By Rick Hendicks New Mexicans became interested in the question of an appropriate state flower years before the territory achieved statehood. In 1906 an unnamed writer for the Las Vegas Daily Optic suggested, perhaps with tongue firmly planted in cheek, that given the opportunity to vote for a state…
The twentieth century has taken its toll on the remnants of prehistoric civilization in Chaco Canyon. By Robin Wakeland Sun washes it with white light, wind beats desert grit in and out of its plumbline crevices, and relentless rain dissolves adobe plaster with which it was built. Tourists trample…
This essay explores how different communities in the Grants-Gallup area engaged in landscape construction and place-making, and how those processes changed with the introduction of uranium mining. By David Salmanson At the college where I taught a course in Environmental History, I took my class…
Cultural Resource Reconnaissance and Historical Overview of Canyon Road Hydroelectric Power Plant An archaeological survey and historical research were conducted as part of planned improvements to the old Santa Fe Hydroelectric Plant. This 51-page document reveals the history of water use and delivery systems to the area of downtown…
Just fourteen weeks after the accident at Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania, thirty four years to the day after the first atomic test explosion at Trinity, New Mexico, the largest, by volume, single release of radioactive poisons in the history of United States occurred in the town of Church…
Las Cruces snags honor as nation's top farmers market Santa Fe garners few votes in online contest By Staci Matlock for the Santa Fe New Mexican The Las Cruces Farmers Market was voted the most popular large farmers market in the nation in an online contest sponsored by the…
by Traci Brynne Voyles Beginning in the 1930s with the Navajo Soil Erosion Control Project, Navajo land and people became the subjects of intense federal scrutiny; in subsequent decades, this project and others such as those run under the Defense Minerals Procurement Agency and the Atomic Energy Commission catalyzed…
By David Correia From February 1889 until the summer of 1891 a clandestine organization of night riders known as Las Gorras Blancas cut the fences and burned the barns of ranchers enclosing the Las Vegas Land Grant commons and destroyed railroad ties and burned bridges in a related effort…
By John T. “Jack” Becker For more than seventy summers, Boy Scouts, Explorers, and their leaders from all over the world converge on New Mexico’s Philmont Scout Ranch. Their goal is to experience the high adventure activities offered by the largest outdoor youth facility in the world. Located in…
By Juan Estevan Arellano Mention the word piñon (also spelled pinyon) to a native New Mexican and immediately the word conjures up all sorts of images. The first that comes to mind is that of sitting on a bench in the resolana (south face of building) in the fall…
