To get things rolling in 1935, Roosevelt had established Delta National Wildlife Refuge, just east of Venice, Louisiana, along the Gulf of Mexico. These forty-nine thousand acres were thick with tens of thousands of wintering waterfowl attracted to the diversity of fish and shellfish species. In the waters around the Delta NWR were speckled trout, redfish, flounder, blue crabs, and shrimp in large quantities. Just as winter sports enthusiasts would travel to Vermont and Idaho to ski, Roosevelt thought that Louisiana’s “ragged boot heel” could become a recreational hub for anglers. At a time when the banks of the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans were lined with oil and gas fields, refineries, warehouses, and petrochemical plants, the notion of saving abused marshland as inviolate wildlife sanctuaries was visionary.
As Roosevelt prepared for his combination fishing and inspection trip to the Gulf South in the spring of 1937, he learned that the National Audubon Society had established twenty bird refuges in Louisiana and Texas. The impressed president, smelling an opportunity, called for the Biological Survey and the private sector to collaborate to enhance the Mississippi Flyway. A joint initiative was undertaken, birds were caught without injury in cage traps, and numbered metal bracelets were “banded” to their legs. The sex, established age, and weight were all estimated. The Paul J. Rainey Wild Life Sanctuary—a twenty-six-thousand-acre oasis along a seven-mile strip located along Louisiana’s Gulf Coast in the marshes of Vermilion Parish—served as a demonstration plot for the modern management of waterfowl. Building on the Rainey model, Roosevelt now also hoped to scout locations for new federal migratory waterfowl refuges along Gulf Louisiana and Texas—stopover safety zones where great flocks could feed, breed, and nest unmolested. The difference was that they would be staffed with wardens supplied by Audubon, making the new refuges a public-private undertaking.1
On April 29, 1937, Roosevelt’s eleven-day fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico started at Biloxi, Mississippi. There, with Governor Hugh L. White by his side, he stopped by Beauvoir, the plantation home where Jefferson Davis wrote his memoir The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. The 608-acre estate, replete with oaks and cedars, operated as a home for Confederate veterans of the Civil War. Five of the ten Confederate veterans, all octogenarians, wore gray uniforms and shakily stood to salute the commander in chief when his car drove up. Eighty-nine-year-old J. C. Cain, who served at the Battle of Shiloh, came forward to present the president with a magnolia blossom.2
From Beauvoir, FDR headed to New Orleans for food, fishing, and an inspection of public works projects. At Antoine’s restaurant, established in 1840, the president ate oysters and pompano, washed down with beer. The WPA had built a “Roosevelt Mall” in New Orleans’s City Park—complete with elegant fountains and miles of lagoons—and the president toured the grounds, impressed by southern live oaks (Quercus virginiana) colorfully named “Suicide Oak,” “Dueling Oak,” and “McDonogh Oak.”3
The principal reason that Roosevelt had come to New Orleans, above and beyond fishing, was to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and to discuss New Deal flood-control policies. That March, shortly after his second inaugural, the entire 981-mile Ohio River, swollen by torrential winter rains, had climbed to record heights. Over one million people were forced to flee their homes. The WPA erected makeshift levees and used sandbags to prevent inundation. The so-called thousand-year flood took more than four hundred lives and caused more than $500 million in damage. This superflood caused Roosevelt to think even more seriously about ways to prevent future calamities.
