From Dude Ranches to Haciendas: Master Planning at Big Bend National Park, Texas

Abstract

In fall 1934, almost a year before Congress passed Big Bend National Park's enabling legislation, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes received an unusual letter from Albert W. Dorgan, a World War I aviator and unemployed landscape architect in Castolon, Texas. Dorgan asked Ickes for a job assisting in the planning and development of an international park that Dorgan proposed the federal government establish at Big Bend. He enclosed with his resume detailed plans for the park. Dorgan envisioned an "International Peace Park" where each nation in the Western Hemisphere would offer crafts demonstrations, permanent and changing exhibits, and performances of art, music, literature, folklore, and history. Each country would have approximately fifty acres for displays housed in structures reflecting its distinct architectural style. Dorgan's vision also included museums, replicas of frontier towns, and health resorts in the mountains and on the shores of artificial lakes. According to Dorgan, these lakes would be created by dams "planned in such a manner that the natural beauty of the canyons would not be marred." 1 Park personnel would be of the highest caliber: cleancut high school and college students who passed a rigorous screening test. Dorgan also listed ideas that would help overcome Big Bend's geographical isolation. Airplane landing fields would allow affluent guests easy access to the desert park while providing them an opportunity to see Big Bend's scenery from the air. Since most visitors would arrive by automobile, Dorgan's grandest scheme involved a "Super-Scenic Highway" or "Highway Americana" winding from Alaska through the Big Bend and ending at Argentina's southernmost tip. As an added benefit, if diplomacy soured among countries along the route, Dorgan noted that the highway could be used as a "military road" by which the United States could send armies and " 'I bd M . "2 weapons to east y su ue eXlCO. Albert Dorgan was a man ahead of his time. His plans foreshadowed late-twentieth-centuryamusement parks and the interstate highway system. It may be difficult to imagine one of America's scenic national parks with frontier towns, dams, reservoirs, airfields, and extensive development, but Dorgan's dreams for Big Bend were prophetic. AModel Master Plan