Resulting from the Holley report and Major Burges’ efforts, and culminating Jim White’s two-decade battle against indifference and unbelief, came the decision to make the cave area a National Monument. President Coolidge’s proclamation of October 25th, 1923, created the Carlsbad Cave National Monument. Jim White’s application for the position of custodian of the new National Monument had the support of the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce, and it was accepted. But Jim was informed there was no salary attached to that job; so then he filed his application for the job of Chief Ranger, which carried a salary. That position he promptly received. One day shortly after he’d been made Chief Ranger, Jim White had a party in the cave. He pointed to the main entrance high above and said to a visitor: “Lowering people in the old bucket down to the Bat Cave is too slow. Some of these days I’m going to build a stairway from where we are sitting, clear up through that main opening.” Through the kindness, generosity and foresight of several Carlsbad citizens, Jim White’s stairway was built a few months later. More than a hundred thousand people used it during the next seven years, until the National Park Service completed the trail that slopes gently down the side of the wall ... a means of entrance far better than the old stairway. Dr. Vernon Bailey was sent to the caverns to do the biological survey on the bats. Seeing the strange mammals hanging aloft in sleep, Dr. Bailey observed that there couldn’t be more than a thousand in the whole cave. Jim White told him to stick around and watch them fly. Bailey did. In his book called “Animal Life of Carlsbad Cavern”, he used the numerical description “Three million” when he wrote of that first bat-flight which he watched. In 1930, the caverns Jim White had explored were redesignated. On May 14th of that year an Act of Congress established the Carlsbad Caverns National Park, with a resident Superintendent in charge, assisted by a force of trained rangers, engineers and electricians. [Illustration: _Government Buildings and Parking Terraces Adjacent to the Entrance to Caverns_] THE CAVERNS BECOME A NATIONAL PARK By 1927 Jim White had begun to see his fondest dreams materialize—those dreams about showing to the world what was to become Carlsbad Caverns National Park. People from literally all over the world were hearing of it, and were arriving in crowds.