Cocoposts

Sonoran Spring

Oh God. The traffic on I-10. The lines of trucks - are they talking  about me? Do they still have CB?  There are very few good horse trainers. There are very few good truck drivers. Can I say that? Will they hear me on their CB’s? Are they out to get me? 

I travel alone. I always have but haven’t felt OK about it until now in my sixth decade. Eating alone, going to museums alone, attending performances and concerts alone, streets fairs and tours alone. But here’s the thing - you’re never alone. People are everywhere. You sit next to them, walk next to them, eat next to them, drive down the highway next to them. Sleep almost next to them in thin walled motels. People are everywhere. And if you’ve ever traveled with someone you don’t get along with, you realize it’s a relief to be able to set yourself a bit apart from all of them. Even the nice ones. It’s a relief to be “alone” this way. 

Deming  GOP headquarters and Mimbres pots at the museum

I-10 makes I-25 look like my driveway in comparison. I-40 is even more crowded and chaotic. The trucks have business so I give them leeway and practice the etiquette I was taught long long ago: signal, don’t hang out in their blind spots, be patient, never flip them off.

At Deming I went to the museum in the old armory building and enjoyed the Mimbres collection. Then I checked into the Best Western and ate the chicken drumsticks and peanut butter and honey sandwich I had packed with wine from the LesCombes winery. Sweet. Too sweet.

I took off in the morning to avoid the expected afternoon wind and stopped again at Benson Arizona to visit another museum. It was a collection of railroad, mining and the settlement history. There was a tiny collection of huge mammoth bones but no mention of indigenous groups. Grumpy men sat near the doorway as if to keep them out. An attentive docent showed off the old dentist chairs, rolltop desks, and cabinets full of ephemera belonging to early residents that might be found on eBay. 

I headed west, intent on finding more evidence of early history somewhere. 

In Dragoon I came upon Amerind Museum, Art Gallery and Research Center by delightful accident. I took the tight turn of the exit ramp on a whim, intending to get to the Dragoon Spring and stagecoach station on the Butterfield Stage route. Within seconds of the harrowing interstate full of fast giant trucks was the narrow slow road to Dragoon. I opened the sun roof and turned up the radio.

My quest for the stagecoach stop ended at a closed gate and private ranch land. I headed back, disappointed but unwilling to trespass. The sign at the turn for Amerind noted it opened at ten and I took the turn. The broad drainage strewn with huge rounded boulders is called Texas Canyon. 

The old ranch turned museum and research center contains a vast collection of Native American artifacts and contemporary native art. It also has miles of trails through the big beautiful boulders.

The wind was roaring when I reached the eastern edge of Tucson. Anxious to leave I-10 I explored the far eastern edges of the sprawl. Eventually I reached old Fort Lowell, but the wind was too fierce to allow any exploration. 

I checked into my beautiful room at the Arizona Inn, designed by the same architect of the Amerind Institute, Merritt Starkweather, who favored the Mission style and dusty rose stucco.

The two days of the Tucson Book Festival at the University of Arizona went quickly. It was well-organized and full of great speakers. It was fabulous and also overwhelming, free and well-attended. I packed my schedule with sessions.

Is this thing on?

This proverbial question at presentations wasn’t asked much. Things ran remarkably smoothly considering the crowds, lines and event spaces. I attended seven sessions in two days and came away informed and inspired. I also purchased books. Note for next year: budget for the books. Maureen  Dowd at Tucson Book Fest

 

The sessions I attended were almost all about current politics. Titles like The Dangerous Manipulators, Freedom Under Fire, Searching for the Truth, and Reconciling in Trump’s World capture the drift of the sessions. All were excellent, if not very uplifting. Random advice: You must stand up. Voting isn’t enough. There hasn’t been a good President since Madison (according to Turley.) The Federalist Society has become the GOP’s “one stop shop” for judges. Conduct and content of “free speech” are different.  Fifty years of not weaponizing the Justice Department has vanished under Trump. Just stating the facts won’t work to convince the right. There are no good billionaires who’ll save us.

 Most importantly: There is hope in the local. 

 

Local Tucson brewery

I needed to explore the desert to recover. 

 I toured the Los Morteros Conservation Area in Marana and the Picture Rocks site on Spring Equinox with a guide from the Old Pueblo Archaeology Center. The first is a Hohokam site featuring mortars in natural rock outcrops used to grind mesquite pods into flour. While we were walking I ordered mesquite flour that I’ve since used to make cookies and pancakes. It’s orangish in color and has a nutty flavor. 

