Dunes and Dreams: A History of White Sands National Monument/Chapter 4

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Dunes and Dreams: A History of White Sands National Monument
by Michael Edward Welsh

Chapter Four: Global War at White Sands, 1940–1945

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4582597Dunes and Dreams: A History of White Sands National Monument — Chapter Four: Global War at White Sands, 1940–1945Michael Edward Welsh

Chapter Four

Global War at White Sands, 1940–1945

With the passing of two generations since the end of the Second World War, scholars of the National Park Service are now fashioning the context of life at units like White Sands National Monument. What emerges is both the continuity of issues (economic, political, and ecological) that shaped the park, as well as the patterns of change that rendered the monument distinctive within the national park system. During the war, Johnwill Faris and his small staff would endeavor to provide the visiting public with the aesthetic and recreational experiences that they had come to expect from the dunes. Yet the vagaries of war surrounded White Sands in ways that few other NPS units could imagine. From this emerged a conflict between preservation and development that would persist for the next five decades, only shifting course as the nation in the 1990s faced the duality of declining economic activity and the demise of the Cold War.

White Sands owed its creation to policies crafted in the Great Depression and subsequent New Deal. By 1940 the monument possessed the boundaries and structures that would entertain millions of guests throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Yet the changes brought to the American West by the entry of U.S. forces into war guaranteed that White Sands would remain one of the most-visited parks in the NPS network. Gerald Nash has written that by 1945 "the West had become a barometer of American life." Ten million men and women passed through the region as members of the armed services, while millions more civilians flocked to the West's myriad of defense installations and industrial centers. The Tularosa basin, while not growing on the scale of Albuquerque or El Paso, nonetheless witnessed a large in-migration of service personnel and their families to the Alamogordo Army Air Base (AAAB). The same conditions of environment that had made White Sands so exotic and forbidding in the 1930s (isolation, distance, aridity, and hot temperatures) suddenly became attractive to the Roosevelt administration's military strategists. The War Department would thus transform southern New Mexico in the space of three short years, and alter the course of White Sands' history.^[1]

Perusal of the historiography of the park service for the years 1940–1945 reveals a pattern contrary to that of White Sands. Neither Alfred Runte nor Hal Rothman found the Second World War of significant import to chronicle its meaning for the NPS. Rothman's Preserving Different Pasts (1989) devoted a chapter to the New Deal, and only a sentence to the war in the national parks. Yet the passage of people throughout the West made its parks well-known, even if visitation nationwide declined. In like manner the encroachment into park ecosystems that Runte and others bemoaned occurred in large measure because of postwar urban growth, coupled with the desire of visitors to escape the very cities they had come West to inhabit. Tourism and "Mission 66" (the NPS strategy to bring park infrastructure up to standards after the lean war years) can be linked to the churning process of World War II. Thus the experiences of Johnwill Faris and his co-workers speak not only to life in the dunes, but also to the redefinition of the park service in the boom years after 1945.^[2]

A quick glimpse of the uniqueness of White Sands at war can be grasped from perusal of visitation data for the years 1940–1945. Despite institution in the late 1930s of an entrance fee (adjusted in 1941 from 25 cents per person to 50 cents per vehicle), the numbers remained far greater than those for comparable NPS units elsewhere. Using 1939 as a base for measurement (59,000 visitors), White Sands saw visitation peak in 1941 at 73,000, then decline by 1944 some 54 percent (to 35,000). Yet the number of visitors soon rebounded the following year to 56,000, and then reached a trajectory in the early postwar era (over 100,000) that continued for the rest of the century. Given the fiscal constraints of wartime, the workload facing NPS personnel at the dunes never eased for any length of time, placing pressure on resources, facilities, and staff that few other parks could match.^[3]

Visitation for the years 1940–1941 (up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941) showed little change from the preceding decade. Scholars, film crews, and government officials drove through the park entrance on inspections for research, entertainment, or supervision. In December 1940, Paramount Pictures sent a camera crew to film Tom Charles, now the proprietor of the burgeoning concession, as he drove tourists over the dunes. Charles and his "White Sands Service Company" vehicle thus advertised the park to millions of movie goers who saw the Paramount series, "Unusual Occupations," on their neighborhood screens.^[4]

Visitors also poured into White Sands on the "Play Days" of 1940 and 1941, lured in the latter year by the landing at the dunes of a commercial airplane owned by American Airlines. The Alamogordo chamber of commerce saw this as excellent publicity for its efforts to connect the basin with the outside world, and park service officials acquiesced, though they warned eager tourism boosters not to expect permission for a permanent landing field. Perhaps ignoring Frank Pinkley's earlier rebukes of Tom Charles' drives over the dunes, Hugh Miller, superintendent of southwestern monuments, identified the "landing strip" as "a satisfactory location, now almost as level as a floor and devoid of vegetation so that no permanent disfigurement of the area would result." Then using words that once brought the wrath of NPS officials down on Custodian Charles, Miller concluded: "Evidence of any special smoothing would be obliterated by the first windy day."^[5]

The American Airlines stunt typified the aggressive promotional activities of the Alamogordo business community, from which had come Tom Charles and the monument itself. In 1940 the chamber initiated another campaign to upgrade the status of White Sands from a monument to a more-prestigious (and better-funded) national park. Nationwide publicity had resulted from a visit to the dunes in December 1939 by Ernie Pyle, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and Albuquerque resident whose praise for White Sands, and for Johnwill Faris' hospitality, reached millions of readers. In March 1940, the chamber petitioned U.S. Representative John J. Dempsey to upgrade the facilities at White Sands, especially its need for more drinking water. Joseph Bursey, state tourism director, and local columnists echoed these sentiments, and circulated a rumor that the New Mexico congressional delegation would introduce a bill to change the status of White Sands. Faris himself became excited at this prospect, as he hoped that the move would elevate his position (and salary). The SWNM superintendent believed that this rumor was nothing more than standard fare from zealous local boosters, but Hugh Miller did praise Faris and his monument staff by saying: "You have a most promising area both from the standpoint of its merit as a national attraction and from the standpoint of revenue which is becoming an increasing factor of influence with the Bureau of the Budget."^[6]

