Page:Michael Welsh - Dunes and Dreams, A History of White Sands National Monument (1995).pdf/49

 Chapter Three surrounding the dunes, or to transfer school lands within the monument for acreage outside its boundaries. President Roosevelt lifted the withdrawal by executive order on December 6, 1933, allowing NPS officials to initiate correspondence with state and private landowners and claimants that would give the service unified control of the park unit.

Frank Pinkley finally managed to visit White Sands that October, praising the beauty of the dunes and promising help for road construction. Tom Charles' only regret was that Pinkley warned against excessive use of the dunes by local visitors, who drove over them, burned fire rings in the gypsum for their cook-outs, left trash middens behind, and carried away buckets of gypsum for personal use. Charles wrote in his October report to Pinkley that nature restored itself at the monument. "Tonight's mountain breeze will heal today's most tragic scar," he said, and described NPS rules as "the cold policy of 'undisturbed.

For the remainder of the winter of 1933–1934, Tom Charles shared his monument with the work crew from the Civil Works Administration. No sooner had the laborers begun to cut an eight-mile clay-based road into the dunes than did Charles receive word from Santa Fe that all CWA projects would be halted. CWA chief Harry Hopkins disliked the national pattern of project directors exceeding his limits on the category of expenditures called "other than labor" costs (overhead). FDR's relief programs had been intended to place as many unemployed workers in jobs as quickly as possible, with a minimum of cost overruns or budget shortages; the easier to blunt intense conservative criticism that characterized the New Deal as "make-work" artificial solutions better left to the free market.

The Hopkins edict would be the first of many such "stop" orders to plague New Deal work crews at White Sands and elsewhere. This echoed the experimental nature of the president's relief efforts, and contributed to the peripatetic nature of NPS policy planning. For Tom Charles, however, the solution was simple: contact political officials responsible and ask for guidance. Again he wired Senator Cuttting, who suggested that he correspond with Margaret Reeves, state director of the CWA. Charles told Reeves that his road project, then 25 percent complete, required heavy non-labor costs because crews had to be transported daily to and from the monument a distance of thirty-plus miles. In addition, the road crews utilized 24 horses drawing repair wagons, with resultant costs for feed, stables, and transportation for the animals. Margaret Reeves then told Charles to contact the congressional delegation for further advice on restoring supplies and materials to the 104-member CWA unit.