Page:Michael Welsh - Dunes and Dreams, A History of White Sands National Monument (1995).pdf/75

 Chapter Three marketplace. To Lucy Lepper Shaw, Tom Popejoy, and other NYA officials, however, learning Spanish-style crafts would provide youth with employment at home, and would take advantage of the 1930s fascination with Southwestern cultures.

Shaw and Bennett agreed that Camp Capitan would produce 53 tin light fixtures for the interior of the White Sands visitors center. "We are very anxious to do a good job," Shaw wrote to Vernon Randau in Santa Fe, "so we will not rush this order." Bennett liked this cautious approach, noting that the young women "could possibly give us a fair job altho not as good as if they [the fixtures] were contracted by a reliable firm." He did concede that the Capitan workers "have done some beautiful hand woven articles." Milton McColm of Region Three agreed, telling the Washington office that "to contract for these fixtures on the open market, the cost is entirely excessive." In addition, said McColm, "there is no labor nor supervisory personnel at White Sands capable of making or directing the making of these fixtures." In an ironic twist, SWNM superintendent Frank Pinkley, champion of instructing the tourist public about the distinctiveness of the region, offered the only discordant note. While signing the work order for Camp Capitan, he wrote in longhand in the margin to his superiors in Santa Fe: "Understand, I am only officially approving these fixtures. Personally I think all these tin fixtures look like hell."

The superintendent's displeasure at the lack of sophistication in Spanish colonial tinwork reiterated a troubling sentiment in the NPS: how to balance the park service's national standards, Pinkley's own perspective on regional distinction, and Tom Charles' appreciation of local tastes and demands. All of this had surfaced before at the dunes, beginning with the Toll and Boles feasibility studies. The inherent tension between "insider" and "outsider" had its denouement in 1938 with the appointment by Pinkley of Jim Felton as the first true "park ranger," the staff member charged with public contact and oversight of daily activities. Felton and his wife stayed only until May, but his running correspondence with Pinkley, and his debates with Tom Charles, revealed the gap between park service professionalism and local boosterism.

Felton echoed the complaints of other NPS observers that White Sands was a victim of parochial interests. "In the past," Felton wrote to Pinkley on February 28, "visitors have driven their cars to any point in the sand they thought possible." Anticipating the annual increase in visitation triggered by the arrival of spring (especially Easter services and Play Day), Felton asked Pinkley to institute "true Park Standards." These included closure of the monument at night; relocation of the access road and parking area away from the dunes; constant ranger patrols; and, "in the near future, a