Read more on Big Bend National Park terminations and possible impacts on the park.
TRI-COUNTY — The future of Marfa’s Blackwell School National Historic Site, one of the nation’s newest parks, and one of few dedicated to preserving Mexican American heritage, is uncertain due to recent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) actions to curb the federal workforce.
“There’s a lot of things that have unfortunately converged at this moment in time where Blackwell School National Historic Site really is at risk of not only not being open more fully, the way it should be, with a full staff, but it’s at risk of not being able to be open at all,” said Daniel Hernandez, president of the Blackwell School Alliance.
The Blackwell School served as a de-facto segregated school for Mexican American students from 1909 to 1965. In 2022, after 16 years of advocacy on behalf of alumni, activists and lawmakers, the Blackwell National Historic Site Act was signed into law, officially designating the adobe schoolhouse as a federal park.
Since then, efforts have been underway to seek public input on a foundation document, develop a scope of collections and interpretive plan, assess the structure’s integrity and determine site accessibility. Staff from the nearby Fort Davis National Historic Site — a frontier military post established in 1854 — are in charge of administering Blackwell while it awaits its own park rangers.
Hernandez said the site is almost “in a worse position” now than before it was a National Historic Site (NHS) because of the federal hiring freeze. Volunteers from the alliance, which formed in 2006, used to run the space as a museum. But that option is no longer available, Hernandez said, due to a lack of signed volunteer agreements required by the parks service.
“We were under the impression that once the site was established the federal government would come in and start staffing and doing the interpretive work and everything that needs to happen at a new park,” Hernandez said. “But a lot of that is just largely on hold because of the change in administration.”
For now, Fort Davis NHS employees ensure Blackwell remains open to visitors on Saturdays and Sundays. But that’s a concern for Hernandez, who fears NPS is “hamstrung” by the hiring freeze, unable to hire Blackwell employees and seasonal workers, meaning closures could be coming. The superintendency at Fort Davis NHS is also vacant after the resignation of David Larson at the end of the year.
“From what I know, staffing at Fort Davis is a challenge as it is and being down a superintendent and also needing to co-manage this brand new national park site, it’s just proved to be a real challenge for them,” Hernandez said.
The only Blackwell employees that have been brought on so far, to Hernandez’s knowledge, have been temporary interns from entities including the Student Conservation Association and the Latino Heritage Internship Program that have partnered with the parks service.
Fort Davis NHS Interim Superintendent Doug Olds did not respond to a request for comment from The Big Bend Sentinel. Chief of Interpretation Chelsea Rios, who is working with Blackwell closely, according to Hernandez, declined to comment, and recommended the paper reach out to the NPS Office of Communications. That office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Hernandez said the region’s national parks are a major economic driver — the Fort Davis NHS generated $2.7 million for the local economy in 2023, according to the NPS — and with spring break fast approaching, it would be a shame to see visitors who travel across the country to the area turned away due to staffing shortages that could otherwise “be solved very quickly.”
“We’re on a collision course towards disaster in the Big Bend region in terms of our public lands,” Hernandez said. “The services and the visitation experience that people have come to expect is not going to be what’s waiting for them if things don’t change very soon.”
Someone familiar with regional Department of Interior operations who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said, to their knowledge, no one employed at Fort Davis NHS full time has been fired. They were aware of a regional Geographic Information System (GIS) worker involved at the park that was fired by DOGE due to their probationary status.
Fort Davis NHS employees were issued a return to work order on Monday, which requires them to be at the site without the option for remote work, the anonymous source said. The park, like many across the nation, is understaffed with a need for more seasonal workers, they said.
Federal employees, including local NPS staff, received the initial “fork in the road,” email weeks ago from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) encouraging them to retire early or leave to go into private sector jobs. Then, this past Saturday, federal employees received an email — which DOGE’s Elon Musk claimed credit for — titled “what did you do last week?” instructing them to respond by midnight on Monday with five things they accomplished the prior week or risk being fired.
On Monday afternoon, the Department of the Interior, which manages the NPS, sent an email, viewed by The Sentinel, to its employees stating that the email was legitimate and to respond with the five bullet points and cc: their manager. Once that guidance was issued, Fort Davis NHS supervisors had all employees respond, the anonymous source said.
“They sat us all down, and they basically made us respond to the five bullets just to cover our asses and be like, at least you did something, they can’t fire you,” the anonymous source said. “It’s kind of sad to me that our local people wouldn’t push back a little harder.”
The anonymous source said routine performance evaluations for park employees are already in place, and that the recent DOGE actions are “demoralizing,” with an apparent goal of “trying to undercut job protections.”
The emails, staffing cuts at parks across the state and country, and uncertainty about the next federal budget and potential shut downs are creating a fearful working environment, they said. “This whole thing, it’s just sowing chaos,” they said. “It’s really frustrating a lot of employees.”