Whtie Sands Administrative History

Johnwill Faris' departure from White Sands coincided with the escalation of another series of military programs under the aegis of President John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier." The young Democratic senator from Massachusetts had campaigned in 1960 against the perceived drift of the nation under the leadership of the grandfatherly Eisenhower. Kennedy vowed to "get the country moving again" through an economic stimulus package that, in the words of historian Walter McDougall, "galvanized science, industry, and government." The 43-year old president proposed a two-track economic and security strategy of peaceful space research and advanced weapons testing. "The Apollo moon program was at the time the greatest open-ended peacetime commitment by Congress in history," said McDougall, while "the Kennedy missile program was the greatest peacetime military buildup." White Sands, unlike its peers in the park service , would thus witness yet another wave of change, given its location in the desert Southwest that offered the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) an environment that McDougall termed "limitless space, limitless opportunity, limitless challenge." [44]

The first White Sands official to encounter JFK's promise to put a man on the moon within a decade was Forrest M. Benson, Junior, most recently the superintendent at Chiricahua National Monument in southern Arizona. Benson's prior postings had made him familiar with the arid ecology of White Sands, but nothing could have prepared him for the dunes' role as a staging area for New Frontier science and engineering. In March 1961, Benson went on his first boundary patrol, only to be "amazed at the amount of [defense] installation." One example of such "encroachment," as the park service now called it, came the next month when Benson discovered that "a 58-wire telephone line and road traverse the Monument for approximately 1 1/2 miles." Then Benson read in the Albuquerque Journal on September 17: "Army engineers said Saturday they had found a potential spaceport on a huge dry lake bed within the confines of the White Sands Missile Range." Michael L. Womack, chief of engineering for the Albuquerque District of the Army Corps of Engineers, reported that the area (Alkali Flats) would cover 70 square miles, and would be "capable of supporting space craft landings, such as the Soviets claim they have accomplished." [45]

Kennedy's highly touted "space race" had thus come to White Sands, touching not only the dunes but Benson's future career in the park service. The superintendent visited with the WSMR commander, General John Shinkle, to gauge the pace of testing and encroachment. Then on October 30, John E. Kell, Southwest regional chief of lands, joined Benson and officers from the missile range and air base to examine the "load bearing" tests being conducted along White Sands' northern boundary. Kell and Benson learned that the armed forces were working on the "Dyna-Soar" project, a high-speed, high-altitude aircraft that needed long runways for reentry from space. Military officials gave three reasons for use of Alkali Flats, and extension of runways into the dunes for five to six miles. The WSMR had already installed "numerous very accurate 'tracking' and instrumentation stations interconnected with a central control system." In addition, the Dyna-Soar plane needed to land on skids on the salt flats because "no tires are currently available that will stand the heavy pressures and heat of landings." Finally, said Kell, Dyna-Soar pilots would find "the visibility of the white sands as a target area easily discernible from outer space while . . . in orbit." The military officials told an impressed Kell: "If a person was on the moon the White Sands area would be clearly visible from that distance [250,000 miles from earth]." [46]

The Dyna-Soar project as planned did not come to fruition (it would become the "Space Transportation System," or "space shuttle," of the 1980s), but this did not spare White Sands. Conventional weapons testing continued at the WSMR and Holloman in the early 1960s, along with the enthusiasm generated by the first manned spacecraft to orbit the earth (the "Gemini" program), and Kennedy's vaunted "Apollo" program to land on the moon. Forrest Benson noted as early as October 1961 the excitement that the space program had created within the Tularosa basin. Local and national news media, including Time Magazine, came to the dunes to cover the story, while Defense officials surveyed the Alkali Flats area and its extensions into the monument. Regional director Thomas Allen wrote to the NPS director before Christmas 1961 to express his fears of the "widespread campaign of publicity . . . underway to explain and sell the project to all and sundry." More disturbing to Allen was the fact that "the men under the [WSMR] General's command are engaged in this and omit any reference to the Monument." The regional director echoed the thoughts often expressed by Johnwill Faris when he concluded: "By the time the [spaceport] proposal is final, the National Park Service will be overwhelmed." [47]

No sooner had the NPS begun its investigation of the effect of the space program on White Sands than did the astronaut John Glenn announce upon his return from orbit in February 1962 that the gypsum dunes were "my most fabulous sight." The park service had entered into negotiations with the Defense Department to revise the 20-year special-use permit, in light of the vastly expanded needs of the spaceport. Superintendent Benson realized new constraints on his own staff within their own monument as interest accelerated in military usage. When his rangers were challenged upon entry into the latest impact zone, the WSMR commander ordered that they be escorted by military police. "Although I asked if this project could not be accomplished elsewhere on the [missile] range," said Benson, "[General Shinkle] made no commitment to cancel the mission. " The superintendent then registered the complaint that "this matter of having to call on the General appears to be a continuing harassing procedure." Nonetheless, constant pressure on military encroachment made them aware of the NPS presence. "We cannot physically stop their activity," Benson admitted, "but with repeated contacts they may soon realize that the entire basin is not theirs to do with as they wish." [48]