Woman, 71, Wins Her Fight to Keep Park Cafe as Hodel Overrules Aide

Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel overruled a decision Wednesday that would have shut down the only private enterprise in Guadalupe Mountains National Park--Mary Hinson’s nine-stool Pine Springs Cafe in remote west Texas.

Hodel’s intervention means that Hinson, 71, who supports a disabled daughter, will be permitted for five more years to continue selling sandwiches, soft drinks and gasoline at the cafe opened by her parents in 1928.

An Interior Department spokesman said Hodel overruled a decision by park Supt. Rick Smith because of a “concern over insensitivity and perhaps a lack of fairness in this issue.”

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) said on Monday that he would push for an act of Congress to require the National Park Service to leave Hinson alone.

Bentsen said James G. Watt, Hodel’s predecessor, had assured Hinson in 1982 that she could stay in business. Watt was a booster of President Reagan’s “privatization” plans to sell or transfer government assets to private business.

Smith said the government bought land owned by Hinson’s parents when the park was established in 1972, but they were permitted to operate their cafe under a use-and-occupancy option for their lifetime.

Bentsen wrote Hodel that the park service tried to evict Hinson “only days after her mother’s funeral” in 1982.

Smith said that Hinson had been granted four extensions on her special use permit and would have to leave by Nov. 1.

Hodel’s intervention, however, extends Hinson’s special use permit for five years.