The Picture rocks site features a sun spiral with a shaft of light or dagger that points to its center at midday on the Spring equinox. We careened to the site in a caravan of cars and arrived at the Catholic retreat to watch as it happened. Tour attendees were respectful and quiet but for the memorable and not insignificant sound of feet crunching through gravel. 

On another tour of the San Xavier del Bac Mission I learned about Father Kino who established it and many others. I found out that it was once a part of the Santa Fe diocese. The Spanish Gothic architecture is unique and unrivaled, even by the California missions. We were told it was once abandoned completely and that people took shelter within its walls, making fires that blackened the wall paintings that took decades to clean and restore.  

The Mission Garden is located at the site of a village and another mission once located at the foot of Sentinel Peak. The site is  “Tucson’s birthplace” and origin of the Tucson name, “Cuk Son” meaning something like “Black Base.” The gardens are relatively new but the site is ancient. Over 4000 years of cultivation has occurred at its location within the Santa Cruz River floodplain. The plots each demonstrate a different era in Tucson’s agricultural heritage, from Native American to Statehood. 

This was one of the multiple botanical experiences I enjoyed that also included theTucson Botanical Garden and the 49 acre Tohono Chul gardens. There I watched an outdoor performance of the Mozart opera, The Secret Gardener, by Arizona Opera. Midway through the opera a woman had an apparent stroke as the tenor was singing about dying of unrequited love. She looked like she had recovered by the time the emergency team wheeled her out. The opera was never paused and many didn’t notice because it was that engaging of a performance.

My Airbnb hosts, who work at the University of Arizona in an arts and cultural capacity, generously invited me to a party for the Martha Graham dancers and a sold out performance the following night at Centennial Hall. 

I also went to the Tucson Museum of Art and Tucson’s Fourth Avenue Street Fair. I took a tour of Barrio Viejo and afterwards enjoyed a margarita with the guide and several attendees. On another tour I learned about the Fort Lowell site which, as the guide suggested, reflects the entire history of Tucson and southern Arizona.

My final nights were spent at the Hotel Congress downtown. The place is character rich with vintage elements. It is also known for performances it hosts. I enjoyed jazz and flamenco shows while there. Guests are warned it is a loud hotel. In fact you have to sign something acknowledging this when you check in. Somehow I thought it was about the music, but the walls are also very thin and my room was above the kitchen.  

At 10:53PM on the first night I woke to yelling. The man didn’t seem drunk. He wasn’t slurring his curses at all. They reverberated down the halls with perfect clarity as he fought with his girlfriend who pleaded with him as a little dog barked. It went on for quite a while and at one point I heard another guest asking him to be quiet. “We’ve got kids. We’re trying to sleep,” to which he responded with loud mockery. That must have been the final straw as it ended soon after that. In the morning I remarked about the “performance art” at the reception desk and was told the police took him away. Subsequent nights were much quieter. By comparison.

I explored downtown on my final day, visiting the Pima County Courthouse and the memorial to the shooting that occurred in 2011. The Courthouse visitors’ center has excellent exhibits, including a large three dimensional representation of the state showing geological and geographical features.

I headed home on the second day that the temperature reached 90 degrees.  I returned with fourteen books, a stuffed javelina, mesquite flour, photographs and great memories, including visiting friends in Marana who have an owl living near their home who watched us as we marveled at the size of her nest. 

The highlight of this trip was stumbling upon the Amerind Museum in Dragoon and learning about the Paquime site in Mexico at Casas Grandes. All this wasn’t enough to fully quench my thirst for the Sonoran. I plan to return again in the cool months. 

 

 

On Cynicism and City Planning

 

 

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” 

 

Things change. I need to be reminded of this constantly. But clearly, not all change is good. Albuquerque’s “city planning” history is one that I view with no small measure of nostalgia and despair.

Decades ago there was more commitment on the part of local governments to “community building.” But the State never pushed planning as a local government requirement and long ago eliminated a cabinet level planning department. Many of Albuquerque’s efforts were funded by Community Development Block Grants that dried up during the Reagan era. 

Past work to preserve buildings, open spaces and places of character did substantially  shape the city for the better. But there were defeats and controversies like the loss of the Alvarado and Franciscan Hotels, and two new river crossings and the widening of Corrales Road. These enabled an accelerated boom in mass production housing and commercial development, largely unguided by planning principles. Sure, there are subdivision and zoning laws, but without planning, developers determine how, when, and where the growth occurs. 