Johnwill Faris realized soon thereafter that the "park status" stories had ensnared him, as Tom Charles had warned during the 1938 WPA scandals. At the close of the New Deal, a conservative Congress had reduced spending on the many public works projects that had assisted White Sands with its infrastructure. This also reduced political involvement in the inner workings of the NPS, although conditions in southern New Mexico bucked national trends. The state WPA office inventoried the labor force at White Sands in 1940, finding that two-thirds of the contract workers were Hispanic. These employees stayed on the payroll longer than the federal limit of eighteen months, prompting Hillory Tolson, director of the NPS' Santa Fe regional office, to warn J.J. Connelly, state WPA administrator, that the park service would run out of money for its White Sands construction well before the close of the 1940 fiscal year.^[7]

Political interference of a more direct nature involved the persistence of fired WPA carpenter Michael Reardon to regain his job and his reputation. Reardon employed an Albuquerque lawyer, Robert H. LaFollette, who pressed the park service to reinvestigate the WPA "scandal." LaFollette (not identified as a relative of the progressive Wisconsin senator of the same name) believed that White Sands officials had reduced WPA wages arbitrarily, and that Reardon had been punished for testifying to that effect before a federal grand jury. The park service, mindful of Reardon's connections to New Mexican politicians Dennis Chavez and John Dempsey, sent Reardon's case file to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, who concurred in the judgment of regional NPS officials.^[8]

Because of the uniqueness of the New Mexico New Deal, Johnwill Faris had to move cautiously in the election year of 1940. The following June he wrote in his monthly report of the appointment of John Dempsey as undersecretary of the Interior. Dempsey had run against Chavez in the 1940 Democratic primary race for U.S. Senator, only to be defeated. President Roosevelt then named Dempsey to the Interior post, prompting Faris to say: "The Honorable John Dempsey knows well the problems of the west and we can be assured of an understanding representative in Mr. Dempsey." This was unfortunately not the story that Faris conveyed privately to regional director Miller. J.L. Lawson, former owner of the controversial Dog Canyon property, had defied the Otero County Democratic party by supporting Dempsey, and Faris feared a reprisal against White Sands. "Tom Charles is bitterly opposed to Dempsey," said Faris, "and not one but many rumors have it that Dempsey will get Tom out of the picture at White Sands[,] etc." Lawson himself greeted Faris on an Alamogordo street by asking "how I liked my new boss [Dempsey]." The custodian told Miller that he should "look behind the scene" if problems arose at the monument, as people said: "You never can tell about Lawson."^[9]

Doubts concerning the sentiments of Interior officials towards White Sands could not deter Johnwill Faris or the regional office in the months preceding U.S. entry into World War II. The lack of staff bothered NPS supervisors, who devoted considerable time to writing an interpretative manual for use in ranger talks. Natt Dodge came to White Sands to observe the operations and maintenance of the museum, which had opened in June 1940. "Undependable electric current," plus a lack of heat in winter, limited the museum's appeal to visitors in its first year, as did the incomplete design of the museum exhibit cases. Then the heavy summer travel brought dozens of visitors at one time through the museum, with no staff available to explain the monument's features. By August 1941, the NPS could send additional employees to the dunes, but had no funds to address the structural problems of electricity and heat.^[10]

The strain upon the monument's facilities also reflected problems old and new: the environmental conditions in the arid Tularosa basin, and the experimental nature of New Deal policy. The ecology of the dunes affected the water supply, whose high salt content corroded pipes and clogged drains several years after construction. High winds damaged lines from Alamogordo built to deliver telephone service, requiring park staff to check the transmission network each time they traveled into town. Newton Drury, director of the park service, noted in his inspection tour in May 1941 that the blowing gypsum not only covered the roads (causing high maintenance costs), but also abraded the engines and chassis of NPS vehicles used in clearing the highway. Most interesting, however, was the deterioration of the adobe walls and buildings. Their style reflected the New Deal's sense of place and historical distinctiveness. Yet the mud construction cracked and chipped during heavy rains, and required annual maintenance for plastering that the NPS had not included in its designs. Then late in 1941 the monument received ten inches of rain within a ten-day span, inundating roads, damaging the adobe structures yet again, and restricting visitor travel to the dunes.^[11]

To meet these needs, NPS officials at first turned to their benefactors, the New Deal agencies that had constructed facilities at White Sands. Despite nationwide curtailment of such programs as the WPA, CCC, and other organizations, New Mexico's political leaders had managed to retain WPA personnel at the dunes. Johnwill Faris had continued to use the federal work crews to keep his park open, with Jesus Armijo devoting all his time to collecting admission fees at the monument entrance. As late as April 29, 1940, President Roosevelt had authorized expenditure of $57,500 for non-construction maintenance at White Sands. These crews built Spanish-colonial furniture for the headquarters, cleared the roads, painted signs, and planted cacti and other native vegetation around the visitors center.^[12]

Dependence upon funds other than the NPS appropriation caught White Sands off-guard less than two months after FDR's proclamation, as word reached Custodian Faris of the termination of all Recreation Demonstration Projects at the close of the 1940 fiscal year (June 30). SWNM superintendent Miller came to the dunes in early September, and noted the pressing need for improvement of facilities and services. Predicting that White Sands "may readily receive 100,000 bona fide visitors next year," Miller feared that the decline in federal support would "create an unfavorable impression of the Park Service as a whole." Upon consultation with Custodian Faris, the superintendent agreed that White Sands' only hope was establishment of a CCC camp (one of the few remaining New Deal labor programs) to fulfill duties that the NPS had never been able to accomplish.^[13]