To Roosevelt, the finest new flood-prevention structure on the Mississippi was the Bonnet Carré Spillway, a project of the Army Corps of Engineers twelve miles south of New Orleans. This engineering marvel was intended to spare New Orleans the ravages of superfloods like the recent Ohio–Mississippi River deluge by allowing floodwaters to flow into Lake Pontchartrain and then drain into the Gulf of Mexico.4 By explaining this connection between the spillway and the recent disaster in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, Roosevelt reassured the nation that the federal government wasn’t asleep at the wheel. The Bonnet Carré Spillway had been opened by federal engineers in March, redirecting some of the excess water from upriver. The citizens of New Orleans were proud that it had worked and that FDR now did them the honor of visiting it. The president implied in his speech that more such spillways would be constructed in coming years along American riverways, but that proper land management would obviate many of the problems of flooding and droughts. Some people might blame God for the Ohio–Mississippi flood of 1937, but Roosevelt blamed deforestation.5
Roosevelt marveled at Louisiana’s vast wetlands, but he was apoplectic about the state’s reckless clear-cutting of trees. During the nineteenth century, over 80 percent of Louisiana had been forested, with vast swaths of virgin oak (Quercus robur), loblolly (Pinus taeda), longleaf (Pinus palustris), slash (Pinus elliottii), and shortleaf (Pinus echinata) pine. By the time of the Ohio-Mississippi flood of 1937, almost all of these forests were gone. The Louisiana lowlands, once blanketed with oak, gum, and cypress, had met a sad fate: machine saws that hissed and coughed and cut up trees for “forest products” like lumber, basket veneer, shingles, handles, hewn railroad ties, fuel, fence posts, telephone poles, and piling. Parishes that had once been considered botanical crossroads—filled with swamp tupelo and delicate water lilies—had been drained until only muck holes remained. Even Louisiana’s biologically blessed bayous were an ecological disaster in the making.
In 1936 Louisiana had the smallest state park system in America; its holdings totaled only twenty-four thousand acres. This bothered Roosevelt. While the CCC had established a foothold in the state, planting huge numbers of trees in several parishes, the “boys” hadn’t been welcomed as in Pennsylvania, California, or Georgia.6 At least at the Kisatchie National Forest, the CCC boys were tending Louisiana’s longleaf pine forests for the sake of future generations.7 But correcting the balance between human needs and stewardship of land and water was an uphill struggle in Louisiana. The destruction of the state’s woodlands had been perpetrated by powerful companies—such as Long-Bell Lumber—that routinely stripped woodlands bare. Many politicians in Baton Rouge were beholden to the timber, oil, and gas industries. Trying to make ends meet during the Great Depression, people in Louisiana, and in the adjacent “big thicket” of Texas, seldom cared about wise-use conservation or replant schemes.8
II
A throng gathered at the New Orleans wharf to bid “skipper Roosevelt” bon voyage as the destroyer USS Moffett left port down the Mississippi to Gulf Texas, where the USS Potomac awaited the president. Wearing his good-luck fishing hat, Roosevelt watched for pelicans and raptors as he headed downriver to the new Delta National Wildlife Refuge. Venice, where the Great River Road ended and began, was the last town on the Mississippi River that Roosevelt studied as he traveled downstream from New Orleans. Now, thanks to the New Deal, the colorful fishing village was the gateway community for the Delta NWR. There was a “last chance” mentality in Venice, reminiscent of Key West and Provincetown, which Roosevelt liked.9
With the president on the ten-day fishing jaunt were his personal secretary Marguerite LeHand; his twenty-six-year-old son Elliott, who was then living in Fort Worth; Captain Paul H. Bastedo of the U.S. Navy; and Dr. Ross McIntire, the president’s personal physician. McIntire’s job was to make sure that FDR was rested and hydrated, and that he found relief from his chronic sinusitis. According to Dr. McIntire, Roosevelt’s rehabilitation from polio had been so successful that he could walk nearly fifty yards with only the aid of an attendant’s arm—quite an accomplishment. Occasionally during the Gulf trip, McIntire would dilate the president’s eyes and check his pulse (from the artery in the back of the neck). Exercise was ordered daily. But, for the most part, the doctor’s prescription for the boss was to have “no humorless nights” and to inhale sea air. “As far as his upper body
was concerned,” McIntire wrote, “he developed it to a degree that would have shamed a heavyweight champion.”10
The great conversationalist of the voyage was Edwin M. “Pa” Watson, FDR’s favorite personal aide. Watson had been born and raised in Virginia’s tobacco region, and the proudest day of his life was entering the U.S. Military Academy; in the same class (1906) were World War II heroes George S. Patton and Jonathan Wainwright. Deep-voiced, blessed with a marvelous Virginia drawl, Watson wasn’t the smartest or most ambitious of the West Point cadets, but he was extremely likable (it was at West Point that he was given the nickname Pa). Watson later served nobly in the Philippines and Mexico, and shortly before World War I, President Woodrow Wilson made him a junior military aide. Wilson only reluctantly let Watson leave the White House to serve with the American Expeditionary Force in France, where he earned a Silver Star for gallantry in battle.
