Whtie Sands Administrative History

Three issues of construction work also complicated life at White Sands in 1938: interior design at the museum and visitors center; conflict between Tom Charles and the new park ranger, Jim Felton, over operational strategies; and the intrusion of New Mexican political scandal into New Deal projects. The persistent complexity of management led the park service late that year to ask Tom Charles to retire as monument custodian, to be replaced by Johnwill Faris, then-custodian at Canyon de Chelly National Monument on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Charles would not depart White Sands, however, as he negotiated an agreement in 1939 with the NPS to operate the first concession at the dunes; a business that his family would maintain for the next 25 years.

For most of 1938, construction work consisted of finishing details, like fencing and building of a telephone line out from Alamogordo. The heavy visitation by car had taken its toll on the clay-based road into the dunes. Charles Richey admitted that in 1933 the NPS had little knowledge of the impact of gypsum drifting over the road. Constant plowing of the drifts added to the strain of the volume of vehicles, leading Richey in February to call for a hard-surface seal coat applied to the new road. Richey also complained about the "promiscuous driving" on the dunes, and the plethora of fire rings left by picnickers. Frank Pinkley called at once for prohibition of dune auto traffic, and removal of the clay-plated road. As for the camp fires, he reasserted his support of temporary fireplaces, as "it is agreed that no permanent developments should be provided for large special gatherings." [70]

What excited NPS officials about White Sands was completion of its museum. The surreal landscape and alluring history of the region fit well within the adobe walls. Park service officials spent generously on exhibit design and case construction to match the facility itself. "The heavy investment at White Sands" by New Deal agencies, said Dale King, "must soon commence to produce rich dividends of visitor interest, education, and appreciation." The NPS, however, had trouble finding monies to support the work of Charlie Steen at the Berkeley laboratories, as he needed travel money for two to four months of research. In addition, the desire of Frank Pinkley and Tom Charles to tell the story of the Mescalero Apaches created delays. The tribe had few objects of material culture on display at major museums like the Smithsonian, and almost none that could be loaned or transferred to White Sands. Other than Morris Opler, few anthropologists had cared to study Mescalero life. The comments of an anonymous NPS museum staffer in Washington said much about the challenge of interpreting Tularosa basin history: "There may be some difficulty in securing a large quantity of duplicate [Mescalero] material since we understand from our contacts these people being under poor ecological conditions were not over rich in their art production." [71]

While exhibit cases drew most of the NPS' attention, a more modest issue (tin light fixtures, or "sconces") revealed the interplay of political, economic, historical and cultural forces affecting White Sands. In the mountains northeast of Alamogordo, the federal government had established "Camp Capitan" as part of its National Youth Administration (NYA) programs. The NYA targeted teenaged youth at risk of dropping out of high school or college for lack of funds. NYA staff sought to teach them vocational skills for future employment, or provided "work-study" jobs that kept students enrolled in school. In New Mexico, the NYA became a savior not only of students but also of their institutions, as UNM detailed its comptroller (and future president), Tom L. Popejoy, to serve from 1936-1938 as state director (he would also work in 1939 in Washington as deputy NYA administrator). Popejoy encouraged NYA personnel to seek contract work from federal and state agencies to provide opportunities for impoverished New Mexican youth, and in the case of White Sands this meant association with Camp Capitan. [72]

In the spring of 1938, Lucy Lepper Shaw, director of the mountain camp, met with Lyle Bennett of the NPS to discuss production of light fixtures, pottery, and woven curtains for the new visitors center at the dunes. Suzanne Forrest, author of The Preservation of the Village: New Mexico's Hispanics and the New Deal (1989), wrote that Capitan "was considered to be the state's outstanding NYA project." It employed 125 girls and young women, ages 16-25, mostly Hispanic, for three months at a time to learn Spanish colonial arts and crafts. Historians like Forrest and Sarah Deutsch, author of No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in. the American Southwest, 1880-1940 (1987), have warned of the paradox of such New Deal programs: training people for skills not in demand in the modern, urban-industrial marketplace. To Lucy Lepper Shaw, Tom Popejoy, and other NYA officials, however, learning Spanish-style crafts would provide youth with employment at home, and would take advantage of the 1930s fascination with Southwestern cultures. [73]

Shaw and Bennett agreed that Camp Capitan would produce 53 tin light fixtures for the interior of the White Sands visitors center. "We are very anxious to do a good job," Shaw wrote to Vernon Randau in Santa Fe, "so we will not rush this order." Bennett liked this cautious approach, noting that the young women "could possibly give us a fair job altho not as good as if they [the fixtures] were contracted by a reliable firm." He did concede that the Capitan workers "have done some beautiful hand woven articles." Milton McColm of Region Three agreed, telling the Washington office that "to contract for these fixtures on the open market, the cost is entirely excessive." In addition, said McColm, "there is no labor nor supervisory personnel at White Sands capable of making or directing the making of these fixtures." In an ironic twist, SWNM superintendent Frank Pinkley, champion of instructing the tourist public about the distinctiveness of the region, offered the only discordant note. While signing the work order for Camp Capitan, he wrote in longhand in the margin to his superiors in Santa Fe: "Understand, I am only officially approving these fixtures. Personally I think all these tin fixtures look like hell." [74]

Figure 18. Rock Island railroad window display, Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL. (1938)
(Courtesy Rio Grande Historical Collections, New Mexico State University Library, Las Cruces, NM)