While the superintendent saw logistical and procedural obstacles, Hugh Miller also recognized White Sands' predicament: high visitation, elaborate facility construction, and limited financial resources. The U.S. Forest Service had a CCC camp outside of El Paso (the Ascarate County Park), which needed more work to remain viable. The cost of shipping workers and materials the one hundred miles to White Sands made creation of a new camp at Alamogordo more feasible, as the lack of potable water at the dunes restricted the housing of two-hundred plus workers. Regardless of the problems, said Miller to the regional office, "we have an urgent situation on our hands at White Sands." He further encouraged Johnwill Faris to submit a twelve-month work plan to the CCC at once.^[14]

The custodian's response indicated the extent to which White Sands depended upon New Deal largesse for its operations. Johnwill Faris devised a program to employ 200 workers for one year, housing them on ten acres of land outside of Alamogordo that city leaders would donate to the CCC. These crews could engage over a dozen projects, none of which included original construction. The menu ranged from housing to roads to landscaping to museum lighting. One interesting feature was Faris' wish to devote 12,500 "man-days" (the number of days times workers) to remove five miles of the old clay-plated entrance road. Built in 1933 by the CWA, the road had been replaced by an asphalt route, but visitors sometimes followed the old path by mistake. Faris also wanted 12,500 man-days to convert Garton Lake to the wildlife refuge first intended in its purchase. These activities, concluded Faris, "will enable us to become an area well balanced and prepared to handle the number of visitors that is apparently destined to come our way." The custodian then acknowledged the consequences of failure to meet these needs by not gaining a CCC camp: "Without the work we may be years rounding out a similar outlined program without embarrassment and virtual disgrace to our Service."^[15]

The merits of the White Sands proposal notwithstanding, the CCC in 1941 did not fund the Alamogordo camp. Then in June of that year the other source of New Deal labor, the WPA, announced elimination of most of its park service contracts. Johnwill Faris and his small staff (Ranger George Sholley and maintenance man Joe Shepperd) thus faced the summer travel season without the personnel of the preceding eight years. Equally affected was Tom Charles. Like his successor as custodian, Charles' business had been overrun by the growth of visitation and demand for his souvenirs, refreshments, and his guided tours of the dunes. By January 1940, Charles once again drew the ire of his former supervisor, Frank Pinkley, when he requested waivers of the NPS restrictions on his operations. The park service had allowed Charles to outfit a small trailer with concession items, but ordered him to bring the trailer back to headquarters each evening. Charles' proprietary attitude towards the park led him to take the wheels off the trailer and leave it overnight in the picnic area. He then asked Pinkley if he could build a watchman's house out in the dunes to guard against theft. The SWNM superintendent wrote to Charles in language as stern as any he had used while Charles had been a park service employee. "All this is not what we talked about nor what we issued a permit for," said Pinkley. Should the NPS let Charles continue to increase his operation, "we are caught in a never ending line of expansion based on the plea that you must be allowed to do this and that and the other in order to protect your investment."^[16]

Charles' request had come less than two months after his retirement as custodian of the monument. Yet within that short span of time, the "Father of White Sands" had realized what he had suspected all along: that visitors to the dunes would patronize a concession heavily. His White Sands Service Company had turned a small profit for the two months of operations in 1939, and in 1940 would generate revenues of nearly $400 per month. To meet that consumer demand, Charles continued to petition NPS officials for expansion of his facility. In March 1940, he received permits from the Southern Pacific and the Rock Island railroads to transport passengers from Alamogordo to the dunes. He also asked Hillory Tolson for permission to move his operations from the trailer to vacant work space in the visitors center. This triggered yet another debate within the NPS regional bureaucracy, reminiscent of the early days at White Sands when Charles' plea for recreational usage clashed with the ecological aesthetic of park service professionals. Charles L. Gable, chief of the "park operators division" in Washington, conceded that the White Sands visitors center would not be fully utilized for some time, and that Charles could generate additional revenue for himself and the NPS by using the headquarters' supply room. In addition, Gable encouraged his superiors to allow Charles to continue his "dune drives" (except to Lake Lucero), and to open a "gasoline service station" for visitors (the only such facility for miles in any direction).^[17]

The park service compromised with Charles for the 1940 summer season by providing "storage space" for the White Sands concession in the visitors center. Charles would continue to use his trailer in the picnic area, with service offered daily from 2:00PM until 11:00PM daily. The NPS would try to build more pit toilets near his concession, but had no money for shade. Superintendent Miller encouraged Charles instead to "experiment … with the feasibility of renting beach umbrellas at a reasonable price." Colonel John White, Region III director, visited White Sands in July to confirm these arrangements. He believed that visitor demand required two sites for concessions: the dunes proper and the headquarters complex. White then acknowledged what normally would have been park service heresy: "[The dune drive] gives visitors not only a fine opportunity to see the dunes, but to have them explained in inimitable fashion by Tom Charles."^[18]

By the fall of 1940, the combination of high volume and Tom Charles' persistence led the park service to negotiate a solution favorable to Charles' company. From June to September, the dunes had 31,000 paying customers, many of whom patronized Charles' trailer. Hugh Miller reported that "the service the operator [Charles] is expected to give is required in the sands and cannot be expected to satisfy legitimate public demand at any other point." Miller declared Charles' trailer to be "ridiculously inadequate," and called for construction of a facility of some 600 square feet "at a point approximately 200 yards beyond the present construction site." If the NPS could not provide Charles with such a facility by the spring of 1941 (including 20 picnic tables and six pit toilets), Miller suggested that the park service accept Charles' offer of private funding in exchange for a "20-year permit" for his company.^[19]

In a fashion typical of its relationship with Tom Charles, the NPS spent the next twelve months alternately challenging his plans and recognizing the inevitable. Hugh Miller wanted Charles to accept a location adjacent to the visitors center, sign a lease for a maximum of five years, and limit his annual salary to $1,800. Miller even criticized Charles' plan to charge fifteen cents for hamburger sandwiches (the local rate in Alamogordo), as Charles did not as yet prepare hot meals at the park. The superintendent also suggested termination of the dune drives, given the distance from the visitors center. Charles agreed to address all of Miller's concerns, but grew weary of the delays. By November 1941, he had consented to lease a $3,500 government structure, to be built in adobe style next to headquarters. Yet Charles also gently chided Miller (as he had his predecessor, Pinkley), noting that he earned $500 in August 1940. "Whatever you think best Hugh," said Charles, "for after all White Sands comes first with me, but I wouldn't have to work for anyone else for $1,800 a year."^[20]

