for assistance on the ground in west Texas. Documents and secondary sources from the park's library formed the basis of the NPS survey, as did maps of the Davis Mountains from the U.S. Geological Survey. Jim Carrico, superintendent of Big Bend National Park, suggested that the study team work with the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife to ensure more accurate assessments of the many factors involved in the project. Fort Davis staff then compiled a list of some "175 local residents, elected officials, landowners, interest groups, and organizations" who would be invited to a public meeting on the Davis Mountains concept. [64]

The more that local residents heard of the NPS project, the more contentious the rhetoric became in opposition. Ross McSwain, regional editor for the San Angelo Standard-Times, interviewed Fort Davis-area officials, none of whom would support the idea in public. County commissioner Ben Gearhart complained that "we can't find out who started it," and Representative Coleman "won't say who's pimping for the park." Further aggravating local officials was the ignorance expressed toward the study by Republican U.S. Senator Phil Gramm and U.S. Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican from San Antonio. Growing outrage at this seeming waste of taxpayers' money led the commissioner's court for Jeff Davis County to pass a resolution opposed to the "acquisition of land in Jeff Davis County for a park or recreational uses." Sounding at once xenophobic and nostalgic, the commissioners declared that their county was "an area whose relative isolation from the problems of the population centers of Texas offers an opportunity for the visitors to the area to experience a degree of serenity unknown in other parts of the state and region." A critical feature of their hostility was the commissioners' assertion that "governmental agencies have increasingly demonstrated their inability to effectively manage a parks system." As evidence they declared: "The more popular national parks have, in recent years, become infested with all of the vices of the contemporary population centers, including pollution, traffic jams, sewage disposal problems, crass commercialism and crime." To Jeff Davis County officials, this showed that "the attraction of people to the parks seems to outweigh the importance of conserving the land and its resources." [65]

Most troubling to the NPS and Representative Coleman was the move by local interests to create the "Davis Mountains Heritage Association," whose organizers told the San Angelo newspaper that they had contacted "some 80-100 area landowners" to "prepare for a showdown over what appears to be another question of land use." Ben Gearhart framed the debate in simple terms, telling reporter Ross McSwain: "We'll keep them [the NPS] in court for 20 years if necessary." The county commissioner claimed that "this area already has 1,300,000 acres of park land and more than 150 parks." He did not include the vast Harte Ranch in neighboring Brewster County, which the family of the San Angelo Standard-Times publisher, Houston Harte, had recently donated to Big Bend National Park, nor the Big Bend Ranch in Presidio County, which the state of Texas had purchased in 1988. "The National Park Service doesn't have funds to adequately police what they have," said Gearhart. Joan Stocks Nobles, who operated the Sutler's Boarding House in the town of Fort Davis, thought that the $100,000 study at first was "a joke." While conceding that the community could use the infusion of cash generated by a new park, she know of no one willing to defend the study. Further sealing its doom, Bryan LaBeff, Fort Davis school superintendent, worried that a vast Davis Mountains National Park would reduce property tax revenues upon which local public education depended. The school district would be "hurt tremendously," LaBeff told the Standard-Times. and he feared that the Davis Mountains as a whole would suffer if the federal government condemned land "that's been in a family for years and years." [66]