There are likely those that will argue, as they have successfully argued in the past, that the government, being “the problem,” has no business managing private investment. But taxpayers have an interest in the public funding that supports development. And their interests, and the assessment of the long term economic viability of growth, has taken a third row back seat to boosterism. The money making interests represented by “Homebuilders,” and “economic development” czars have repeatedly claimed that growth pays for itself. It doesn’t. But who will prove it now?

A nearly silent war occurred behind the scenes when Bernalillo County, representing the interests of large landowners and beleaguered valley residents, easily convinced they’d been left out of growth benefits, claimed it should have the powers to become urbanized. Almost simultaneously, the land in the county previously categorized as Rural or Reserve, was allowed to develop and the Comprehensive Plan that had established those designations was unceremoniously kneecapped. 

Captal improvements, funded by the legislature, were largely or completely unguided by planning. The location of water and sewer extensions were made by the legislators who got the funds, not through any policies regarding priorities. 

The hegemonic development community, enabled by elected and appointed officials of the state, city and county, and supported by the daily newspaper (owned by a man with a development interest in what would become Journal Center) completely overran planning in favor of the building “industry.” This industry, that isn’t an industry, continues to claim that building is economic development. The need for primary industry to support housing was flipped upside down in the mistaken belief that jobs would follow houses. Ironically, this fundamental principle is used today to argue for even more growth on the fringe of Albuquerque in the interest of ‘jobs-housing balance.” 

In an effort to measure the costs of growth and design a fair “impact fee” schedule, The “Planned Growth Strategy” was undertaken in the early 1990's but immediately hijacked by developers. They insisted, through their proponents on the County Commission at the time, that the “benefits of growth” be considered in the study. What began as an objective cost assessment of roads, water, sewer, parks, and storm drains, became lost in arguments like, “everyone wants a single family home with a yard,” and “infill costs more.” Encouraging use of vacant land and redevelopment lost the battle to production builders on the fringe.

The connection between declining areas of Albuquerque and the growth of the westside is not made obvious through any actual measure. But it has been estimated that 80% of Rio Rancho’s residents came from Albuquerque. (Source: Albuquerque.com) And it is arguable that if reinvestment and redevelopment had been encouraged over the past thirty years, both Albuquerque and Bernalillo County wouldn’t see as great of a decline in developed areas as is evident today. But that wouldn’t have made a few large scale land developers rich from building sprawl and not paying for it. 

There are other factors. Like how creation of the Water Authority created another huge bonding entity for the benefit of fringe development. 

It is ironic to me that there is general acceptance of how development of the uptown shopping centers in the 1960’s killed the downtown core. ( See www.petedinelli.com) But I hear only crickets about the impact of westside growth, enabled and encouraged by bridges, roads, utility extensions, and new schools, on Albuquerque east of the river. It is viewed, when viewed broadly at all, as inevitable and not a consequence of public policy, or the absence of it.  

 

 

Apaches' Homelands

The hole in my knowledge of Apaches was large enough to drive a stagecoach through.  It consisted of brief mentions in books and movies and a few place names. Those place names along I-10 don’t denote reservations or present day populations of Apache people as a similar interstate drive in New Mexico does. They can, however, reflect their homelands which stretched broadly across the southern part of present New Mexico and Arizona. In at least one location, the names have been nearly entirely erased.  

EVE BALL

Roswell resident and author Eve Ball died at 94, leaving an important legacy. In the most recent edition of her book, An Apache Odyssey, Indeh, Lynda A. Sanchez, her assistant, notes that she began her research at age sixty and worked determinedly “to write and interpret (Apache) history and to record oral tradition.” Her work was well received by critics and Apaches themselves. Author Sherry Robinson has written a recent book, Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival As Told by Eve Ball, in which she reviews, reinterprets and presents Eve Ball’s stories and interviews. It is an engaging read, if somewhat frustrating for the lack of a timeline.  

The place names first spurred my interest. Things like “Doubtful Canyon," and Apache references along the seemingly desolate stretch of I-10 between Las Cruces and Tucson provide multiple hints at Apache history and enticements to learn more.  

THE STAGECOACH

The route of Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company coaches roughly parallels the freeway. It is  partly visible in satellite photos and was granted status as a National Historic Trail in 2023. The trip took approximately fifty-two hours and coaches were express - running day and night. The portion that parallels I-10 was only one of several routes west. All of them cut through Apache territory but were popular because they were snow free, unlike more direct trails further north.

The route is still visible today in many places where it hasn’t been obliterated by plowing, grading, pipelines, or the freeway itself.  Still, in general, more is known today about the stagecoach than the Apaches, perhaps because it continued in use after remaining Apaches were exiled to Florida. Perhaps because we romanticize the settlement of the west. 

