CARTA’s other main function was in organizing our own series of speakers on Thursday evening. These included : 1) Dr. Stanley M. Hordes, To the End of the Earth: The participation of Crypto-Jews in the settlement of the far northern frontier of new Spain; 2) Tom Harper, Parida the Hill from the Air; 3) Dr. John Hunner, Time Travel on el Camino Real; 4) Dr. Roy Ben Brown, On El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro with the painter Leon Troussett.
CARTA had a table set up at the Macey Center for taking memberships, passing out CARTA flyers, and selling t-shirts, hats and tote bags as a fund raiser. Thanks to CARTA Vice- President John Bloom, CARTA board member Louann Jordan and my wife Becky for manning the table at various times.
A special thanks goes to Glenna Dean, the State Archaeologist, who arranged for the printing and shipping of our sales items, and Pepita Ridgeway of the Socorro Chamber of Commerce for storing and transporting the material, and the motel room accommodations.
We have increased our membership this year. If you haven’t renewed your membership please try and do so. Encourage your friends with similar interests to join. Ben Brown and I will be going to Sonora later this year to explain our goals and membership.
Activities of the President During the Last Quarter
On April 17, 2006 CARTA sent a letter (signed by me, at the approval of the whole board by e-mail) to the Doña Ana County Commission on the disposition of the old Amador Hotel (County Manager’s Complex). The County was considering selling the old building, which is on the State Register of Historic Properties. The hotel is one of the few remaining landmarks in Doña Ana County on the Camino Real. Martin Amador was also one of the leading figures in the commerce of the Camino Real from the cities of Chihuahua to St. Louis and later to Kansas City, Missouri. We recommended that Doña Ana County insure the building is transferred to another public entity (city or state) that could use the facility as a museum or other like purpose.
On April 19, 2006, I gave a talk to the Munson Senor Center in Las Cruces on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.
On May 11, Mike Taylor and I attended the El Paso River Walk charette round table in El Paso Texas. The purpose was to discuss interpretative themes about the Camino Real along the El Paso River Walk Trail project. The Rio Grande River Park Trail interpretive panels (10 panels) are being funded by the National Park Service through CARTA.
On June 17, the CARTA Board of Directors met at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Center in Las Cruces. A number of committees were formed with a CARTA board member chairing each committee. The committee chairpersons will be looking for CARTA membership members to round out the committees. There was general agreement that our publication, Chronicles of the Trail, will become a bilingual publication by January 2007.
The CARTA Executive Board is in the process of letting the contract for the identifying the status of all El Camino Real markers in New Mexico and Texas. This action was approved by the full CARTA board last fall.
Patrick H. Beckett, CARTA President
COAS: My Bookstore
317 North Main
Las Cruces, NM 88001
Phone: 1-505-644-0868
e-mail: pat@coasbooks.com
Project Status
In the north, the National Trails System, Santa Fe office, is working with Okay Owingeh Pueblo on an integrated plan for trails, wayside exhibits and visitor amenities that will highlight the pueblo’s role as the site of the “First Capital” of New Mexico. The colonists led by Don Juan de Oñate in 1598 spent their first weeks in the north as the guests of Okay Owingeh, at the confluence of the Chama River and the Río Grande. In the late fall, they moved across the Chama to a small pueblo that the Indians called Yungue. Renamed San Gabriel and remodeled by the Spaniards, this little settlement served the colonists until they relocated south to what would become Santa Fe several years later. A design team led by landscape architects Steve Burns and Carla McConnell and American Indian Coordinator Ed Natay, NPS, has been working with the Pueblo on design concepts for site development.
In the Santa Fe area, the Camino Real River Connection (CRCC), led by Nichoe Lichen, Santa Fe County, under the direction of Paul Olafson, Director, Open Space and Trails Division, and the Trust for Public Land have been working to rehabilitate the Santa Fe River and create Camino Real-themed trails near the traditional community of Agua Fria. In the past year, this coalition has secured the acquisition of river properties that will allow Santa Fe County to expand the San Ysidro River Park and continue to link parks, trails and open space along the Santa Fe River and sites commemorating the El Camino Real trail.
