The strain under which White Sands operated by the mid-1950s echoed that of park service units across the country. Demands for improved services and better access to the system's treasures prompted NPS officials to inaugurate a ten-year plan called "Mission 66." Planned to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the park service, Mission 66 began with a system-wide series of "area management studies." The regional team sent to the dunes in 1956 included James Carpenter (administrative officer), Philip Wohlbrandt (engineer), Erik Reed (chief of interpretation), and David Canfield (chief of operations). They produced a lengthy document in January 1957 that explained for the first time the scale and scope of White Sands, and offered suggestions for remedies to the problems that Johnwill Faris and his staff knew so well.
The area management study began by noting White Sands' size (seventh in acreage of the system's 85 monuments). The team identified boundary status problems with the neighboring military bases, and also the heavy volume of local visitation "on special occasions." Among its Mission 66 recommendations were permanent and seasonal employee housing to aid staff in the volatile real-estate market of Alamogordo, and reduction by means of a "diplomatic effort" in the number of "local celebrations." Among these were Play Day and the Fourth of July fireworks; the latter a fire hazard in the heat and crowds of mid-summer (both events were terminated by 1960). The team called for additional full-time staff (a naturalist and museum attendant); extensive repairs to buildings (painting and sealing); steam-cleaning of garbage cans to improve sanitation: and the incorporation of these recommendations within the next three years.[1]
Regional officials in Santa Fe reviewed the White Sands Mission 66 report, but failed to recognize the severity of conditions at the monument. Johnwill Faris spoke bluntly in September 1957 when he learned that the region disagreed with his "justification of our extension of picnic facilities and enlargement of our Visitor Center building." Faris found most annoying the region's "request for brevity," in that he had linked expansion of the physical plant to the increase of visitation. "Whether we like it or not," said Faris, "our area is of the type that is very popular with picnickers." Referring to the review team's study, he reminded his superiors that "according to estimates made during our early years of development, our present unit is ideal for approximately 50,000 visitors per year." Showing little patience with the rhetoric of Mission 66, Faris concluded: "Present inadequacies must be corrected and an expansion program inaugurated, or we will fall increasingly short of our Service goal with the passing years."[2]
Johnwill Faris' confrontation with his superiors reached a critical stage in 1960, after fifteen years of explosive growth at the monument. In his 22nd year at White Sands (21 as superintendent), Faris had labored under the strain of visitation, environment, and NPS management to make the dunes become a professional and
