Navajo Administrative History

But despite such improvements in the interpretation scheme, Navajo National Monument lacked the primary perquisite of Park Service programming. Unlike most of the other archeological monuments in the Southwest, there was no visitor center at Navajo. The makeshift contact station and its added diorama had to suffice. As late as the middle of the 1950s, Navajo still lacked the basic resources that other park areas took for granted when they began to devise their programming.

But a combination of factors converged that began to change the situation at the monument. The increase in visitation had taken a toll on the park system. Designed to handle about 25 million visits per annum, the system served more than 50 million visitors in 1955. Beginning that year, NPS officials devised a broad master plan for the system they envisioned in 1966. This would be capable of serving eighty million visitors each year. Congress supported the plan at a level not seen since the New Deal, appropriating $49 million for capital improvements in 1956 and continuing to increase the amount to almost $80 million in 1959. Conrad L. Wirth recalled later that it seemed that individual congressional representatives engaged in a form of one-upmanship, allocating even more than NPS officials requested. The ten-year plan, entitled "MISSION 66," rejuvenated the physical plant of the park system. The investment of more than $700 million built more than 2,000 miles of roads as well as modern visitor centers that replaced those built during the New Deal. Officials at many parks that had never had visitor centers looked expectantly to MISSION 66 to provide the resources for construction. [20]

At the end of the Second World War, infrastructure was the great need of the Navajo reservation. Road building was one of the top priorities. Most of the roads on the reservation were more appropriately labeled trails. The Navajo/Hopi Rehabilitation Act of 1950 set aside $38 million for road construction, $10 million of which was designated for improvement of secondary roads on the reservation. The Atomic Energy Commission also built roads to facilitate the extraction of uranium. Its first rudimentary road stretched from Teec Nos Pos to Kayenta; additional roads stretched from Kayenta to Monument Valley and later to Tuba City. These dirt highways were critical to the development of an infrastructure on the reservation. [21]

During the 1950s, the Navajo Nation began to invest in capital programs on the reservation. With the wealth from the nascent development of its natural resource base, the tribe embarked on a number of programs. Constructing roads became one of the most important. In March 1958, the Tribal Council appropriated nearly $1,000,000 for road building as a means to combat an economic recession. Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater arranged a similar amount from the Bureau of the Budget. Much of the money was earmarked for the western reservation area surrounding Navajo National Monument.

The addition of paved roads on the reservation offered many benefits. Besides encouraging industry, the roads brought travelers to see the region and made the Navajo people more mobile. After intensive and drawn-out planning, the road-building program began in 1958. One of the first tracts paved was the trail between the Utah border and Kayenta, a little more than twenty miles through the canyons from Betatakin. Following closely was the implementation of a plan to link Kayenta and Tuba City by paved road. Although a difficult area in which to build, a road through the heart of the western reservation was essential if the leaders of the Navajo Nation were going to pursue development and tourism as strategies for the economic advancement of its people. [22]

Paved roads in the region had clear implications for Navajo National Monument. A road would end the isolation that had characterized the monument since its establishment in 1909, bringing many more visitors to the park and intruding upon existing relationships between the Park Service and its neighbors in the Shonto area. But combined with the MISSION 66 programs, the idea of a paved road spurred the first stage of modern development at the monument. [23]

MISSION 66 for Navajo was the most comprehensive development proposed in the history of the monument. When it debuted in 1957, MISSION 66 for Navajo proposed a headquarters building for the monument, the first of its kind at Navajo, and the construction of an approach road. There was also a provision for the Bureau of Public Roads to build an approach road to the monument from the new U.S. Indian Service highway 1 (U.S. 160). But Navajo National Monument was very small, and the MISSION 66 program could not begin before the NPS reached agreements governing use of land in the region with the Navajo Nation and individuals in the vicinity of the monument.

In 1956, a superintendent who would leave a larger-than-life mark on the monument came to Navajo. Arthur H. (Art) White was a "superintendent's superintendent." A rugged man possessed of personality and charm, he excelled at stretching what he had. Typical of the jack-of-all-trades types of people who worked at remote park areas, he was handy with tools, good at salvaging equipment and rebuilding it for park use, and resourceful in all matters. White was a real leader, a man with perspective who could inspire, and who helped those who needed it. He installed the radio telephone to replace closed-circuit NPS radio, added fencing at Keet Seel and Inscription House, and made many other improvements at the monument.

White and Navajo National Monument were made for each other. With a background in anthropology, he was well versed in Navajo culture. White was a true old-time Park Service man who was immensely popular with the seasonal and permanent staff that grew during his nine years at the monument. "We work fourteen to sixteen hours a day out here," he told Ranger Bud Martin when the latter arrived in 1962. White was under a diesel front-end loader at the time. [24]

This kind of commitment characterized the Park Service in the days before the rigid enforcement of federal regulations. Most park personnel thought nothing of working unpaid overtime or performing whatever task came along, no matter what their job description. These iconoclasts invested themselves in the park system, albeit in a sometimes unorthodox fashion. Yet their actions created an esprit de corps that made those who worked the long and often lonely hours at remote areas into a close-knit clan that recognized the common ground they shared.

Park Service people at Navajo faced a life of real privation. When Emery C. (Smokey) Lehnert arrived as the second permanent employee in 1958, the only available housing was an 8' x 32' foot house trailer. The Lehnerts added a baby boy to their family in July 1959, making a minute living space even smaller. Because inclement weather for as much as six months each year limited access to the outdoors, the trailer became oppressive. The Lehnerts suffered from an advanced case of "cabin fever" in the winter of 1959-60, with Mrs. Lehnert affected so thoroughly that, under physician's orders, she left the park in the spring for an extended vacation. Isolated in inadequate quarters, far from family and friends, and trapped by snowfall for extended periods, life could be miserable for park rangers and their families. Later the Lehnerts received permanent housing, alleviating a symptom but not necessarily the cause of some of their discontent. [25]

White came to Navajo at precisely the correct moment to utilize his talents. With his experience, perspective, and saltiness, he provided the leadership necessary to administer growth and attendant change. White gave his staff "enough rope to hang yourself with or do something with it," Martin recalled, leading by example and expecting his staff to follow. During his tenure, there was little left undone at Navajo. [26]

White also developed close relationships with Navajos in the area, building on the tradition of Hosteen John Wetherill and laying a foundation for future superintendents. White learned Navajo silversmithing while at the monument, an art for which he became renowned. He also extended a helping hand to many of the neighbors of the park, providing an informal road grading service outside park boundaries. He and Bob Black became close friends, both speaking fondly of their memories of each other almost thirty years later. Bob Black recalled with a twinkle that after White used the road grader, Black would have to go smooth out the squiggles and rough spots left in the road. White remembered Black as one of the best people he had ever met. [27]

This grader was an essential part of keeping the dirt road to the monument open.