Tom Charles' strategies for concession work at White Sands reflected his deep understanding of local demand and state politics. Both factors influenced land-use issues in 1940–1941, as the state land office sought control of unclaimed grazing acreage within the monument. The New Mexico state game warden, Elliott Barker, pursued his own proprietary policies on the thirteen sections of state land at White Sands. In January 1940, Barker brought to the monument a herd of nine antelope, hoping to restore game animals to the Tularosa basin. Within days, however, coyotes attacked the weaker animals, reducing the herd size and endangering the game experiment. To Barker's surprise, the NPS denied his request for state game officers to pursue coyotes onto monument property and kill them. He found especially mystifying the logic of Milton McColm of the Santa Fe NPS office, who claimed that "coyotes are just as interesting to many of our monument visitors as are antelope and we hope Mother Nature will allow us to have both."^[21]

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]

The enthusiasm of the park service for solution of land claims at White Sands in December 1941 later seemed ironic, as no one knew the consequences of events that month in the far-off Pacific Ocean. Johnwill Faris noted that "for the first time we will have a uniform and definite agreement on all grazing." He further remarked to his superiors at SWNM headquarters: "It was very gratifying to find all the ranchers as cooperative in getting these permits straightened out." One reason for the cooperation may have been the petition of the U.S. Army in June 1941 to secure 1.25 million acres of public and private land in the Tularosa basin for a bombing range. Since the United States had yet to enter the Second World War, the Army did not pursue the land withdrawal. Instead, Custodian Faris wrote of the increase in visitation of uniformed personnel from Fort Bliss and Biggs Field, in and near El Paso. By July 1941, soldiers and their families comprised 15 percent of visitors to the dunes, and nearly 2,000 other soldiers stopped at park headquarters to see the exhibits in the museum.^[27]

All this would change after December 7, 1941, when the Japanese armed forces struck the U.S. naval installation at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawai'i. The war would replace the economic uncertainties of the 1930s with the exhilaration and stress of national security. White Sands would stand alone in the park service as part of what John Freemuth later called "islands under siege;" park service units surrounded by commercial development. In the case of White Sands, the U.S. Army would establish its Alamogordo Army Air Base within weeks of the Pearl Harbor attack. Johnwill Faris also noted the economic and psychological impact of the war. "Seemingly the tension of Our Country being at war," he reported, "means a higher strung type of visitor and stops are noticeably shorter." There had already been a statewide "blackout," where citizens turned off outside lighting to reduce potential risk from invading forces. Faris remained optimistic, telling his superiors: "One thing now, we have no doubt about the men in the Service [;] they are all in uniform."^[28]

More doubtful for Faris and his staff was operation of their park unit amidst the changing orders and demands of their new neighbors. Issues that had been merely problematic (water use, understaffing, budget reductions) escalated under the dual strain of wartime bombing around (and sometimes on) the monument, even as the military brought thousands of soldiers to the dunes for picnics and maneuvers. White Sands thus differed from its peers in the park service in the chaotic nature of park management in wartime.

Three weeks after Pearl Harbor, Interior secretary Harold Ickes initiated the process of change that would fundamentally alter the history of White Sands. Ickes, under whose purview fell not only the NPS but also much of the public land in the Tularosa basin, recommended to President Roosevelt that the Army's request for 1.25 million acres in southern New Mexico be approved. Nearly 275,000 acres of the bombing range belonged to the state of New Mexico, and almost 35,000 more acres had been claimed by private citizens. Ignoring the complex negotiations of 1941 that had "resolved" the NPS-New Mexico disputes over claimants in the monument, Ickes encouraged FDR to sign Executive Order No. 9029, creating the Alamogordo bombing range. The order contained a clause calling upon the Army to "consult" with Interior officials about bombing targets. In addition, the order promised to restore the lands to Interior "when they are no longer needed for the purpose for which they are reserved."^[29]

Demand for public land to house the vast bombing facility quickly generated a need for water. The scarcity of water in the Tularosa basin had plagued the early years of White Sands' development. But the scale of consumption anticipated by the Army staggered the imagination of park service officials. In April 1942, the Arizona Constructors, who had the contract to build the runways at the air base, approached Johnwill Faris for access to the Garton well. The aridity of the basin—one of the assets for year-round testing of aircraft—required large amounts of water to compact the desert soil, then mix into concrete for thousands of cubic yards of cement. The NPS regional office considered the petition "a critical defense project," and authorized Faris to grant the company a permit to withdraw up to 75,000 gallons of water per day (a figure that would soon grow to 175,000 gallons daily). Charles Richey of the SWNM office further suggested that Faris "discuss informally with the Army engineers in charge of the airport the possibility of our purchasing water from the city of Alamogordo at the end of the Army's new pipeline at the airport." The regional director concurred, remarking that the 1930s effort to create a wildlife refuge at Garton Lake "is of minor importance and should not dominate … our plans for the development of the area."^[30]

By June 1942, the Arizona Constructors had completed runway paving at the air base, and no longer needed access to Garton Lake water. White Sands then negotiated access to the air base's water line from Alamogordo; something that a lack of funds had prohibited before the war. Another benefit generated by the expansion of military spending was the placement of two CCC camps at the base. The pleas of the NPS for similar work at White Sands had gone unheeded, but the bombing range managed to lure the work force north from El Paso. This increase in work prior to completion of the Alamogordo water line drew the Army Engineers to the Dog Canyon site, where the Army envisioned a 15.5 mile-long pipeline to another air field planned south of monument headquarters. Congress, however, did not authorize these funds in the 1943 fiscal year appropriation for the Army, leaving plans for Dog Canyon water development in abeyance.^[31]