Trail administrators have also been talking with Fran Levine, Director, New Mexico History Museum and the Palace of the Governors, about featuring El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro in the new exhibits slated for the History Museum building project. Dr. Levine has made trails and transportation networks a key theme of the new museum, and Mike Taylor and Sarah Schlanger expect to help the museum interpret the national trails in the new galleries.
Trail stewards have begun to monitor sites in the La Cieneguilla area, under the direction of Leslie Cohen and Galisteo Site Watch, and Paul Williams, archaeologist with the Taos BLM. We expect to expand this program to sites in the Jornada del Muerto, as well as trail segments north of Socorro and in the La Bajada area. Contact Sarah Schlanger, 1-505-438-7454, sarah_schlanger@blm.gov if you would like to be trained as a trail steward.
Mike Taylor and Peg Nelson, NPS, are working with George Paloheimo and El Rancho de las Golondrinas, in La Cienega, on a new interpretive exhibit for the living history museum which will feature the history of El Camino Real and give an overview of sites in the region. New signage, new surfacing, and a remodel of the museum entrance are all in development. Just up the trail, the BLM is working with Steve Burns and Brooke Taralli, NPS landscape architects in the Santa Fe office, on design concepts for visitors interested in the petroglyphs on the basalt cliff face behind LA 16, La Cieneguilla Pueblo. Paul Williams and Tami Torres, recreation specialist, BLM Taos, are looking to develop a short walking trail and an interpretive wayside that describes the role of the Santa Fe River, the canyon, the pueblo and the trail on this margin of the Galisteo Basin. In addition to being identified as significant trail sites, the pueblo, the petroglyphs, and the nearby colonial site, the “Camino Real Site,” are all included as protected areas in the Galisteo Basin Sites Protection Act passed two years ago by Congress.
Albuquerque’s historic Martineztown neighborhood will also see new interpretive exhibits featuring El Camino Real as community leader Frank Martinez works to develop a multi-stage renovation of park facilities along historic Edith Boulevard in Albuquerque. Ed Boles and Clay Gatewood, City of Albuquerque, Jill Brown, of Sites Southwest, Sarah Schlanger, BLM, and Mike Taylor and Steve Burns, NPS, met on-site to discuss interpretive themes and ideas. Frank Martinez is working with Joseph Sanchez, NPS, to identify crossroads and trails now overlain by Martin Luther King Boulevard and other east-west arterials in this area.
Las Cruces BLM is working with trail administration to plan waysides, companion trails and overlooks in the Jornada del Muerto section of the Camino Real just south of the proposed spaceport. Oz Gomez, recreation specialist, Pam Smith, archaeologist, and Tim Sanders, Assistant District Manager, have visited the site with trail administrators and are waiting to hear about project proposal funding within BLM. Pam Smith is also interested in directing trail stewards along this section of trail. Please contact her at Pam_Smith@blm.gov or by phone, 1-505-525-4398, if you are interested in this opportunity.
At the southern end of the trail, trail administrators and the NPS Rivers and Trails program have been partnering with El Paso Groundwork, the El Paso Historical Commission, the International Boundary and Water Commission, and others in the El Paso area on an NPS challenge-cost-share-grant-supported project to develop eight interpretive waysides along the El Paso River Trail. Groundwork, directed by Steve Silver, has hosted two charettes with local historians and other authorities to develop interpretive themes that will be used to focus these eight installations and guide further efforts in the El Paso area. Paul Cusumano, who has been with this project since its inception as part of the NPS Rivers and Trails program, recently left NPS to take a community planner position with EPA in the Raleigh/Durham area, North Carolina.