The movie “Stagecoach” radically changes the geography and route of the Butterfield Stage and affords no honest or fair representation of Apaches or even of the stagecoach era. Another, called “Broken Arrow,” is far more sympathetic but combines and fictionalizes events and characters, including Cochise and Geronimo.

The Overland Mail Company only ran stagecoaches on this route for three years, from 1858-1861, despite the large effort and amount of capital invested in establishing the route. At the start of the Civil War, Union troops stationed at multiple forts for protection were withdrawn. But use of the trail by others, including emigrants, continued.

APACHE WARS

According to some sources, there was relative peace in the lands of the Apache until Mexican independence. Deterioration in relationships closely aligned with incursions into their territories and the practice of reprisals and raiding.  The Mexican government, like later American government, attempted limit nomadic tribes’ movements by establishing Apache settlements where they were provided rations and land to farm. But after independence supplies to “peace camps” became unreliable and Apache raids resumed. In 1835 the Sonoran government established a scalp bounty, creating a hellish landscape.  

Americans efforts apparently didn’t fare much better. Various efforts to make peace and end raiding were of mixed success. Some Indian agents were accused of selling rations intended for Apache settlements and shortages led to renewed raiding. Some Anglos in Tucson didn’t support settlement efforts. Perhaps the most egregious move was to break prior agreements and forcibly remove Apaches from their homelands to a single reservation in Arizona - San Carlos.  Conflicts between various bands and the sheer distance from their lands led many to flee. Nothing ended very well for the Apaches and much of their history isn’t taught. 

THE WARM SPRINGS APACHES

One striking example is that of the Warm Springs Apaches who were closely associated with the Mogollon and Mescalero and considered an eastern branch of the Chiricahuas. They called themselves the Chihennes. Among their better known leaders were Mangas Colorado, Nana, Loco, and Victorio. Their homeland was around the San Mateo Mountains in New Mexico and along Alamosa Creek near the village of Monticello. 

An extensive study of the 4000 year long prehistory and history of this area was conducted over a thirteen year period and presented by the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum. The “Cañada Alamosa Project” included 728 square miles extending west from today’s Truth or Consequences west into the mountains. According to the project, Apache people occupied this land from approximately 1621 to 1879. 

In 1874 the Warm Springs Apache reservation was approved by President Grant but it didn’t stick.  They were forcibly removed to San Carlos for the second time. Soonafter their leader, Victorio, was killed in Mexico at a place called Tres Castillos. Eventually, Apaches not settled at San Carlos were exiled to Florida, Alabama, and then Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They didn't regain their freedom until 1913.

I visited this place in the eighties. We were enchanted even without knowing its rich history. There were building ruins there not far from the dramatic mouth of  Alamosa Creek called the Monticello Box. Nearby was the namesake warm spring. (Above) At the time it seemed the place was being deliberated destroyed.  There were cattle in the springs and a road directly through the creek bed. The land appeared overgrazed and contemptuously abused. There was no reference to the reservation on the map we used.

Recently my friend Jerry told me he remembered a topographic map showing the reservation. I searched for it and didn’t know that topo maps could be revised by the public like wiki pages. While the reservation isn’t shown on these, an unusual number of individual ranches are named. (Right) Perhaps this is an intentional effort to erase the Indian history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But on topoquest.com (Left) I finally found the old version showing “Old Indian Treaty Boundary.” The marked area extends from the mouth of the creek west into a neighboring canyon. 

Nurturing a sense of wonder and curiosity about this history is a comfort in present tumultuous times. The freeway routes we take today with tractor-trailers, potholes and windstorms are nothing compared to the hardships and horrors travelers endured in previous centuries. And our land use conflicts over zoning and with our neighbors, simply pale in comparison to those that cost settlers, soldiers and Apaches, their lives. And in the case of the Apaches, their homelands.  

 

 

 

Further Reading:

Eve Ball, Indeh, An Apache Odyssey, University of Oklahoma Press, 1980 edition.

_______, Victorio, Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache, University of Arizona Press, 1970. Sherry Robinson, Apache Voices, Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball, UNM Press, 2000

New Mexico Historical Review, Various authors, online digital repository.

New Year Wishes

Rosa and Old Pots

"It’s perfectly legal to do what he did. It was his land. It happens all the time and it if wasn't him it’d be somebody else."

Cat stared at Sadie, brow furrowed, and answered flatly.

"Destroying ancient pueblo sites, even if technically legal, is disrespectful to tribes and science."

