The euphoria of 1916 (excluding the third congressional rejection of Fall's park) met the sobering realities of 1917 for New Mexico and the Tularosa basin. American entry into war in Europe coincided with turmoil in Mexico, where Senator Fall and other investors lost access to their oil properties because of the prolonged Mexican revolution. Economic constraints in wartime (among them cessation of railroad shipping) burdened Albert Fall with bad debts. The senator tried to sell his water rights to the EPNE railroad, but met opposition from Mescalero farmers who charged that this would endanger their irrigation water. Then in 1920 Fall further irritated the Mescaleros by fighting plans of the Indian Service to sell $500,000 of tribal timber for reinvestment in a 10,000-head tribal herd. Fall held grazing leases on the reservation, and believed that expansion of Mescalero cattle would overgraze tribal lands and reduce the value of his leases.[1]
Albert Fall gained leverage with the Mescaleros, and with Congress, when in 1921 he became Secretary of the Interior. Fall and his successor in the U.S. Senate, Holm O. Bursum of Socorro, hoped to revive a variety of economic development schemes that had been blocked by Progressives in Washington or delayed by the exigencies of World War I. These would include national park proposals, opening of Indian lands to mineral exploration, quieting title to Pueblo Indian lands contested by non-Indian owners, and easing of federal restrictions on western resource development. This strategy would generate a highly emotional resistance in New Mexico and nationwide, culminating in Fall's prosecution and, ironically, in the promotion of a separate White Sands monument by the Alamogordo insurance agent, Tom Charles.
Secretary Fall employed some of the marketing ideas of the "See America First" campaign that the NPS had supported during the First World War. Designed to stimulate travel to the parks, and thus extract more financial support from Congress, the NPS also encouraged formation of private lobbying groups, such as Robert Sterling Yard's National Park Association (NPA). During the gubernatorial administration of William McDonald (1912–1917), New Mexico business and civic leaders formed a statewide version of the NPA, the "National Park Association of New Mexico." Before the war its primary concern had been creation north of Santa Fe of the "Cliff Cities National Park," later to become Bandelier National Monument. In addition, the NPA petitioned Congress for a $500 million "national Park to Park highways" project. Senator Bursum offered to "push the matter vigorously," as New Mexico desperately needed outside funding to improve its meager transportation network.[2]
Along with building momentum within the state for national parks and their federal expenditures, Fall asked William Hawkins and Richard Burgess to campaign for a disconnected national park containing Mescalero lands and the Elephant Butte dam and reservoir, a two-million acre-foot water project on the Rio Grande north of Las Cruces.
- ↑ Kelly, Assault on Assimilation, 168–69.
- ↑ Runte, National Parks, 106; William Boone Douglass, Secretary, National Park Association of New Mexico, to Merritt C. Mechem, Governor of New Mexico, May 4, 1921, Letters Received and Letters Sent Files, Governor Merritt C. Mechem Papers, NMSRCA (cited as Mechem Papers).