By the summer of 1942, the NPS had reason to worry about the growth of the military presence around White Sands. Regional personnel and Custodian Faris joined with Army officials to plan for expanded usage of the monument by soldiers and their families. Visitation for the 1942 travel year (October 1941–September 1942) declined 34 percent, but army personnel accounted for 15,500 of the total of 52,000 patrons. The dunes provided the only recreational alternative to Alamogordo, which regional director M.R. Tillotson saw as having "some beer parlors and one bowling alley." Soldiers desperate for relief in the heat of summer had gone to a "borrow pit" near the lake (a hole dug by road crews to extract building materials), and used it for swimming, only to have one man drown due to lack of supervision. The park service suggested to the Army that it dredge Garton Lake to accommodate the large number of soldiers, and that the Army be responsible for "maintenance and control" of this "swimming pool." Unfortunately, Army tests of the water revealed it to be "contaminated," and plans for the pool were dropped.^[32]

Despite the problem of water quality, the Army continued to press for usage of Garton Lake. In August 1942, Colonel A.S. Albro, air base commander, asked SWNM's Charles Richey for permission to train pilots to eject over the water and have crews "rescue" them as part of their "tactical training." The Army also admired the adobe style of monument architecture, and asked Faris for the "plans, specifications, and bill of materials." SWNM's Richey thought that "it would be a fine thing if we could influence the Army … along the lines of the architectural precedent we have set for the White Sands area." Less attractive to the NPS staff was Faris' granting of permission to the Army to conduct full-scale maneuvers in the dunes. The Army wanted its truck drivers to gain experience in the difficulties of desert travel, and saw the dunes as a perfect location. Faris in addition carried water to the Army in NPS vehicles, which cost the park service 15 cents per mile to transport from town. Richey warned Faris: "We should also be very careful and not let the Army gradually expand its use at White Sands so that they feel they can do as they please there." Then in a judgment that would be prophetic in the postwar era, Richey concluded: "Should this [use] ever happen, administration at White Sands will be extremely difficult."^[33]

The issue of most concern to Faris about the military was its insatiable appetite for land. The NPS could bargain with the Army about White Sands because of its national stature. The same could not be said for state and local land officials, who instead saw the Army as an answer to their prayers. Arid desert soil that had thwarted private development schemes for decades suddenly held great value, given the Army's need for vast open spaces with sparse vegetation where ecological harm would be less odious than on land near populated areas. State officials also became enmeshed in political intrigue as a result of wartime demands for land, and by August 1942 a grand jury in Santa Fe had indicted the state land commissioner, H.R. Rodgers, for mismanagement of his office. The NPS believed that this would delay any suitable exchange program at the monument for the duration of the war. Compounding this political pressure was creation in October 1942 of a "land acquisition board" that sought three sections of monument property for the Alamogordo air base. The park service withstood this appeal, as it would again in November 1944, when former New Mexico governor John E. Miles ran for state land commissioner on a pledge to restore "all federal lands possible" to the state. Faris suggested privately to NPS superiors that White Sands give up 79 sections in the northwest quadrant of the monument; an area that "may contain scattered selenite crystals and even some scattered gypsum deposits." Referring to Alkali Flat, Faris believed that the political aggravation caused by resistance to Miles was not worth the "waste land" on the west side of the dunes.^[34]

Strain upon the monument's land and water base further exacerbated conditions caused by extensive military visitation and training exercises. As early as October 1942, Custodian Faris called a section of his monthly report "War Jitters." Civilians commented on their fears that wartime rationing of tires, gasoline, and oil would prohibit future visits to the dunes. They also complained of the additional sixteen-mile round trip from headquarters to the picnic area as another wartime nuisance. There was a momentary relaxation of visitor concern in January 1943, when the original fears gave way to release of pent-up demand for access to White Sands. In April of that year, Faris detected what would become America's postwar attitude towards outdoor recreation. "Public sentiment seems to be," said the custodian, "work harder and play harder, and our area furnishes the play outlet." Yet five months later (September 1943), the pattern of scarcity had returned, not to ease until the summer of 1945 (coincident with the Allied victory in Europe).^[35]

Where civilians could not fill the dunes as they had in years past, military personnel rushed in by the thousands. The Army brought its Military Police (MP's) to supervise uniformed troops, and the White Sands staff remarked more than once about the good behavior of such large groups. The United Services Organization (USO) also planned activities at the dunes, among which were Tuesday breakfasts for soldiers' wives, and use of the museum lobby on winter evenings. Custodian Faris paid special attention to the "weekly visit of convalescent patients from the Air Base hospital as a means of outdoor recreation." The soldiers expressed great appreciation for the services provided at White Sands, taking as much park literature as Faris could provide, as well as gypsum that they sent home for Christmas gifts. They in turn promised to bring their families to the dunes at war's end. Evidence of this regard for White Sands came in November 1942, when the National Parks Magazine printed an article in its winter issue entitled, "Soldiers' Paradise." Isabelle Story of the NPS information office decided that White Sands exhibited the type of service that the NPS wished to provide the military, and made the dunes the cover story for this nationwide publication.^[36]

Assisting the staff in meeting the needs of servicemen at the monument was Tom Charles' concession. Park service officials granted Charles permission in January 1942 to build his facility adjacent to park headquarters. Charles would offer the only food, beverage, and dry goods store along the eighty-mile route between Alamogordo and Las Cruces, and the closest such outlet for soldiers at the air base. Charles' sons enlisted in the Army soon after Pearl Harbor, leaving Tom and his wife, Bula, once again to commute to the dunes. By May 1942, Charles reported that his primary customers were soldiers, who regarded his concession as a "canteen," purchasing soft drinks and cigarettes in large quantities. The former park custodian did worry about the long-term effects of reduced civilian traffic, and corresponded with railroad agents to continue publicizing the dunes as in their prewar advertising.^[37]

