Page:Michael Welsh - Dunes and Dreams, A History of White Sands National Monument (1995).pdf/106

 94 (one of the few remaining New Deal labor programs) to fulfill duties that the NPS had never been able to accomplish.

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.

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 Built in 1933 by the CWA, the road had been replaced by an asphalt route, but visitors sometimes followed the old path by mistake.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."

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