Page:Michael Welsh - Dunes and Dreams, A History of White Sands National Monument (1995).pdf/64

 52 Contributing to Happer's woes at White Sands were the unexpected legal delays caused by the mineral-rights leaseholders at Garton Lake. Happer solicited testimonials from NPS and state officials to the scarcity of oil on the property, hoping that this would suffice to release federal funds. Tom Charles also asked for monies for road construction in the monument, as three accidents at the park entrance in February and March caused two fatalities and serious injury to nine other passengers. The failure of the well casing also harmed plans for the bird sanctuary, as muddy water and botulism (alkali poisoning) killed fish and fowl alike. Then the leaseholders either refused to deed their claims to the NPS, or tried to get more money from the government than the appraised mineral value.

The year 1937 marked a turning point for White Sands and its benefactor, the Roosevelt administration. Because 1936 had been an election year, FDR's staff had released large sums of money for public works projects to attract voters' attention. This strategy thus increased White Sands' emergency relief monies by a factor of 39, from $2,400 in fiscal year 1936 to $78,161 in the following year. For the next three years White Sands received smaller, though still substantial grants for construction work, so that by 1940 the federal government's relief investment topped $256,000. Completion of highway paving and the visitors center-headquarters complex owed much to this generosity. In addition, the NPS could mount a serious campaign to identify a stable source of water for the expanding visitation base (108,000 in 1937, a figure not to be matched until after World War II).

The infusion of such federal capital made Tom Charles' role at the monument less critical than when he served as the only park service representative at the dunes. WPA construction of employee residences brought more staff, which in turn changed the strategy for counting visitors. Early in 1937 Frank Pinkley asked Charles to adjust his numbers for variations in weekday and weekend usage. To do so, Charles and a "volunteer," Barry Mohun (the son of a wealthy eastern family who paid his salary at White Sands for six months), counted cars for 59 days, compared these to the written registrations, and calculated that 14 percent of all visitors signed the log book at the