Spaceport Update
This spring, the BLM and NPS sent a joint comment to the Federal Aviation Administration as part of the project review for the proposed spaceport south of Engle, which will operate on state lease lands under a federal permit. In their comment, the agencies noted the potential impacts of spaceport development on trail segments on both BLM and state lands, and reminded the FAA that the spaceport development is not compatible with the BLM’s management plan for the lands immediately surrounding the proposed location. In particular, they noted that the development of roads and other infrastructure could damage trail resources, and the spaceport operations will interfere with the trail viewsheds and protected visual resource corridor that BLM designated in their Las Cruces District Resource Management Plan. Indirect impacts from future build-outs, visitors trekking crosscountry, parking along the trail, and using the historic trail as an access route for spaceport viewing were also brought up as concerns. The FAA has not yet released its draft Environmental Impact Statement for this project; this document is expected to be available for additional public comment this fall. Trail administrators have put together a fact sheet on the spaceport project, location maps, the potential impacts to the trail, and the status of the project at present. Please contact Sarah Schlanger, sarah_schlanger@blm.gov or Mike Taylor, michael_taylor@nps.gov , 1-505-988-6742, if you would like to have a copy of the fact sheet. El Camino Real International Heritage Center, the state monument just off Interstate 25 between Socorro and Truth or Consequences, is enjoying near universal acclaim since its November 2005 opening.
Contact us:
Sarah Schlanger, BLM
Phone: 1-505-438-7454
e-mail: sarah_schlanger@blm.gov
Michael Taylor, NPS
Phone: 1-505-988-6742
e-mail: michael_taylor@nps.gov
“Because of it, our kids can make first-hand observations and comparisons about our rich history that would not have been possible otherwise,” said Sherry Fletcher, assistant superintendent of the Truth or Consequences, New Mexcio, school district, who holds a master’s in history as one of three advanced degrees. “And it helps us fulfill our newly-mandated (April, 2005) and much-needed requirement for high school credit in New Mexico history,” she added. “It looks like it will grow into an important economic asset,” said Janet Green, Director of the New Mexico State University School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management. “Along with the proposed Spaceport and other new attractions it’s part of a clustering necessary for the emergence of bed and breakfasts and similar tourists needs.”
Perhaps more important to Green is that the Center is “the genesis of a huge connection to Spain and Mexico” and fulfills a void and will have positive economic consequences.
The international connection Green spoke of was addressed at the Center’s dedication ceremony last November by Juan Manuel Solana, the Consul of Mexico in Albuquerque. “I see an increase in commerce between our countries,” he said. “The Camino Real is very much alive and its history is part of our future.”
Green’s interest in “clustering” is expressed in only slightly different terms by Socorro Mayor Ravi Bhasker, an intrepid early proponent of both the National Historic Trail and the Heritage Center. Bhasker said the Center adds “critical mass” to the Socorro economy, not only in terms of tourism, but social and educational interactions such as a recent Camino Real symposium at Socorro’s Macey Center. Paul Harden, a straight-talking local historian who has walked the ruts of the Camino Real from Hatch to Las Nutrias, including the rugged Jornada del Muerto, calls it a “fantastic monument.” Harden makes that assessment while believing that too little attention was paid to Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate’s role in the establishment of the trail. “But I wouldn’t be here (he’s vice president of the Heritage Center Foundation) if I didn’t firmly believe it was worthwhile,” he said.
State Representative Don Tripp of Socorro, a strong advocate of the Center during the funding process, confesses to not being a history buff during his school days in the area, but the monument gave him a second chance. “Although I read about Oñate and the forts along the trail in high school, I never knew the whole story of the Camino Real until I got involved in it,” he said. “I’m sure there are others who are like me and the monument and exhibits bring the history to life.”
Tripp said the exhibit provides a broad panorama of New Mexico history from the earliest footpaths to the modern Interstate 25, and he shares with many visitors the view that it can be “one stop shopping” of New Mexico history — not a snapshot of a single historic event or period.
And visitors are proving the Center’s worth, not only by scribbling in the visitor log, but by showing up in significant numbers. Although it is not yet on many national maps or well known nationally, it is drawing visitors at a pace consistent with two national historic attractions located similar distances from Interstate 25. In the first four months of 2006, the Heritage Center drew 4743 visitors, which compares favorably with Fort Union and Pecos. For the same three months of 2005, the latest numbers available, Fort Union, between Las Vegas and Raton, and featuring extensive original ruins, drew 2081 visitors, less than half of the Heritage Center’s total.
Pecos National Historical Park, an amalgamation of two former state monuments (Glorieta and Pecos), located on 6770 acres including the ranch of the late actress Greer Garson, drew 7106 over the same four-month period, 590 per month more than the Heritage Center. But Pecos is located in a populated area near Santa Fe on the outskirts of the town of Pecos.
