surveys or studies of their feasibility; and it made no provisions for funding the establishment or maintenance of such a park.[1]
Secretary Fall and Senator Bursum, on the other hand, believed that the NPA was of no consequence, a theory seemingly vindicated by the speed with which S. 3519 moved through the Senate. On July 7, Bursum asked the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to consider the measure, with neither reading nor discussion of the bill's contents. Distracted by a lengthy debate on tariff rates, the senators approved the measure unanimously, accepting Bursum's logic that the bill was now "purely local in character and affected only New Mexico," as well as extending a courtesy to a former Senate member (Fall). By sending the bill to Indian Affairs, Fall had bypassed the Public Lands Committee, the normal deliberative body for national parks. He also promised the Indian Affairs senators that the AYNP bill "will be more for the interests of the Mescaleros than any other legislation of recent years concerning other reservation Indians and their properties."[2]
Logic and procedure such as this gave Robert Sterling Yard and John Collier the leverage they needed to defeat Fall's park bill and Pueblo lands legislation. For the remainder of 1922 the NPA and Collier's Indian Rights Association (IRA) campaigned in Washington for rejection of Fall's agenda, with contributions pouring in from wealthy benefactors. As the pressure mounted, Fall slowly retreated from his measures, though not without vehement denials of charges of conflict of interest. On January 3, 1923, while Congress still debated the AYNP, Fall tendered his resignation as Secretary of the Interior. By year's end he would be implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal, Warren Harding would die of mysterious causes just as the scale of the "Harding scandals" became public knowledge, Vice-President Calvin Coolidge would promise vigorous prosecution of officials like Fall, and John Collier would become the premier advocate of Indian policy reform.[3]
Local sponsors of White Sands knew of the bitterness engendered in Congress by Albert Fall's scheme, and plotted their strategy accordingly. In the mid-1920s the U. S. Forest Service discussed a program of increased usage of the Lincoln National Forest, including recreation and logging. This would also bring more federal spending to the Tularosa basin, as would talk of new reclamation projects for southern New Mexico. The Republican State Central Committee wrote to party members in the area to enlist support for Senator Bursum, who promised as part of his re-election campaign to increase federal spending in the state. Louis W. Galles, state director of the party's "Coolidge and Dawes Clubs," named for the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates for 1924, wrote to L.O. Piersol of Alamogordo stating that Bursum's access to the federal treasury meant everything to New Mexico. "Don't forget," said Galles,