The commitment of Tom Charles and his family to White Sands played a significant role in the prosperity of their concession work. From 1941–1945, the White Sands Service Company generated over $38,000 in sales, and returned nearly five percent in profits (this despite two years of losses: 1942 and 1944). Tom Charles, however, could not keep up the pace of commuting to and from the monument. By late 1942 he missed work on several occasions, replaced at the concession stand by Mrs. Joe Shepperd, wife of the White Sands maintenance worker. In March 1943, Tom Charles succumbed to illness, dying at age 69. At his funeral the pallbearers included Johnwill Faris and his monument staff. Former park service director Horace Albright, now president of the U.S. Potash Company, wrote to Bula Charles that Tom had persuaded him "by the force of his vast knowledge, unanswerable logic and high enthusiasm" to create the national monument. The local chamber of commerce asked Johnwill Faris to permit them to install a plaque honoring Charles at park headquarters. Charles Richey demurred, noting NPS policy that discouraged such actions. In its place, said Richey, the chamber should petition the state legislature to rename a section of U.S. Highway 70 as "Tom Charles Parkway," a gesture that Richey believed "would be a magnificent memorial in commemoration of his work."^[38]

As the Second World War moved toward resolution, the staff at White Sands could not ignore the irony of the military's presence: high visitation and an increasing number of airplane crashes. As early as October 1941, Johnwill Faris reported the crash of a plane fifteen miles west of the monument boundary. Three fliers were killed, the first of many victims of the haste of training, the inexperience of the pilots, the erratic quality of plane construction, and the forbidding terrain of the Tularosa basin. The National Parks Magazine may have billed White Sands as a "soldiers' paradise," but in March 1943 Johnwill Faris reported: "Many more plane crashes and we will need a full time man for [service] as a field guide." The following month Faris traveled to regional headquarters in Santa Fe to obtain accurate maps "on which we plan to spot plane crashes, etc., within or adjacent to our area." One particular crash in October 1944 struck just south of the monument entrance, tearing out telephone lines and requiring extensive repairs.^[39]

Of all the military interaction at White Sands, none had the psychological effect of tracking crash victims in the dunes. The number of crashes brought heavy equipment across the gypsum at a rate that endangered plant and animal life. In addition, staff members were often awakened in the middle of the night to guide rescue crews onto the monument grounds. This caused wear and tear on park vehicles, and left employees tired before the start of their normal work days. Johnwill Faris, in an interview twenty years after the war, still remembered as "some of the most horrible … duties" the discovery of fiery crashes, including "going in and finding—it's not agreeable to mention, but shoes with feet in them or a glove with a hand in them and so on." Faris learned from Army personnel that inexperienced pilots in distress would mistake the white dunes as a flat surface for emergency landing. The custodian also impressed his military counterparts with his ability to drive stock vehicles through the desert. Ironically, this skill led Army officials to offer Faris a commission to enlist as a trainer of Army equipment operators preparing for the 1943 North African campaign. Faris declined the offer, preferring to assist the military by serving as a rescue guide at White Sands.^[40]

The future of White Sands, and for that matter the nation as a whole, reached a watershed in the spring of 1945. The Allied offensive in Europe had closed within striking distance of the German capital of Berlin, with victory all but assured by April. That month also the nation lost its four-term president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose social policies had fostered the growth of White Sands, even as his wartime strategies engulfed the dunes with military training and visitation. But the most distinctive feature of the entire conflict—the detonation of the atomic bomb—touched White Sands as would no other event in park service history. The sequence of events in the Tularosa basin from April to August 1945 created the "atomic age" tensions that bedeviled the monument for the next five decades, even as the permanent presence of a major air base to the east (Holloman) and the White Sands Proving Ground to the west (later renamed the White Sands Missile Range) buffered the dunes from postwar commercial development that became the core of John Freemuth's "islands under siege" thesis.

It was ironic, therefore, that on the date of FDR's death (April 12), Johnwill Faris called Santa Fe regional headquarters to report that "the [Army] engineers had filed condemnation [papers] on all of the private and state land, not only adjacent to but within the boundaries of the monument." James Lassiter, acting Region III director, assumed that "after the war we should have a good opportunity of having this land [the private in-holdings] transferred to us and added to the monument." Such optimism spread to NPS wartime headquarters in Chicago, where former Region III director Hillory Tolson (now acting NPS director) called upon White Sands to use its water in Dog Canyon so that its permit would be renewed. Soldiers continued to pour into the monument (over 7,000 by June 1), and Johnwill Faris expressed hope that White Sands could coexist with the military despite the dunes' location "in the very heart of the new [bombing] area."^[41]

The park service could not know the scale of change about to descend upon White Sands, but each passing week in the spring and summer of 1945 revealed a brave new world that challenged Johnwill Faris and his staff. By May the Army Engineers had informed Faris that the extent of test firing might require evacuation of personnel for indefinite periods. Faris learned that the vast stretch of the Tularosa basin (from Socorro to Carrizozo, then south to the Texas state line) had become part of the "Ordcit" project (which Faris for a time called "Ordcet"). On May 28, Faris wrote to Santa Fe NPS officials: "The sands proper are very much in the danger zone. My understanding is that we will be denied any and all use of the sands." Army Engineer appraisers took the monument's "Physical Plant Index" to El Paso to study the extent of NPS facilities that stood in the line of fire. Within days the regional office solicited urgent advice from Chicago, as War Department officials spoke as if "the White Sands are actually going to constitute a bomb target in themselves." E.T. Scoyen, associate director for Region III, underscored this concern with testimony taken from a hearing in Albuquerque of the U.S. Senate Committee on Public Lands. "One is led to conclude that the activity must be of great importance in the conduct of the war," Scoyen wrote to A.E. Demaray in Chicago, as "there could be no other adequate justification for breaking up ranch homes which have been going concerns for well over 50 years with severe financial losses in many instances."^[42]

