monies). "We have enough things locked up in New Mexico now," claimed Hawkins. If Bratton felt compelled to accede to Tom Charles' wishes, he said, "for God's sake cut it [the monument] down to a thousand or two thousand acres" from the total of 270 square miles of gypsum.[1]
Hawkins' opposition to creation of the NPS unit developed momentum in February 1930, when Park Service director Horace Albright asked President Hoover to withdraw nine townships (a total of 354 square miles) in the White Sands area for study. Both New Mexico senators, Sam Bratton and Bronson M. Cutting, supported Hoover's action, as did the El Paso and Alamogordo "boards of trade." Hawkins, a veteran of Albert Fall's AYNP deliberations, suddenly found the process of withdrawal highly offensive, and begged Governor Richard C. Dillon to intercede. Hawkins considered especially outrageous the idea that the Interior secretary (Ray Lyman Wilbur) need not "depend upon what is agreed upon in New Mexico, but very largely upon the experts to whom [Wilbur] may commit the [White Sands] question for examination." Dillon complied with Hawkins' request, and prevailed upon Secretary Wilbur not to act as capriciously as Albert Fall had planned a decade earlier when he coveted access to Mescalero lands.[2]
Two problems arose for Tom Charles and the park service after William Hawkins' intervention. The NPS did not have a qualified staff member available to visit White Sands and write a report before the close of the summer tourist season. Director Albright had asked Thomas Boles, superintendent of the nearby Carlsbad Caverns National Park, to examine the dunes as the official observer for the park service. Boles could not make the journey to White Sands, but wrote to Albright stating his belief that the dunes, in the words of Dietmar Schneider-Hector, "did not constitute an interest for the National Park Service." Local businesses also worried, as had William Hawkins, about the precedent of removing the entire dune field from economic development. But Tom Charles wrote to all public officials concerned of the volume of tourist traffic that would stop at White Sands should the monument be created.[3]
Correspondence in 1931 between Charles and parties interested in White Sands revealed the power of Hawkins, Fall, and other business leaders to shape the destiny of White Sands. Arno Cammerer, acting director of the NPS, came to the nearby town of Roswell in July of that year to gauge regional support for the monument. He informed the Roswell chamber of commerce president, J.S.B. Woolford, that the Park Service
- ↑ William Ashton Hawkins, El Paso, to Bratton, January 18, 1930, Governor Richard C. Dillon Papers, NMSRCA.
- ↑ Hawkins to Richard C. Dillon, Governor of New Mexico, March 18, 1930; Dillon to Ray Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the Interior, March 24, 1930; Wilbur to Dillon, April 4, 1930, Dillon Papers, NMSRCA; Schneider-Hector, White Sands, 79.
- ↑ Schneider-Hector, White Sands, 79, 82; L.M. Richard, La Luz Clay Products Company, La Luz, NM, to Bronson M. Cutting, U.S. Senator, January 28, 1931; Charles to "Mr. Hunter," July 6, 1931; A.E. Demaray, Acting Associate Director, National Park Service (NPS), to J.S.B. Woolford, President, Roswell Chamber of Commerce, July 9, 1931, Historical Files 1931–1932, WHSA Library.