The Heritage Center is jointly funded and operated by New Mexico State Monuments, the State of New Mexico, and the Federal Bureau of Land Management.
Heritage Center Events
Nasario García, Tiempos Lejanos
Saturday, July 1, 2006, 2:00 pm
Nasario García’s poetry recalls his personal images of the past. His poems, presented in Spanish and English, take us back to the village of Ojo del Padre, now called Guadalupe, New Mexico, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when such villages were about to leap from the preindustrial era into a postindustrial world. García ably captures the landscape of his childhood, the village, its people, and the birds and animals, domestic and wild, just before they are extinguished forever.
“If good poetry is the distilled wine of writing, then this slim, beautiful volume of poems by Nasario García is a rare, vintage brandy… It’s a short read, but you will return to it again and again, to savor its bittersweet flavors.” — The Daily Times, Farmington, NM
“In short lines, the poems gracefully flow down the page. Within their gentle confines one finds nostalgia as well as whimsy and humor… With quick brushstrokes of his pen García creates small canvases with his clear and uncluttered language.” — Southwest Book Views
Nasario García is a professor emeritus of Spanish at New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas
Eliseo “Cheo” Torres, Healing with Herbs and Rituals: A Mexican Tradition, edited by Timothy L. Sawyer, Jr.
Saturday, August 5, 2006, 2:00 pm
Healing with Herbs and Rituals is an herbal remedy-based understanding of curanderismo and the practice of yerberas, or herbalists, as found in the American Southwest and northern Mexico.
Part One, “Folk Healers and Folk Healing,” focuses on individual healers and their procedures. Part Two, “Green Medicine: Traditional Mexican-American Herbs and Remedies,” details traditional Mexican-American herbs and cures. These remedies are the product of centuries of experience in Mexico, heavily influenced by the Moors, Judeo-Christians and Aztecs, and they include everyday items such as lemon, egg, fire, aromatic oil and prepared water. Symbolic objects such as keys, candles, brooms and Trouble Dolls are also used.
Dedicated, in part, to curanderos throughout Mexico and American Southwest, Healing with Herbs and Rituals shows us these practitioners are humble, sincere people who have given themselves to improving lives for many decades. Today’s holistic health movement has rediscovered the timeless merits of the curanderos’ uses of medicinal plants, rituals and practical advice.
Eliseo “Cheo” Torres is vice president of student affairs at the University of New Mexico. Timothy L. Sawyer, Jr., is a public information representative at the University of New Mexico. Torres and Sawyer co-wrote Curandero: A Life in Mexican Folk Healing, published by University of New Mexico Press.
Cristina Ortega, The Eyes of the Weaver (Los Ojos del Tejedor), illustrated by Patricio E. García
Saturday, August 19, 2006, 2:00 pm
(For reading levels 10 years and up)
Cristina Ortega is the granddaughter of master weaver, “El Tejedor,” Juan Melquides Ortega, from northern New Mexico’s Chimayó Valley. Chimayó, with roots in early Spanish Colonial times, has long been famous for its unique weavings. Juan M. Ortega was taught to weave by his father in the days when weavers sheared their own sheep and spun and dyed the wool for their blankets. Ortega continued weaving until he was one hundred years old, when his eyesight failed him.
In The Eyes of the Weaver, Cristina shares her childhood memories of visits with Grandpa in the village of Chimayó, where he taught her how to weave. She also recalls how Grandma helped her husband choose color combinations for his Chimayó blankets. It was during those visits that Cristina learned how important it is for a child to listen to and learn from his or her relatives.
Some of Juan M. Ortega’s weavings and tools of the trade have been included in the exhibit, “American Encounters,” at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.
Cristina Ortega teaches elementary school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Patricio E. García exhibited in a one-artist show at the Governor’s Gallery in Santa Fe.
Center Location:
From IH 25, 30 miles south of Socorro, turn east at exit 115. Turn south on frontage road (Highway 1), drive 1.4 miles, turn east onto County Road 1598, follow it for 2.7 miles to the Heritage Center.
For additional information, call 1-505-854-3600 or visit www.caminorealheritage.org.