Page:Michael Welsh - Dunes and Dreams, A History of White Sands National Monument (1995).pdf/48

 36 Rothman and other students of the park service offer varying comments on the merits of these brief, sometimes colloquial statements that included visitation totals, lists of prominent visitors, commentary on the weather, and reports of construction. In Charles' case, his years as a journalist in Kansas, and later his free-lance articles promoting the Tularosa basin and the dunes, fitted him well to present his case to Pinkley for more staff and facilities. Visitation began with Charles' estimate of 16,540 for the month of August, a figure that stunned other SWNM custodians reading the monthly report. Charles could only count vehicles on Sundays (his day off from insurance work), and calculate the number of visitors daily by guesswork. He also spoke of the need for highway work, both in the monument and out from town, as he believed that his park service unit would host 500,000 people in its first twelve months.

By Labor Day the SWNM superintendent had yet to arrive at White Sands, prompting Charles and his colleagues at the local chamber to plot their own strategy for construction work. The chamber had learned that Governor Arthur Seligman had appointed Jesse L. Nusbaum, former custodian at Mesa Verde National Park and by 1933 director of the Santa Fe-based Laboratory of Anthropology, to select twenty sites in New Mexico to receive work crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). This was the most popular of FDR's work-relief programs, as it removed young single males from urban areas and placed them at work in the countryside. The CCC also required no state matching funds; a factor critical in New Mexico, where the entire state budget that year stood at only $8 million.

By September the Alamogordo chamber had asked Nusbaum for a 200-member CCC camp to begin road work at White Sands. Pinkley agreed, noting that the moderate winter climate could expedite construction. Nusbaum had to deny the request, however, as CCC regulations at that time prohibited work on federal lands. Alamogordo then immediately petitioned another relief agency, the Emergency Conservation Work program (ECW), for one of its winter crews. The NPS learned in November that the newly created Civil Works Administration (CWA) would take over ECW projects, and that a crew could begin soon on access roads, a parking area, boundary surveys, and restrooms built in a style that the NPS described as "Navajo hogan character."

At the end of 1933, Tom Charles could reflect upon a satisfactory year at White Sands. He had shepherded the monument through the labrynth of state and regional politics, and had begun the arduous task of linking NPS strategies with local desires for usage. The state land commissioner had asked for revocation of President Hoover's withdrawal order of 1930, which had limited the state's ability to lease acreage