Sadie went on like she hadn't heard her, imitating her mother’s slow southern drawl. 

"It’s just pots and feathers. Pots and feathers. If they'd found bones…."  She made a face.  "They'd report it. They were important men in charge of important construction projects, not treasure hunters, as you call them."

"Pot hunters is what I call them."  Cat corrected her.

Sadie turned her back and went on in her own voice. 

"Perfectly legal. Perfectly legal. Everyone thought so except my Aunts. I remember Connie dragging my father off a bulldozer after he collapsed a wall of the chapel looking for treasure. And I remember Rosa looking at all the pottery in his curio shop and saying never trust an old pot.  I thought she meant some pots weren't as old as my father claimed because he sold a lot of fakes."

She stopped to light a cigarette. Cat knew this story but didn't interrupt. Sadie liked to talk about her Aunts.

"When we were decorating the hacienda for a photo shoot in 94 museum staff pulled some pots from Alva's vault. We arranged them on a shelf high on the east wall. The lights weren't even in yet but she saw them right away. The place was all decked out for Christmas but she immediately focused on the pots." 

Sadie stubbed out the cigarette and shivered involuntarily. 

"She pointed at them and starting shaking and yelling, Get. Them. Out. Over and over. Louder and louder. It was horrible. She didn't stop until Angel came over with a ladder and took them down. No one said anything about it after that." 

Cat smiled. She herself had told the story at least a dozen times. 

No one wants a skeleton in their closet or a pot from a skeleton’s grave.

Chimney Rock

Glad I took my sandwich!

I announce this on my return to the upper parking area to the very talkative volunteer who is momentarily mute. She's standing with a large tour group. I notice a chilly vibe. 

Reading the informational material long afterwards I see it - No food or picnics. Reasoning hints at aggressive squirrels. It’s not like I took a cooler of beer but it was awkward. Afterward awkward. But I was still glad I took my sandwich and the larger water bottle. 

I was the first one up the trail. It was about 9:15 when I got to the main entrance at the base of the mountain. The contrast with the Mesa Verde is profound. I was nearly alone. Driving up the road myself was delightful. It’s the end of the season now. In summer vans take you to the upper parking lot.

It’s a dramatic landform even without knowing its significance to ancient people. They must have felt a similar sense awe. Racing along US 160 West of Pagosa Springs today we come upon it fast and dramatically. The Chimney and Companion rocks poke up from the top of a mountain that towers over the Piedra River between two other river valleys. 

At the height of occupation the ancient pueblo people grew corn, beans and squash in the valleys. They lived in smaller scattered farming villages, most within a mile of the upper pueblo where a 44’ great kiva is located. This is 90 miles from Chaco Canyon and considered the Northeastern most Chaco outlier. Signal fires were used and I expect there was a code language. There is a lumber camp theory that trees were harvested from here for construction elsewhere. Like other Chaco pueblos, it was abandoned after 1135.

Uncertainties always remain in archaeology. One is the why this happened. Another is the degree of connection between different contemporaneous cultures during this and other periods. Trade goods prove connections - primarily with the South. The Maya and Zapotec cultures were going then. So were the Mogollon, Hohokam,  and Fremont. To the east the Mississippian cities like huge Cahokia were flourishing. 

Imagine a traveller - Kokopelli the hunchback flute player depicted in ancient art - spending the better part of his or her life traveling. As he approaches villages he’s encircled by children drawn to the sound of his flute. He’s a master of music and languages. He shares knowledge, first with the children and then with adults, learning and teaching new and different techniques for weaving, clay work and building. There must have been many others traveling singly or in groups. Undoubtedly some were friendly and some were not.

There's another big kiva surrounded by rooms at the very base of the big rocks. I walked up the steep narrow "causeway" to the old fire tower location. The tower was removed in 2010 and beneath it archaeologists found the 1000 year old signal fire pit. Interestedly, the signal fire communication potential wasn't proven until a Farmington high school student, Kathy Freeman, used mirrors to relay light from here in 1990.

I sat on the edge of the lookout foundation and ate my tahini and honey on whole wheat as a huge raven circled overhead. He knew the rules.

 

 

Mesa Verde National Park

Jesse Nusbaum with little friend. NPS photo.


Today’s experience visiting Mesa Verde couldn’t be more different from 1000 years ago if we were dropped down from space. We move on asphalt networks in metal capsules of varying sizes, hopping in and out of them (over twelve times by my count) at carefully positioned locations to view ruins covered by monstrously unattractive metal buildings.  Funny thing is, I don’t mind. It is a very special place in spite of this strange and temporary connection.

