By Rick Hendricks Keynote Address Three Trails Conference, Santa Fe, NM, 18 September 2015 I consider myself something of a Jack of All Trails. In the course of what is beginning to seem like a rather long career, I have been researching, lecturing, and writing about New Mexico history…
Just as dawn was breaking one August day in 1824, three horsemen, who spearheaded a long wagon train, reined in under an enormous cottonwood tree. They gazed up at the purplish peaks of what is now Mt. Franklin. From the heights on the northeastern side of the middle peak,…
Transcontinental Air Transport plane crashes on Mt. Taylor, 1929 1929 Airliner Crash on Mt. Taylor Falls off the FAA Historical Radar Screen By Mark Thompson Albuquerque: Present at the Birth of Commercial Aviation The Associated Press said it was the first crash on a regular commercial land route. The…
America's 1st Commercial Spaceport Blooms in the Desert By Leonard David SPACE.com’s Space Insider Columnist New Mexico's Spaceport America is no longer the stuff of fancy graphics. The scene is now one of bulldozers and other heavy equipment. Loads of asphalt and concrete are being spread. The initial phase…
Coming of the Iron Steed: Railroads of Santa Fe County 1880-2010 By Fred Friedman Introduction: Santa Fe has been a railroad town since 1880, when the first locomotive backed all the way up from Galisteo Junction, now known as the community of Lamy, because there was no facility in…
By Rick Hendricks Some astronauts flying on Apollo missions were allowed to take small personal items along. When he went to the moon in 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa, a former US Forest Service (USFS) smokejumper, took tiny tree seeds to see how a trip to the moon…
By Rick Hendricks On Friday 4 October 1929, Roy W. Johnson, football coach of the University of New Mexico Lobos, and Tom Popejoy, graduate manager of athletics at the University took in a game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. They were scouting Occidental College in its contest…
By Rick Hendricks The traditional view of trade with the commercial centers of Nueva Vizcaya and New Mexico is limited to the triannual mission supply caravan and some limited participation by New Mexico's governors. The reality is much more complex. Frontiers entrepreneurs from such communities as Parral and San…
By John P. Wilson A new era in cross-country communications opened in October 1858, when the Butterfield Overland Mail linked the westernmost railroad line in Missouri with San Francisco in California. The stagecoaches and lighter celerity wagons completed their 2,800 mile runs in as little as twenty-one days….
Coming of the Iron Steed: Railroads of Santa Fe County 1880-2010 By Fred Friedman Santa Fe has been a railroad town since 1880, when the first locomotive backed all the way up from Galisteo Junction (now known as the community of Lamy) because there was no facility to…
