Whtie Sands Administrative History

More aggressive than the state game warden was the New Mexico state land office, which sought in 1940 to exchange its "in-holdings" in White Sands for federal lands outside monument boundaries. So long as the park service held these 13 sections (8,320 acres), the state could not generate revenue from leaseholders because of the lack of contiguous acreage demanded by ranchers and mineral companies. In early 1940, state officials resumed negotiations with the NPS, hoping to arrange satisfactory transfers. In April of that year, state and federal officials met at White Sands to discuss trading land just north of the monument. Included was the separate lease held by Frank Ridinger, owner of the motel and gas station that had bothered Tom Charles in the 1930s. By September the park service had surveyed the claims, and also restudied the Dog Canyon water-rights issue, as the state's five-year limit on "beneficial use" neared. Finally, the family of the late Gene Baird sought to reinstate his longtime use of 40 sections of monument land for grazing. The park service faced a dilemma, in that the well-connected Baird family could not easily be ignored. Yet to fence the acreage would cost money that White Sands did not have, while the staff lacked the time to observe the remote sections for violations of park service grazing rules. [22]

While engaging this mixture of land uses, the park service received a shock when the state land office moved to claim the acreage around Garton Lake. The Interior department had included the Garton property as part of the White Sands Recreation Demonstration Area, in order to expedite funding for facility construction early in the New Deal. The state contended that the land had not been deeded over to the park service, and the failure to complete the Garton project restored the land to the U.S. General Land Office (GLO). Under the Taylor Grazing Act, several New Mexican ranchers, the most prominent being E.F. Harrison, filed claims in 1938 and 1939 to the Garton acreage and other non-park service tracts within the monument. To everyone's surprise, on March 7, 1941, A.J. Wirtz, undersecretary of Interior, ruled that the NPS had fenced more of the Garton property than allowable. "The remainder of the vacant lands," said Wirtz, "are unreserved except as a part of the [fourth] grazing district, and should be administered as in the case of any other Federal range." Wirtz did not grant Harrington his claim, but encouraged the U.S. Grazing Service to generate revenue by allotting the land to another claimant. [23]

The Harrington case brought together officials from the NPS and Grazing Service to limit the potential damage of the Wirtz decision. Johnwill Faris told Superintendent Miller: "The loss of this property would greatly reduce the value of the Garton tract as a wildlife area and cause our Bureau to lose a very important strip of the cross section of the Tularosa Basin." Robert Upton, Faris' chief ranger, wrote an assessment of the impact of renewed grazing at Garton Lake. Waterfowl would be driven off, the state's antelope herd would lose access to forage, not to mention the resultant damage to the ground cover. Upton and Faris then called not only for retention of the Garton grazing lands, but "enlargement of the present lake and surrounding marsh, by the addition of another well and further dike development." [24]

As the two federal agencies examined the Garton property, what became clear was the faulty bookkeeping of the park service and state land office. Overwhelmed in the 1930s by the pace of park expansion, and also by the intricate "checkerboard" pattern of private and public land ownership in the Tularosa basin, the NPS had recorded only the actual Garton patent of 160 acres that constituted the lake bed and its shoreline. W. B. McDougall, Region III biologist, could find no documentation supporting Wirtz's belief that the lands had reverted to the GLO. In addition, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on May 5, 1941, to give the NPS all RDA projects at White Sands and three other units. The SWNM superintendent pleaded for reason, reminding his colleagues that "the clear intent" of the Garton Lake project "was to establish a wildfowl refuge." Hugh Miller further warned the NPS that certain portions of the RDA acreage abutted U.S. Highway 70. It "would be highly desirable," said Miller, "to insure control of commercial development and to make possible the exclusion of objectionable enterprises from that portion of the roadway for all time to come." [25]

Concerted study of the Garton dilemma throughout the summer resulted in an amicable solution. The U.S. Grazing Service offered to fence in the disputed acreage, as well as an area south of the monument entrance "which is not [now] included in either the National Monument or the Demonstration Area." Soon thereafter Newton B. Drury, director of the park service, reported that his staff had detected the error in A.J. Wirtz's ruling on Garton Lake. The entire tract had been part of FDR's 1936 executive order granting the White Sands RDA to the monument, and Wirtz agreed to revise his earlier opinion. New Mexico's John J. Dempsey, Wirtz's successor as undersecretary of the Interior, ruled on August 26, 1941, that "the notations on the tract books were erroneous," and that "no attempt should be made to administer the land therein as a part of the grazing district." Dempsey's decision paved the way on November 10, 1941, for a sweeping cooperative agreement between the NPS and Grazing Service on White Sands' land use. Both parties would police the grazing sections within and adjacent to the monument, and would also limit grazing to a "carrying capacity" satisfactory to the park service. [26]