The Army felt confident that it could avoid major damage to NPS facilities at White Sands, but moved nonetheless to secure the park acreage by gaining permission to close U.S. Highway 70 from Alamogordo to Las Cruces. The speed of planning for the atomic test resulted in delays in communications, and also unintended remarks that sustained the levels of anxiety at the monument. On June 4, 1945, A.E. Demaray wired Region III with word that the museum need not be dismantled. "We are assured," said Demaray, that the monument was "not a bombing target but merely within [the] path of [the] projectile." Yet the next day, Johnwill Faris reported that a member of his staff, Ray Knabenshue, had spoken with an army captain who said "that unless we [the park service] were out by the 15th [of June] the army would put us out." Faris took Knabenshue's comments seriously, in that he had been well-connected to national leaders prior to coming to White Sands for his health (Knabenshue had been employed by the Wright brothers early in their flying experiments, and his wife had served as personal secretary to FDR while he was governor of New York). The story proved groundless, however, and by June 10 Faris had regained his belief that the postwar era could help rather than hurt the monument. An example was his correspondence with the regional director to plan for "taking in all of the sands area as a postwar movement." Charles Richey had determined that "prevailing winds may move our best sands to lands outside our boundary." The park service should initiate a "complete investigation," and be ready if the acquisition occurred "not in the immediate future, but over a long period of time."^[43]

This dream came to an end in July 1945, when the Army Engineers' "Manhattan Project" came south from Los Alamos, New Mexico to detonate the first atomic weapon in human history. When Johnwill Faris learned that White Sands could no longer draw water from the air base because of the project, he realized the scale of the Army's plans. Only two days prior to the July 16 nuclear blast at "Trinity Site," on the White Sands Proving Grounds, Faris discovered that the Army planned not only a twelve-inch waterline from Alamogordo, but also a 115,000-volt power line, and massive airplane runways. "It is a project that is being rushed from all angles," Faris told his Santa Fe superiors, "and things break fast." Then the NPS correspondence became silent on the pace of construction, even though the atomic explosion occurred less than sixty miles northwest of monument headquarters. Thus Faris could not realize how ironic was his letter on August 3 to the regional office protesting the NPS decision to remove the Billy the Kid exhibit from the White Sands museum. Faris, who in 1940 had voiced concern about the park service idolizing such a violent figure where children came to visit, now believed that the early history of the Southwest without Billy was "like the Civil War without [Abraham] Lincoln." Faris had learned in his six years at the dunes that "to a surprisingly large number of people in our southwest Billy the Kid was almost a crusader." To ignore him, "good or bad," said Faris, would now "show a distortion not in keeping with our policy of [portraying] true facts for our visitors."^[44]

The need for secrecy lifted on August 6, 1945, when press releases heralded the dawn of the nuclear age, and White Sands' place therein. Acting Region III director Scoyen wrote to Chicago NPS officials with an explanation of the impact of the atomic testing on both White Sands and Bandelier national monuments. The Bandelier custodian had once threatened to arrest Los Alamos Army officers engaged in "unauthorized operations," while Johnwill Faris had reported that the nuclear blast on July 16 "was covered up for a time as the explosion of a [munitions] magazine at the air base." Faris' wife Lena, whom Johnwill had sent with their two sons to California just before the test date, remembered in 1993 that the bomb was not only, in the words of historian Ferenc M. Szasz, "the day the sun rose twice" (a reference to the intense glare that pilots saw 600 miles away). The shock waves were also measured 550 miles west of White Sands at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation office in Boulder City, Nevada. Thus it did not surprise Mrs. Faris that the vacuum created by the explosion awoke Joe Shepperd and his wife, sleeping in their house at the monument, and pulled the covers across their bedroom.^[45]

For the Alamogordo chamber of commerce, the release of information on Trinity Site provided a unique opportunity for tourism promotion. On the morning of the second atomic blast, over Nagasaki, Japan (August 9, 1945), chamber officials called Johnwill Faris to suggest that the park service create a new national monument to commemorate the atomic test. A.P. Grider and Fritz Heilbron of the chamber wrote to the NPS director to promote the idea, comparing its historical significance to "the spot where the first Pilgrim set foot on this continent." Johnwill Faris saw things somewhat differently, as he dealt more closely with Army officials than did the chamber. "Peace will have no effect on the White Sands Proving Ground operations," he told the regional office. Yet Faris knew that the atomic site held great potential, and suggested that the NPS had "a wonderful opportunity to build and install a museum of super-quality."^[46]

The Alamogordo chamber knew what mattered to visitors and locals as the Second World War came to an end. Whether the curious came to the Tularosa basin for a glimpse of "instant" history, or whether local residents wished to rid themselves of the cares of wartime sacrifice, the numbers at White Sands would grow rapidly in the weeks after the war's end. Visitation in August and September 1945 (11,000) equalled prewar counts, and the monument that December recorded its busiest winter month since 1938. But the numbers also meant a strain upon scarce water resources (already threatened by continued military testing and the onset of drought in the basin). Then New Mexico's political leaders weighed in first with their calls for an atomic monument, and then their fears of the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres of grazing lands. One example of this concern was the idea of Charles S. McCollum of the Farm Security Administration in Las Cruces. He wished to make the test site "a real peace monument or shrine for the entire world." The crater could be fenced and equipped with a visitors center "that would be worthy of comparison with many of the fine buildings in Washington." McCollum would have deep wells drilled, and visitors drawn from around the world to experience both "the surrounding peacefulness of the desert calm," and "the terrible force that can be utilized against any nation that might have thoughts of making war on any other country."^[47]

Media attention also focused heavily on the Tularosa basin, with reporters scouring the countryside for evidence of the atomic test. Johnwill Faris kept a scrapbook of the famous visitors who came to the area, as the NPS collected information on the proposed monument. One such group included a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, who wrote of the publicity campaign waged by the Army to disprove Japanese charges of lingering health hazards at Hiroshima. "There was more radioactivity in the atomized New Mexico area visited by the newsmen," said the Times on September 12, "than possibly could have existed at Hiroshima because of the different altitudes at which the two bombs were exploded." As if to prove that Americans had nothing to fear from nuclear radiation, the Times portrayed prominent Manhattan Project officials walking through the cinders wearing "no protective clothing except canvas 'booties' where radioactivity would be 'hottest.'" The Army also allowed the media to take away as souvenirs the "atom-fused earth crust" which resembled "gray-green, crackled glass;" a compound later to be named "Trinitite."^[48]

