Voces de Santa Fé - Explore Our History

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Wednesday, 28 May 2014 17:13

The Gila Country

Contributed by Michael Miller

Published in Historical Events/Stories/Do You Remember?

Sunday, 25 May 2014 02:05

Traditional Agriculture in New Mexico: Planting With The Moon

Contributed by Michael Miller

The moon represented the cycle of birth, growth, abundance of food, decay, and death in ancient Aztec culture.

Published in The Arts, Food, and Culture

Tagged under

The moon was often represented as a rabbit in ancient Aztec codices

Sunday, 25 May 2014 01:59

Traditional Agriculture in New Mexico: Planting With the Moon

Contributed by Michael Miller

Metziqualoca is the Nahuatl term for eclipse of the moon.

Published in The Arts, Food, and Culture

Sunday, 25 May 2014 01:47

Traditional Agriculture in New Mexico: Planting With The Moon

Contributed by Michael Miller

The red moon is a sign of heat and dry tempratures in the ancient Aztec culture.

Published in The Arts, Food, and Culture

Friday, 23 May 2014 17:09

HAVE A GREAT MEMORIAL DAY

Contributed by ed Saiz

A great story about one of our World War II Veterans, from the Santa Fe New Mexican. A W.W.II Veteran from Belen, did something He'd always wanted to do.

Graduate from High School. Luis Silva who landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day, always dreamt of getting his diploma. The 90 year old veteran recieved his

this week, 71 years after He was drafted - Officials say that He earned the credits to graduate before the war. After the war He returned home to Belen, got

married and raised 4 children. He proudly watched his children, grand-children, and great grand-children graduate. This week Mr. Silva and his great -grand

daughter graduated together. Everyone have a good and safe Memorial Day. Como Siempre, Ed Saiz

Published in Honoring Seniors

Thursday, 22 May 2014 21:03

My Grandfather's Birthplace on the Santa Fe Plaza

Contributed by Arthur Scott

Sanya Fe P[aza, 1855?, Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, Negative 10695

My Grandfather's Birthplace on the Santa Fe Plaza

Arthur Scott

I recently discovered that my grandfather, Arthur Seligman, was born in 1881 on the Plaza in Santa Fe. According to Ralph Emerson Twitchell's "Old Santa Fe," published in 1925, Arthur was born to Bernard and Frances Seligman in the residence in the rear of the Siligman-Cllever (Seligman Brothers) store. Later this location was advertised as "The end of the Santa Fe Trail" As an infant Arthur made three trips with his mother over the trail. The view in the 1855 photograph is looking at the corner of present day San Francisco and Old Santa Fe Trail. This street has carried the names of "Santa Fe Trail, Seligman Street, Shelby Street, and Old Santa Fe Trail."

The store is shown above on the right in what William Stone (New Mexico Them and Nowe) calls the oldest photo found of Santa Fe. He also noted that Sigmund Seligman, my great uncle, was the first photographer in New Mexico. Before entering the mercantile business in 1852, he ran a daguerreotype portrait studio for a short time in Santa Fe. To the left is the Exchange Hotel, the only lodgings in Santa Fe at the time of the photo..

Published in Santa Fe

Tuesday, 20 May 2014 15:44

Phantom Spur

Contributed by Richard Barrett

The Phantom Spur

Years ago an old Pecosonian wood seller told me the railroad once ran into the town of Pecos. While I didn't disbelieve him I could over the years find no trace of this line: on maps, in railroad history books or historical articles. USGS topo maps showed no sign of it, as they usually do of abandoned rail lines: a dashed line labeled as "abandoned railroad grade". Myrick's very thorough New Mexico's Railroads doesn't mention it. Old forest service maps don't show it.

And then one day while researching my recent article on the old limestone quarries of Santa Fe in the New Mexico Geological Society annual bulletin of 1995 I came upon a photo of the American Metal Company's reduction mill .3 miles west of Pecos in Alamitos Canyon. "Voila". There it was! Railroad ore cars sitting on a siding waiting to be loaded and hauled to the Santa Fe mainline at Fox, four miles to the south.

The lead-zinc ore being processed in this Pecos mill came from twelve miles north, from the mine at Terrero. It was transported to the mill site on an aerial tramway considered the longest in North America at the time. This all occurred from 1927-1939; that is the shipment of ore via railroad cars.

There are several reasons for this lacuna of historical record on maps. First, this spur line existed for such a relatively short period of time that it missed mapping periods. It didn't exist in 1924 when the Forest Service issued a Santa Fe National Forest sheet of the Pecos area. It had disappeared when years later a new map was issued. The same goes for the USGS topo maps of the period.

Secondly this spur probably wasn't built and owned by the Santa Fe railroad, but by the American Metals Co. Consequently it doesn't show up on any Santa Fe railroad maps of their system, like all their coal spurs do in NE New Mexico, Madrid and elsewhere around the state.

Another guess is that it didn't show up on SF railroad maps, which were published yearly, because it didn't carry anything but ore, and was just considered an industrial siding, unlike some industrial and mining spurs which also carried freight and passengers, mostly workers, to and from the mines.

But with the above sited photo it did exist and so I did a little homework and went to the map collection of the State Library Southwest Collection. The USGS topo 7.5 min. quadrangle of Pecos, 1961, shows a narrow band of un-vegetated land, no piñon-juniper, heading north from the siding at Fox to the mill site west of Pecos.

A close look at Google maps shows portions of the grade in exactly the same position as the topo map. About half of the right-of-way was commandeered by modern dirt roads, the rest is visible by its beautiful, elliptical topographical curves, that are so typical of railroad engineering.

An aside: unlike the eastern half of the US, where vegetation, they call them trees, have obscured old roads and railroads from Google maps, out west we have no such bio-mass. As everyone knows, when you drive from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, you see everything from right to left for thirty miles or more. Out east this isn't true. You're lucky to see fifty feet into the verge.

This is also true of satellite imagery. One can follow old railroad grades for miles on Google map in the west due to the absence of vegetation. Even the most obscure logging and mining spurs, which New Mexico is full of for the looking.

As for textual information, much has been written about both the Terrero mine and the mill site in geological reports, mining surveys (see the USGS Minerals Yearbook starting in 1932 onward) and historical writing. Most recently, both sites have been the subject of intense interest due to environmental remediation.

So anyone driving from Pecos to Santa Fe from 1927-1939 on the old Route 66 would have crossed this spur line near the present-day gas station, liquor store motel on the right about 2/3 of the way to Pecos.They would have, maybe, if they were lucky, seen a steam locomotive dragging a string of ore cars to and from the mill site. They would have thought that the railroad had come to Pecos. In a way it did, but not for people or general freight, just lead-zinc ore.

This obscure bit of railroad arcana is in and of itself not important. But what is, is the wonderful historic importance of these New Mexico Geologic Society Annual Reports. Not only are they full of geologic history, but also social and economic history. If you haven't had the pleasure of reading them, I urge you to.

They are available for circulation from both the Santa Fe Public Library and the State Library Southwest Collection.

Richard Barrett

Published in Surrounding Communities (Towns and Pueblos)