Tingley Beach, Albuquerque. "In 1933 the Roosevelt Administration
began the Civil Works Administration, which would provide a 90 percent match
for public works projects. The CWA in 1933 and 1934 supported more than 30
projects in Albuquerque, including construction of Roosevelt Park and
Tingley Beach, and provided hundreds of jobs."[1]
"Tingley's beach project was also a stretch. Only Tingley, it seemed,
could see a recreation area where there was only a dump. Tingley arranged
for the conservancy district to divert water for a small lake that became
Conservancy Beach (later Tingley Beach). In 1933-34 the CWA supported more
than 30 projects in Albuquerque."[2]
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Tingley Beach 1936[3]
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"Tingley Beach may be one of the best examples of the political genius
embodied in Depression-era public works projects. It not only employed
people but gave them an inexpensive place to have fun as a community.
Children, teenagers, and employed and unemployed adults shared the beach.
All ages share the raft in the 1934 photo. Kids could be kids
and
part of society. ... Tingley Beach was thoroughly renovated starting in
2004 and was reopened to the public in November 2005. The renovated beach
does not include swimming facilities but does include pedal boat rentals, a
catch-and-release fishing lake, a model boat pond, a children's pond, and
Tingley Station with restaurants, arcade games, bike rentals, and
restrooms."[3]
Sources seem to differ over the federal New Deal role in Tingley beach.
Most likely the original construction occurred in the early 1930s, just
before the New Deal, using state and/city work relief funds (Tingley as a
governor was to New Mexico as Roosevelt was to New York[4]), and then later
federal agencies such as CWA continued the work.
References
- New
Deal Economy, Albuquerque Tricentennial site, accessed 30 November 2018.
- U.S. Statehood
Government, 1912-1945, Albuquerque Tricentennial cite, accessed 30
November 2018.
- Anthony Anella and Mark C. Childs, Imagine a City that Remembers: The
Albuquerque Rephotography Project, University of New Mexico Press
(2018).
- Suzanne Stamatov, There Was a Time
and it Was Tingley's, New Mexico History.org (Office of the State
Historian), accessed 23 November 2018.
- Charles D. Biebel, Making the most of it: public works in Albuquerque
during the Great Depression, 1929-1942, Albuquerque Museum (1986).