By the end of February 1989, local discontent had reached epidemic proportions. The park service announced that it would send its study team to the Davis Mountains from March 6-10, with a public meeting in Fort Davis on the night of Thursday, March 9. The DSC released the first of what it intended to be "quarterly" newsletters about the study, with a map enclosed that unwittingly fanned the flames of opposition. The Alpine Avalanche reported that "Jeff Davis, Presidio, Brewster, Culberson and even parts of Hudspeth, Pecos and Reeves counties are possible for inclusion in long-range studies." The vastness of this area frightened many in the Trans-Pecos region, as did Representative Coleman's assertion that the names of the ranchers pressing the study were "privileged information." Superintendent Cheri remembered six years later that the map and secrecy fed a sense of "paranoia" among certain residents, as evidenced in their comments to an Avalanche reporter just two weeks prior to the public meeting. Ben Gearhart volunteered that "we just want to get ahead of the hounds to stop this sort of thing." When queried by fellow county commissioner John Robert Prude about his reasoning, Gearhart replied: "I don't want them [the NPS] to take my house or take my land." Commissioner Chris Lacy complained in similar fashion: "Who's going to feed the nation if we keep taking land out of agriculture production?" County Judge Anne Scudday tried to blunt the arguments of the study's critics, noting that Brewster County did receive some $350,000 from the federal government in "money in lieu of taxes for property that is now part of the state and federal parks systems." Scudday's remarks did prompt some residents to speak in favor of the jobs that a new park could create, while "still others say they would prefer a park rather than see the big ranches continue to be divided into smaller and smaller pieces." But the most telling concern about the potential for development came from citizens fearing "the loss of Fort Davis, Marfa or Alpine as small communities if a large, thriving park were to be located near the towns." What these critics cited was popular imagery of "turning any of the towns into a Jackson Hole [Wyoming] or Aspen [Colorado] or Ruidosa [sic] ," the latter a mountain resort in southern New Mexico; all places that had received much media coverage for their upscale lifestyles, trendy boutiques, overcrowded ski slopes, high property costs and taxes, and their disdain for the agrarian values of their long-time neighbors. [67]

With the die cast on the future of the Davis Mountain study, and with the staff of Fort Davis caught between local respect for their work and the supposed outrages of a coercive federal bureaucracy, the NPS made last-minute preparations to come to town for the March 9 hearing. Mary Williams placed a telephone call on February 28 to Ben Levy, asking if he could locate the bill introduced in Congress in 1926 by Claude Hudspeth to create "Davis Mountains National Park." In addition, she wanted to know the whereabouts of the files on the 1933 efforts to establish the "Davis Mountains National Monument." Levy, in his inimitable style, offered advice on the future of the project (which he preferred to call a "preauthorization," rather than a "resource" study). Williams wrote in her memorandum that Levy "was having a difficult time establishing or putting national value on the area-with the exception of 'preserving the dark sky." The senior NPS historian felt that "we may need to revamp our thinking along lines of establishing a scientific or astronomical reserve and not a national park." It also bothered Levy that the team of NPS officials (of whom he was a member) that had visited Fort Davis in the summer of 1988 to study its "Resource Management Plan" had ignored his call for inclusion of "resources outside of the immediate area" of the park. Now that they had to face the question without proper detail, the park service, in Levy's estimation, should ask people like Bob Utley or Erwin Thompson for advice. He also worried that the McDonald Observatory, the putative beneficiary of the project, would "officially be neutral." "They don't have to support a national park" said the senior historian, "but they do need to let it be known that [their] work depends on maintaining (preserving) a black sky." [68]

Levy's concerns at a distance in Washington were mirrored in Denver by Larry Beal, team leader with the DSC. After speaking with Levy, Mary Williams received a call from Beal late in the afternoon of February 28 expressing his doubts about the Fort Davis hearing. As of that late date, Beal "had not received an approved task directive on the project (signed) from either Washington or region [Santa Fe]." The team leader "had not been able to [proceed] in an orderly fashion," in part because of the "time constraints." The DSC official disliked trying to collapse one year's planning work into a few weeks, and worried that the "region is supposed to be the leader in this project." Nonetheless, Beal made plans to bring eight staff members from the DSC and regional office, who would join Fort Davis' Kevin Cheri, John Sutton and Mary Williams on a three-day tour of the area. Among their planned activities were a lecture by Williams on "ranching history of Jeff Davis County," comments by Clay Miller on his family's life in the area, a visit to the "new 'ranchette' subdivisions," a meeting at Davis Mountain State Park with state park regional director Tom Palmer, flights over the terrain, and a tour of the McDonald Observatory. [69]

