Page:Michael Welsh - Dunes and Dreams, A History of White Sands National Monument (1995).pdf/80

 68 What ensued (as Pinkley had predicted) was a firestorm of local protest that nearly ruined Tom Charles' last summer as the White Sands custodian. Reactions ranged from a temperate plea from the Alamogordo chamber of commerce to Harold Ickes, Interior secretary, to the accosting on an Alamogordo street of Johnwill Faris by H. H. Stevenson, one of the promoters of creation of the monument. On weekends, ranger Faris spent 16–17 hours daily at the dunes, "borrowing" WPA crew members to provide security and maintenance. Faris also faced the aggravation of "turnarounds," local vehicles filled with visitors who refused to pay the entrance fee once they had driven the fifteen miles out from town. Then the numbers came in: June 1939 had only 2,429 paid admissions; a decline of 75 percent from the previous June. The attributed nearly all the visitation decrease throughout the SWNM system to the White Sands fee, calling it "just another tax that is unjust and detrimental." The charge prohibited visitors from gaining access to their own park service unit, and perhaps more seriously, kept "much money out of the cash registers of businessmen in the vicinity."

Lost in the furor over the entrance fee was Johnwill Faris' unique request for additional staff. Since Pinkley had no men to release from other parks, Faris suggested the hiring of a woman as the White Sands museum attendant. "Ordinarily I am very much opposed to a woman ranger," said Faris, "but somehow feel that in this particular instance it would be wise to consider a museum attendant being a girl." He predicted that White Sands' visitation "will have many women and children and it is surprising how many [women] are alone," or who were accompanied by "groups of children." The ranger could not articulate his logic clearly, but did suggest: "It would be much less embarrassing to have a woman attendant than perhaps any man."

Pinkley's response was immediate and characteristically abrupt. "First, we don't check with you in getting a woman attendant," said the superintendent. Because White Sands was "particularly undermanned," a male employee could work "on any of the dozen or so outside jobs which always will be coming up, whereas the woman's capacity to handle any but the museum work would be limited." Not able to envision a time when the park service included women in many formerly all-male positions (including superintendent), Faris nonetheless acknowledged the essential fairness of his proposal: "Perhaps I haven't the picture as clearly as I should, but I believe in our eventual scheme we will still be wise to consider a woman in that connection."

Johnwill Faris predicted a different future for White Sands, and for women in the NPS, in part because of the unfolding plans for the visitors center and museum. The park service had received much more funding for the facility than many thought possible,