The mesa changes from verde to oro this time of year as oaks and serviceberry turn. I imagined thinner crowds and cooler weather but the parking lot at the big Visitor and Research Center was already busy at 9:45AM and it was warm on the mesa by noon.

TACA Board Member Jerry Widdison remembers visiting the park with his family after the war. They stayed at the Aneth Motel in Cortez. It’s still there. Aneth is a word in many languages but Jerry said it’s Navajo and also a Utah place name. The origin may be a nickname given to a greedy Anglo trader meaning just like a devil. The term was used more widely about unsavory business practices at trading posts.

The Drive

At the entrance kiosk up the road I bought an Annual Senior Pass which is a very good deal. The man staffing the kiosk was a quintessential park ranger in full uniform, full beard, dark sunglasses and Smokey Bear hat. I resisted asking, “All set for Halloween, are ya?” 

It is a great road up and across the big mesa and its smaller mesas, that reach like fingers between multiple canyons. There are stunning views from several overlooks. Jerry recalled the hair raising part of the route called “The Knife Edge” that’s now a trail. A tunnel replaced this section of the road.

Far View Ruins site was my first intended stop but, like all of  Wetherill Mesa, it was closed.  With no choice, like everyone else that day, I went on southward on Chapin Mesa to the museum and two loop roads. 

It’s clear from old maps and aerial photos that ruins are all over Chapin Mesa but you can’t see the archaeology from the roads and you’re not allowed off them. This is by design. It protects the sites and landscape from being over-run by humans, no doubt. It also means you can be well over two hours into the park before ever seeing a ruin.

Jerry also recalled that the tours of the famous cliff dwellings were first-come-first-served and that you could walk into many of them unaccompanied by a guide.  Those days are gone. 

Park History

The people behind designation of Mesa Verde as a National Park in 1906 included women. Virginia McClurg (1857-1931) started a movement to preserve the cultural treasures of the mesa. Lucy Peabody, (1863-1934) the “Mother of Mesa Verde” worked nine years to gain national support for park creation, including negotiation with the Weminuche Utes.

Wetherill and Chapin Mesas are named after Richard Wetherill and Frederick H. Chapin. Along with Wetherill’s family, including Marietta Palmer Wetherill, they explored the ruins during the summers of 1889 and 1890. Chapin wrote the first book about the place in 1892, “The Land of the Cliff Dwellers.”

Wetherill was from a Quaker ranching family that settled in the Mancos River valley in 1880. He ran trading posts, including one in Chaco Canyon where he was murdered in 1910. Artifacts he and his family collected were subsequently donated by Marietta Wetherill to the University of New Mexico. 

Perhaps the people with the mostly visible modern impact on the park were Jesse Nusbaum and his wife Eileen. Jesse Nusbaum was selected as park superintendent in 1921 and began significant improvements in 1922. 

Parkitecture

Before arriving at the museum I turned off on a whim to check out the picnic area. It was  delightful. No other people were there. Old thick junipers shade the picnic tables. This was once the campground and the spaces and little roads are scaled for Model Ts. I found a choice spot in front of a serviceberry bush in full yellow fall color and saw a turkey, crows, and a hawk.

It was here in the old campground that first noticed a little sandstone brick building that looked a bit like an ancient pueblo structure. It was a restroom.
The reinterpretation of ancient architecture for modern purposes at Mesa Verde in the early twenties created a cluster of unique historic buildings on Chapin Mesa - a layer of history upon prehistory.

Jesse Nusbaum (1887-1975) was born in Greeley, Colorado and became an archaeologist when the science was new. He studied teaching and then taught in Las Vegas, New Mexico before becoming an archaeologist and architect, undertaking work on new and ancient buildings, including the Palace of the Governors and the State Art Museum in Santa Fe. 

I left the picnic area and headed into that cluster of historic buildings - hidden in and among large junipers and punctuated by expanses of asphalt roads and parking. The museum was one of six buildings funded by JD Rockefeller Jr.  and built by the newly appointed superintendent between 1922-1925, with an addition in 1939. It’s design subtly mimics a scaled down Spanish mission with a small interior courtyard (barely visible through the windows) and a “church” or auditorium where a film about the park was showing.

Ruins at Last

In spite of its position as the focal point atop the trail that descends into Spruce Canyon and Spruce Tree House - my first view of a ruin - the museum is underwhelming and crowded. The building was apparently tortured into ADA compliance and ramps consume entire rooms. It’s obvious a lot more money and effort have gone into displays at the visitor center at the entrance in recent years than at the old museum on Chapin Mesa.

There’ve been many fires but many beautiful trees remain. During the height of occupation in the thirteenth century, the plateau was largely deforested. According to dendrochronologists cited in the extensive wiki page about Mesa Verde, the last tree used in construction was cut in 1281. This marked the tail end of mesa occupation.

The loop roads have many overlooks from which to view canyon ruins. Jerry said he visited an overlook exactly 100 years after Wetherill rode a horse up to that same spot and saw Cliff Palace for the first time. It’s still awe inspiring.

I’m planning on visiting Mesa Verde again before my annual pass expires. I’ll never grow tired of trying to envision life on this mesa, even in the more recent past when visitors in early cars or wagons climbed the mesa over difficult roads to visit mysterious stone structures for the first time. Plenty of mysteries remain on Mesa Verde. 

 

 

A Late Summer Summary

Planning Emergency

Image: 1927 New Mexico highway map show route of today’s 550 as 44 joining 19 at Aztec. The  road to Silver City crossing the Black Range over Emory Pass, now NM152,  as US 180

My first concern is no hot shower. The phone is charged, which is good because otherwise I would have missed the notice on my weather app about a “Regional Planned Emergency Power Outage.” That’s the wording. I’m especially amused by the oxymoronic ‘planned emergency.’ Apparently it provided “plausible deniability” for hotels that rented rooms in spite on knowing what was coming. 

Up until then I liked my big bright corner room in the grand old hotel. The fire escape door at the end of the hall was tied open and there was a smell of room deodorant masking a sewer scent in the bathroom. But the mountain view - incomparable and stunning.

Red Mountain White Knuckles

The drive on US 550 up here is intense. As kids we called the whole stretch the “Million Dollar Highway.” It probably costs at least that much every year just to maintain it. It is now apparently only called that between Silverton and Ouray. According to wiki, it’s the portion twelve miles south of Ouray - that last hair raising portion through Uncompagre Gorge, that gives the highway its name. Quick glances at faces in oncoming cars show passengers expressing worry or terror. 

The highway is an impressive drive all the way from Albuquerque. It’s US 550 the entire way - the Rio Grande Valley to Montrose on the Western Slope through some of the most interesting geology in the west. Portions follow routes used in prehistory and the Old Spanish Trail. In the San Juans a man named Otto Mears built the first tollroads on parts of what became this highway. Then he built the first railroad to Silverton. Collectors of railroad memorabilia love his Silverton Railroad passes, printed on buckskin and adorned with silver filigree. 

It’s nice to divide the drive into two parts with a stop in Silverton for relief from the cliff-clinging road. A free Shakespeare production of As You Like It in intimate little Anesi Park that night was delightful. Multiple sponsors included UpstART Theater That Moves. The play was also preformed in Ouray.  

The Silverton history museum expanded from the old jail to a mining boarding house donated to the San Juan Historical Society. In and under those buildings is everything related to mining but a live burro. A mineral exhibit had me transfixed and I stared at innocent looking yellow uranium powder for probably too long wondering if it’s safe.  

My second concern on the morning of no electricity, is no hot coffee. I thank my stars for the cold brew I bought yesterday and sit in my car taking big gulps while admiring the looming mountainsides, illuminated like a stage backdrop by the rising sun. Somewhere someone is whistling. 

The whole county is lined up in the one coffee shop with a generator. There are delicious pastries. A hot cup takes ten minutes. Everyone is listening to city workers talking loud and greeting each other as they file in between the tourists. One guy says marijuana is a gateway drug and another says it sure was for him. The whole place erupts in laughter.

Give me an old hotel over a new dull and anonymous one any day. Preferably with electricity. 

To Tucson

From I-25 I drove west to Silver City through the Black Range. It is a magical drive and less scary for the height conscious passengers. I remember boys at NMSU hauling bicycles up and riding them down the curvy steep bits above Kingston. I drove the pickup. No one was hurt, remarkably.  Tiny grey deer under ponderosa watch the occasional traffic. I try and take photos but end up attempting watercolors  later for the first time in years - simply inspired.

Silver City is a good and interesting. It's one of those places where the rolling Wheel of Fortune has been very visible and left an indelible track. Artists and seekers sometimes come to places like this.  Sometimes money or popularity "ruin it" and we'll talk about how Vail or Durango or Santa Fe used to be. Silver is like that now.  I'm sure it'll change again. Cultures have been displacing, absorbing, undermining each other from prehistory. Land and landscapes used and abused. Mountains turned upside down for copper. Rebellion over cows to controversial feral cow elimination.

It’s always the end of an era. Sometimes things get better. Sometimes (usually) long after “we” are gone. Like how a flood in 1895 washed out Silver City’s Main Street leaving a 55 foot deep trench. Main street became the next street over. Now the trench is a pretty linear park. 

The copper mines could be a set piece for the Netflix series “KAOS” with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus sitting in a giant excavator observing the miles-wide pockmarks, seeping festules, funny-colored fake mountains. A friendly cowboy in the brew pub said when dust from blasting settles on cars it eats away the paint, “and that can’t be good." He knows dust, being from where dust storms frequently close I-10. I asked if the mines employed many people. He said he didn't really know but that they'll never close them. They'll always keep "a skeleton crew" to avoid the costs of reclamation work required when they close.

I stayed at the Murphy Hotel, a downtown classic. It is solid, simple, nice. I like to pretend I’m the Hotel Inspector. That reality show follows famed hotelier, Alex Polizzi, around Britain as she visits and critiques hotels and B and Bs. I don’t have her background, experience, heritage or chops, but I know good vibes and clean sheets when I feel and see them. I also see that cool Mondrian inspired mural on the back wall across from restored old brick buildings. I can smell the sweet little bakery downstairs around the corner. 

Mimbres pottery is a reminder of prehistory and that spinning wheel of time. Western New Mexico University has a huge collection housed in a beautiful 1917 Arts and Crafts building. The distinctive black on white Mimbres pots with animal images became so popular with collectors that ancient sites where the pottery originated have been routinely destroyed. A century of looting resulted in several large private collections that this museum has acquired for analysis and display. 

Mimbres means little willow in Spanish. We don’t know what these people called themselves or the beautiful river valley where many villages were located. Similarly, the Mimbres are classified as part of the Mogollon culture, named after mountains that were named for a Governor of New Spain. 

The Sonoran Desert

Interstate 10 is very bumpy and busy past the Arizona border. It’s best viewed as it stretches out in the distance on the descent from Silver City. Trainline-like lines of tractor trailers move back and forth. You barely see the cars, seemingly outnumbered by big trucks.

This was part of  the Gadsden Purchase - 45,000 square miles the US ripped-off from Mexico in 1854 for a transcontinental route and a railroad magnate’s aspirations. Mexico pretty much ripped it off from the Apaches who ripped it off from the Mogollon and Hohokam and Ancient Puebloans. All this within a millennium. 

It never stops. Subdivisions punch holes in the delicate Sonoran desert. It is an honor and a tragedy to be this close. Like petting an endangered fish. I baby talk to javalina from a swimming pool and sketch quail from the bedroom window. The relentless wheel spins. What will be next, you can’t predict. 

So breathe the delicate morning air. Enjoy the native desert. Come back when it’s cooler.

 

 

The Victorian Hotel

 

Sadie:  I love them. Old places but especially old big richly storied hotels in western towns. 

Cat:  I worked at an old resort near Denver for a summer. It was memorable but not endearing. I can smell it now - mold and dust. Not entirely unpleasant, or among the least unpleasant things I recall. The work was grueling. It consisted of dragging an old vacuum cleaner to hillside cabins and cleaning all day after serving breakfast, then cleaning ourselves up to serve dinner. We slept in a bunk room under the porch with cheap polyester blankets, no insulation and touching wiring. We got one day off a week, alone, when I would drive to Denver in a borrowed VW Beetle to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

S: It was pretty - that canyon and the trees and the grand old three-story tower. We rattled the bones of that building at that square dance in the lobby. The whole place was alive. Give me an old hotel like that over a new one any day.

C:  Sure, if you like the smell of rotting wood and body odor. The worst place I ever stayed was an old “Victorian” in Texas. Historic, they said. Charming, they said. There were bugs. It was cold. It was windy. The windows whistled and the closest decent restaurant was thirty miles away so we ate peanut butter on stale bread and had bad coffee under dusty stuffed dead things in the morning. 

S: I remember that place. I recommended it to you. The taxidermy display in the dining room was impressive. 

C: There was a grizzly bear behind the table and a mountain lion above it. It felt like I was the meal. And it wasn’t cheap. I’d prefer a new La Quinta or Embassy Suites to fancy crown molding and a piano player in a derby.

S: Dull and anonymous.

C: Just what a hotel should be. I don’t want character. I want to sleep.

Orange

Sky, Balloon, Coyote, Dog

Project Pasture

Conservation easement establishment is progressing and the tree project is gearing up. 
I only wish I’d started ten years ago. 

 

Nikos

Single

Mushroom Men