Beginning in 1933 Major General Watson served as Roosevelt’s senior military aide. Almost exact contemporaries, they got along famously, talking a mile a minute, heartily ribbing each other as if brothers. It was Watson who often helped Roosevelt strap on his steel braces many mornings. In coming years, when Roosevelt wanted to get out of Washington, he often paid a visit to Watson’s well-manicured Kenwood estate in Charlottesville, Virginia. The manor had been built by FDR’s cousin, architect William Delano (known for designing the balcony on the South Portico of the White House).11
On this Gulf South trip Roosevelt and Watson served as self-appointed federal scouts looking for the most essential migratory bird habitats to withdraw for protection by the Biological Survey. Taking advantage of the momentum gained by the Delta NWR, Roosevelt now sought to establish a sizable federal wintering region for birds in the Gulf South that would extend from the mouth of Florida’s Saint Marks River through the Mobile Bay region of Alabama, the delta and Cameron regions of Louisiana, and all the way down the east coast of Texas through Galveston, Port Aransas, and Laguna Larga, along the Sabine River in Gulf Texas and eastward to Calcasieu Lake, Louisiana. What fascinated Roosevelt about Texas was that three major migratory flyways converged within its borders; an astounding 625 species of birds had been cataloged.
In 1935, Roosevelt had established Muleshoe Federal Migratory Bird Reservation in Bailey County, Texas, near the New Mexico line. This was the first refuge for sandhill crane (Grus canadensis) in the United States. Smaller than whooping cranes (Grus americana), but similar in proportion, these largely gray cranes were gregarious, noisy, and conspicuous, and flew in large flocks. The Muleshoe grasslands offered ideal habitat for them. Unlike the whooping cranes that migrated on the edge of the Gulf, the adaptable sandhill had moved inland and upland to survive in sanctuaries like Muleshoe.12 In central Wisconsin in 1937, Aldo Leopold wrote his elegant tribute, “Marshland Elegy,” to the sandhill cranes. “When we hear his call we hear no mere bird,” Leopold wrote. “We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.”13
On the heels of the Muleshoe sanctuary came Roosevelt’s second 1935 refuge in Texas, this one largely for the Canada goose (Branta canadensis) and the greater white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons). Located on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma on the Red River between Oklahoma and Texas, Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge saved an important transitional zone between two different ecosystems known as blackland prairies and Eastern Cross Timbers. While both Muleshoe and Hagerman were in Texas, neither was along the Gulf of Mexico. So on his voyage, Roosevelt hoped to find other spots in Texas to establish federal wildlife sanctuaries near the sea.
The Moffett cruised past Galveston toward Rockport, the “birding capital of North America.” A basic schedule was soon established for the Gulf holiday that the press could follow. Every night Roosevelt went to bed at 10 p.m. He then woke up at dawn. Over breakfast, he’d read newspapers, catch up on correspondence, and scan government reports that were shuttled to him by plane and boat at his various anchorages. (For instance, on May 1, his first day on the Potomac, Roosevelt received thirty-eight letters and documents that required his signature “for the first time in Central Standard Time Zone,” after an airplane brought them from Galveston.)14 Then, with Watson by his side, he’d talk to an array of guests about coastal conditions while he relaxed in the sun. One person FDR met was a rookie Democratic congressman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, a self-proclaimed “land conservationist.” Deeply impressed by his political cunning, FDR, on returning to Washington, told adviser Tom Corcoran, “I’ve just met the most remarkable young man. Now I like this boy, and you’re going to help him with anything you can.”15
Many easterners mistakenly assumed that south Texas was a flatland of overgrazed cattle pastures, oil fields, caprock formations, and punishing desert heat. But Roosevelt, the master angler, knew better. No fewer than fifteen major rivers flowed through Texas before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. This made its tidal flats nurseries for all sorts of creatures. Much of the coast was sheltered by barrier islands, such as Galveston, Matagorda, Mustang, and Padre, which were renowned as fishing spots. On this spring trip, everything from redfish (red drum or channel bass) to speckled trout (spotted weakfish) to flounder was at risk when Roosevelt’s keel came near. But the trophy FDR most hoped to haul from the Atlantic was a tarpon (Megalops atlanticus) for the White House’s Fish Room.