For local boosters, the Times article proved the appeal of the test site to tourism, and by extension economic development. For the park service, however, the actions of the Army at the proving grounds soon indicated a bleaker future for a new monument in the Tularosa basin. On August 22, the War Department announced that it had transported from Europe two shiploads of German-made "V-2" rockets. Because of its vastness, the proving grounds would be the site of test firings for scientific research. The Army wanted to conduct these tests for 20 days at a time, with NPS personnel evacuated two days out of every three. U.S. Highway 70 would also be closed to traffic, thus limiting access for monument visitors. The Interior and War departments then negotiated a "Memorandum of Understanding," which included reimbursement to NPS staff for expenses incurred while away from White Sands. The superintendent at Carlsbad Caverns, Thomas Boles, expressed interest in employing Johnwill Faris and his staff if the White Sands closures were lengthy. This offer became moot in October 1945, when the Army decided to fire the V-2 rockets on four mornings per week, lodging the White Sands personnel overnight in Alamogordo.^[49]

The ultimate plan for test firings at the proving grounds did not stop Interior officials, New Mexican politicians, and the Alamogordo chamber of commerce from seeking high-level sponsorship of the atomic monument. Harold Ickes himself announced on September 8 that his General Land Office commissioner would "reserve the lands surrounding the place of the atomic bomb experiment for a new monument." Ickes wished to recognize not only the wisdom of using the bomb, saying that it "reduced the further loss of life and limb among members of the armed forces of this country and our allies." He also saw the monument portraying "the successful wedding of the skills and ingenuity of American, British and other scientists, and of American industry and labor." Then in a pronouncement that would symbolize the Cold War's fascination with nuclear power and energy, the Interior secretary declared: "The atomic bomb ushers in a new era in man's understanding of nature's forces and presages the use of atomic power … as an instrument through use in peace, for the creation of a better standard of living throughout the world."^[50]

Ickes' directives put in motion a strategy of negotiation between the Interior and War departments that revealed the latter's commitment to national security versus the former's quest for historic preservation. E.T. Scoyen found it amusing that NPS headquarters had awarded $100 to a Mr. Joseph Stratton of the Chicago office for suggesting creation of the atomic monument. Scoyen noted that the first NPS employee to mention the concept was Johnwill Faris, and that his Santa Fe regional office had discussed the idea at length. More important was regional director Tolson's "adverse recommendation" of September 5. Publicity such as the Stratton award drew many curiosity-seekers to the Tularosa basin, and by October 11 Charles Richey reported that "quantities of the 'green glass' which supposedly lined the crater are being carried away." Within a month the Army had sealed off access to the Trinity Site, and even former NPS director Horace Albright could not gain permission to visit the prospective "monument."^[51]

For the remainder of 1945, Johnwill Faris and his staff struggled with the past and future of White Sands. Large-circulation national magazines (Life and Look) sent photographers to prepare stories on the monument, and Harold Ickes asked the NPS to supply him with his own personal souvenirs of "trinitite." Regional director Tillotson had Faris collect specimens of the "green glass," along with a section of cable wire "that was actually used in transmitting the electric impulse which detonated the bomb." Tillotson warned that the souvenirs, while "tested for radioactivity," "should not be carried for any length of time in close proximity to the human skin." Secretary Ickes instead should keep the trinitite in "a glass or lucite container." Other applicants for atomic specimens were turned down, however, and NPS officials thus asked Faris to keep trinitite at White Sands for future display in the museum.^[52]

Johnwill Faris closed the momentous year of 1945 by negotiating a second memorandum of understanding with the Army Engineers on the monument's relationship to the "Ordcit" project. The Army not only had no plans to permit creation of an atomic park; it also persisted in its request for "intermittent use of the lands included in the White Sands National Monument within the exterior boundaries of the Ordcit Project." This assumption that Ordict superseded the mandate of the park service became clear in the memorandum, as Faris agreed to remove all employees and close White Sands at the request of the War Department. In return, the Army would negotiate with all private grazing lease holders within the monument over the loss of access to their claims during test firings. The War Department would also reimburse White Sands staff for their expenses, house employees and their families at the Alamogordo air base at no cost, and pay for any damage to NPS lands and structures caused by Army missile testing.^[53]

The pattern of park management that unfolded from 1940–1945 would recur throughout the Cold War era. The military pressed Johnwill Faris in November to sign the memorandum without circulating it through proper NPS channels. The state of New Mexico kept up its demands for an atomic monument, and the local chamber of commerce churned out recommendations for improving the marketability of the Tularosa basin. One such suggestion came from L. A. Hendrix, mayor of Alamogordo, who wired the new Secretary of Agriculture, Clinton P. Anderson, requesting that the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic device over Hiroshima be brought to town for display at the junction of U.S. Highways 70 and 54. Alamogordo boosters had already begun to describe their town as "the cradle spot of the release of atomic energy." Stimulating their interest was the temporary storage at the nearby Roswell air base (later renamed Walker AFB) of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombers. All this activity, plus the potential for vast increases in White Sands' visitation, led Johnwill Faris in December to ask NPS officials to change his status as a park service "custodian." Faris believed that his work at the dunes merited the more-prestigious (and better-paid) title of "superintendent." All that Hillory Tolson could advise from Chicago was that the park service distinction between "custodian" and "superintendent" was "arbitrary," having been "approved by high administrative field officials some years ago." Tolson knew of the awkward status of Faris and his monument within the park system, and hoped that "this explanation will enable you to enjoy more thoroughly and with some peace of mind the forthcoming holiday season."^[54]

A non-free image has been removed from this page.

Figure 28. White Sands, New Mexico. Laura Gilpin (1945). Negative
No. 26231.1. Courtesy Laura Gilpin Collection. Copyright 1981. Amon
Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX.

A non-free image has been removed from this page.

Figure 29. White Sands, Laura Gilpin (1943). Negative No. 2600.2. Courtesy Laura Gilpin Collection.
Copyright 1981. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX.