New Mexico Historical Encyclopedia

(Rio Grande Books) The New Mexico Historical Encyclopedia puts New Mexico's history and locations all in one book and provides a brief description of over 700 events and places in the Land of Enchantment - each accompanied by a bibliography which is intended to provide the names of books and other references that offer more information. This Encyclopedia gives a historical look at New Mexico - what is written about New Mexico and what events and locations played a part in its history. The Encyclopedia is intended to show that New Mexico history is original, exciting and interesting. In publishing this volume, New Mexico Centennial Author Don Bullis continues a long and distinguished history of such works in New Mexico. Continued

Storefront: Elida, NM

1985: U.S. Route 66 is officially removed from the United States Highway System.

(Wikipedia) ... The beginning of the decline for US 66 came in 1956 with the signing of the Interstate Highway Act by President Dwight Eisenhower who was influenced by his experiences in 1919 as a young Army officer crossing the country in a truck convoy (following the route of the Lincoln Highway), and his appreciation of the German Autobahn network as a necessary component of a national defense system.
During its nearly 60-year existence, US 66 was under constant change. Continued

A tool to trace indigenous cultural heritage

(Santa Fe New Mexican) ... Now he is working with his wife, Anna Naruto-Moya, a former archivist for the National Archives, on a Museum of Indian Arts & Culture project to help people — primarily those from the 23 New Mexico tribes and the Hopi people — access federal records never before available in New Mexico. Among them are documents related to government boarding schools for Native American youth and land issues in the period that lasted from the end of the Indian Wars in the 1800s to the Indian New Deal reforms of the 1930s. Continued

Battle of the Little Bighorn

(Wikipedia) The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to Lakota as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes, against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which occurred June 25–26, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana Territory, was the most prominent action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. Continued

Ambrose Bierce

Poetry Foundation: [June 24, 1842 – circa 1914] Ambrose Bierce's literary reputation is based primarily on his short stories about the Civil War and the supernatural—a body of work that makes up a relatively small part of his total output. Often compared to the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, these stories share an attraction to death in its more bizarre forms, featuring depictions of mental deterioration, uncanny, otherworldly manifestations, and expressions of the horror of existence in a meaningless universe.
...  In 1914 he informed some of his correspondents that he intended to enter Mexico and join Pancho Villa's forces as an observer during that country's civil war. He was never heard from again, and the circumstances of his death are uncertain. Continued

The Road to Field

Bad Company and Burnt Powder: Justice and Injustice in the Old Southwest

(historynet.com) This offering from prolific Texas author Bob Alexander presents a dozen detailed profiles of frontier figures most general readers won’t recognize and who probably wouldn’t crack anyone’s list of top lawmen and outlaws in the old Southwest or anyplace else. But their stories, as related by an author who knows how to tell tales, are plenty lively. His style, which has been termed “breezy and colloquial,” makes one feel as if he is sitting around the home fires being entertained by good company. Continued

Pleasant Hill Cemetery

Pleasant Hill Cemetery, in eastern Curry County, New Mexico, may be the quintessential high plains burial ground. It's full of well preserved markers bearing witness to the lives of the early homesteaders. It's also full of infant mortality, military service, last chancers, and oddly, longevity. But it's not all hardship and suffering, there's also evidence of lives well lived, and prosperity tortured out of an arid landscape. The village was once part of the Brown Ranch and the Shenault Ranch and was founded in 1910, according to "The Place Names of New Mexico" by Robert Julyan.

Elfego Baca Gets No Respect

(True West) ... Sherriff Garrett’s claim to fame came from killing an outlaw, most likely armed with nothing more than a butcher knife, in a darkened bedroom in the middle of the night. What did Baca do? Well, if you buy the legend, Baca held off some 80 belligerent Anglo cowboys for 36 hours in a jacal in what is now Reserve, New Mexico, surviving an estimated 4,000 rounds of gunfire and even some dynamite. Continued

So long Hastings, its been good to know you

Well, Hastings is down for the count and I doubt it’ll get back up. The company claims competition from online retailers for it’s demise, and while it’s true that the web has caused many bricks and mortar retailers a world of hurt, many still survive, and profitably too. Warren Buffett once said, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."
However, Hastings has been good for small cities around the Southwest and it will be missed. Hastings had books, movies, music, comic books, and games galore, important when you consider that in many of its small-town locations, the internet disappears with the sidewalks, leaving ranch families with little in the way of electronic media. It may be hard for people who live in large cities to believe, but people in rural areas still buy a lot of CD’s and DVD’s, there’s no other option. Add books to the mix, and Hastings was an important cultural resource, a pop-culture resource, but a resource nonetheless.
The worst thing will be all those lost jobs (my own position was eliminated last month), but in the end, we'll all be a little poorer without Hastings.

Field Cemetary

If you can't get a feel for eternity in a Southwestern Cemetery, you'll probably never get it anywhere. Of course, a brief look at the stones will bring you right back to earth, or in this case, Field.

Located in Curry County, New Mexico, Field sits atop a slight ridge on the western edge of the vast plain known as the Llano Estacado or Staked Plains. It's a ranching community, and like so many others, the largest population density, by far, is in its cemetery, along with a good amount of pathos and, as previously mentioned, a healthy dose of the infinite.