Those who attended the fateful meeting on March 9 in the crowded St. Joseph's Church in Fort Davis long remembered the level of anxiety and doubt that permeated the air. Gene Hendryx agreed to broadcast the proceedings live over his radio station in Alpine, and the NPS staff estimated that over 500 people had jammed the hall and spilled out into the parking lot. Neil Mangum, then Southwest survey historian, recalled the fears articulated by all speakers, who preferred rejection of the study by a wide margin. The DSC's "closeout" report on the study, drafted in December 1989, noted that the only speaker in favor of the project was Jose Sanchez, district director for Representative Coleman. The report also detailed the reasons cited by attendees for opposing the plan: "Fear of federal condemnation of land, loss of property tax revenues, and fear of unregulated tourism and vandalism." "Several speakers," said the report, "were extremely emotional and sincerely felt that the Park Service would condemn their land for a national park." Outside the meeting room, however, "several individuals privately expressed their interest and support of further NPS involvement to planning team members." Unfortunately, as Neil Mangum recalled in a 1995 interview, one speaker told park service personnel that he would "settle things outside" if they did not accede to the community's desire to quash the study immediately. [70]

On the morning of Friday, March 10, Doug Faris called the office of Congressman Coleman to report the response of meeting attendees, and to suggest that the NPS halt the Davis Mountains study altogether. Larry Beal reiterated this sentiment in his "trip report" of March 6-10 to his DSC superiors. Local residents, said Beal, "gave us the clear message that there was much misinformation about the National Park Service and the resource study process." In addition, Beal detected "a great deal of distrust of federal and state government." Speaking rather candidly, Beal further declared: "Congressman Coleman grossly underestimated the opposition of his constituents regarding federal involvement in Jeff Davis County." The irony of this conclusion was that the NPS study team only two weeks earlier had concluded that the area merited study for its undeniable beauty, and for the need to preserve the very lifestyle that critics claimed that the federal government despised. Beal went so far in a trip report of February 21-27 as to suggest that "protection alternatives should include continued private and local management of resources with some mechanism to buy failing ranches and keep the land ownership in large units for cattle grazing purposes." Also of merit would be response to the "demand for public recreation facilities in the form of hiking trails to some of the more scenic areas and possibly a north-south hiking route." While not willing to dismiss a project in which he had invested so much time and energy, Beal nonetheless offered the DSC several options: to terminate the study immediately and reprogram the remaining funds; to prepare a report on the "resource significance and initial alternatives;" and to "revise the scope of the resource study to include the resource inventory and resource significance elements." [71]

Public announcement of the inevitable cancellation of the Davis Mountains study would not come for several weeks after the Fort Davis hearing. Yet all parties concerned knew that the idea was dead, much as it had perished in the 1930s for the same reasons of ranchers' power and fear of repressive government. Dudley Harrison, state representative for the Davis Mountains, wrote to Kevin Cheri on March 15 to thank him for his work on the study, and to console him with the idea that "the outcome was the best for all concerned." To his regional superiors, the superintendent reported that "despite strong opposition from the community and the halting of the study in March, Fort Davis NHS was able to maintain excellent rapport with the citizens of the area." While that was his official comment, made some twelve months after the incident, Cheri spent the next three years, as he recounted in a 1994 interview, "trying to rebuild local confidence in Fort Davis." Thus it was cold comfort to Cheri and the park staff to read the regional office press release of April 5, declaring that "as a result of public concern in West Texas over the Davis Mountains Resource Study initiated in March by the National Park Service, Congressman Ronald Coleman (D-TX) has directed the National Park Service to stop the resource study and reprogram remaining funds for other Service studies and plans." Even more ironic was the fact that regional director John Cook came to the Davis Mountains in April to present to the park its second "Garrison Gold" award. Several reporters asked Cook if the NPS was "not being totally up-front about the entire [study] issue." But Cook came away realizing, in the words of Kevin Cheri, that "the community has vowed to help make the Garrison Gold Award an annual event at Fort Davis." [72]