What attracted Roosevelt to Gulf Texas in the first place were the jetties and surf of Port Aransas, renowned in sportsmen circles for the Tarpon Rodeo, the most popular fishing tournament in the Gulf of Mexico. Also, Elliott Roosevelt had fished in Port Aransas the previous year and convinced his father that the waters were thick with fish.16 Once the Moffett arrived at PA (as the locals called it), the presidential party was transferred in a dinghy to the steel-hulled USS Potomac. This switch allowed Roosevelt more freedom of movement; the modernized Potomac had an elevator that allowed FDR quick and easy access to both decks.17
On board the Potomac, Roosevelt selected safe harbors and anchorages, performed low-grade chores, and directed the crew’s activities. Amid banter and storytelling on the deck chairs with Pa Watson, he trolled for marine trophies. When he was bored there was always bottom fishing. One rule on the yacht was that FDR, usually wearing dark sunglasses to protect his eyes, played the role of commodore. After the first flash of luck with mackerel, the seas turned still and the fish stopped biting for the president. Refusing to give in to failure, he improvised supper for his crew. A nearby shrimp boat was waved over to visit with the floating White House gang. Flabbergasted to meet the president in the flesh, the fishermen donated two buckets of jumbo Gulf shrimp to the Potomac potluck. A U.S. Navy bulletin reported: “Easterly wind not good for big fish but President and Captain Bastedo got 350 shrimp.”18
Roosevelt (seated) reeled in a seventy-seven-pound, four-foot-eight tarpon off Port Aransas, Texas, on May 10, 1937. His guide, Don Farley (far right), held the fish with help from FDR’s son Elliott.
Strapped in a skipper’s chair, sitting with a straight back, elbows propped on his knees, with a saltwater rod in his hand, a light breeze gathering as the knots increased, Roosevelt was in his element on the Potomac. He was determined to experience the furious runs and jumps of a tarpon—a fish that can weigh hundreds of pounds. Built for speed, but with beautiful raiment, tarpon preferred brackish inlets and bays to open water. In short order Roosevelt caught four handsome kingfish (twenty-three pounds of the party’s fifty-one-pound catch), but not a single tarpon. At such moments, Roosevelt’s physical disability seemed irrelevant. Relaxing over card games with his son, he recalled seeing tarpon at the American Museum of Natural History that were more than seven feet long and weighed three hundred pounds.19
While fishing in gulf waters, the president received news that the Hindenburg, a German zeppelin, had caught fire and was destroyed within seconds when attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New
Jersey. After writing Chancellor Adolf Hitler a letter of condolence, Roosevelt went ashore to study the birdlife on Saint Joseph’s Island, an unpopulated barrier island twenty-one miles long. Numerous species of thrushes, warblers, vireos, tanagers, and grosbeaks popped up in the underbrush with surprising regularity. Ospreys hovered above the president’s head, scanning for prey. Onshore his host, Texan oilman Sid Richardson, took FDR hunting for black-tailed jackrabbit in the sweet bay brush—there was no word about whether the president shot any.20
Resting from time to time at fishing shanties, soaking in the ambience of the vast coastal marsh, Roosevelt was as happy as a kid playing hooky. There were about seven hundred species of grasses in Texas—half of the number of varieties throughout the entire United States—and a swarm of butterflies to enjoy.21 From the piney woods and bayous near Galveston to the prairielands and unspoiled sand beaches near Port Aransas to the mesquite brush of the Hill Country, near Austin, the Texas outdoors exceeded expectations. A couple of farmers and fishermen were stunned to see the president in such a remote part of America, scanning the Gulf coastal prairie with binoculars around his neck. After being exposed to so many species of birds there, Roosevelt, with his “map mind,” determined that much of Mustang Island—where Port Aransas was located—should become a federal waterfowl sanctuary. Besides its pintails, royal terns, coots, green-winged teal, and redhead ducks, the island was appealingly secluded and rich in shrimp.
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