The air is less dense and that makes it much clearer. You can look at a point on the road and guess it to be fairly close, then drive to it and find out it was two miles. But the roads are a real pleasure to drive. They are scenic and have few cars. At one point I tried to convince Evelyn that Thailand would be a good place to retire. Slow pace, interesting culture, beautiful scenery, low prices, good food, mostly spicy. I think she was bothered by the fact it is so distant. But to some extent all those things are true of the Southwest. And Evelyn seems much more amenable to opening the discussion about this territory. We both like it a lot.
Our next stop was at the Three Rivers Petroglyphs. This just goes to show you that even defacing nature can get an air of respectability with time. Some rather short hills at three rivers give a commanding view of the whole surrounding valley. That was just how the Mogollon Indians used the hills. Well, looking at an empty valley for hours on end waiting for something to happen--and it never does--is a boring occupation, and not surprisingly these sentinels got bored and into mischief. They started scratching figures into the stones. Abstract designs, lizards, sheep, human figures: all were grist. The vandalizing became a sort of art form between 1000 and 1350 A.D., not unlike grafitti is in Manhattan.
These glyphs were later rediscovered and turned into a sort of park where, with little management or supervision, you can explore the hills. That lack of supervision is, of course, a problem. Some neo-Mogollons have been scratching their own patterns. Most of them are easy to recognize. The originals have much better style and use lines a third of an inch wide. Just scratching with a stone gives much narrower lines.
From there it was back on the road to Alamogordo. The road passes lava rock and yucca plants (they look like the green of a pineapple but the leaves are bigger and straighter). In 1897 a local rancher, Charles Eddy, had a group of Eastern investors come out on a camping expedition. They rode in coaches but ate from chuckwagons and slept on the ground. But the point was to show them cattle, timber, and gold. Within weeks they had financed him to build the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad. He purchased the Alamo Ranch and made it a junction for the railroad. 'Alamo' means cottonwood. He renamed the area Big Cottonwood--Alamogordo.
It was a big change for the area, but the area later ushered in a big change to the world. It was July 16, 1945, when the Manhattan Project took a remote section of the Alamogordo desert and set off the first nuclear bomb.
From the beginning of World War II the local Holloman Air Force Base was testing experimental weapons and in particular missiles-- not an activity popular with the local farmers. But it was a sacrifice they made for the war. In 1948, over the protests of Alamogordo, Las Cruces, and El Paso, the proving grounds were expanded. The name became the White Sands Proving Grounds.
Speaking of white sands, after checking into a motel, we headed out for White Sands National Monument.
Back in the Pre-Cambrian to Mezozoic Ages continental plates collided hereabouts. It was a slow but violent collision. The edges crumpled, forcing huge sections upward. Where gaps formed in the structure, magma bled into the gaps and hardened. But some gaps did not fill with magma, leaving huge hollow spaces supporting incredibly huge masses of stone. So the pressures forced the land up all throughout this area but could not uniformly support it. A section cracked away and fell, causing a natural basin. Rains dissolved minerals, particularly gypsum, and washed them into the basin. Hot, dry winds then evaporated the water and left gypsum deposits in the basin. The dry winds broke up the residue. What was left was a big bowl of gypsum dust. It was not a hospitable environment for plants. Some, like the yucca, did survive. Some get blown out of the gypsum and die. Some have the gypsum blown out from under them and are left like towers standing on tall roots.
White Sands National Monument is nothing but a 224-square-mile sandbox with white sand. People love to come and watch the dunes, climb sand hills, picnic, etc. Evelyn thought the area looks totally alien. I think the hills of white only look like snow. The white sand is surprisingly cool to the touch in the hot sun and we took advantage by climbing dunes barefoot. It was not the most fascinating of attractions to me, but it was worth seeing. We left long enough to have dinner, then returned to see the sunset and the full moon rising (within about five minutes of each other). I was somewhat reluctant to leave the car and miss the first of the Presidential debates. However, after returning to our room, C-SPAN was rebroadcasting the debate and I could see what I had missed hearing. Evelyn conked out early but I caught up on my log.
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This is the day wrongly celebrated as the 500th Anniversary of Columbus's landing in the New World. Wrong! That will be in nine days. Columbus landed on October 12, 1492, in the Julian calendar which put too many leap years into the calendar. In the late 1500's (many places) they switched to the Gregorian calendar. That meant dropping eleven days. So isn't the anniversary eleven days later? No. Two of the eleven days were for extra leap year days after 1492, I guess. The proper date is October 21.
Not seeing much that looked better, we had breakfast at Denny's. Then we headed to the Space Hall of Fame. It turned out to be on Route 2001--how cute! We got there at 8 AM, an hour before it opened. They have a garden outside to walk around with missiles of various sizes. They have a Nike Ajax. I am not great with my missiles, but I was able to tell Evelyn it was either a Nike Ajax or a Nike Hercules. I do get the two confused, but I knew it was one. Somehow the Nike Ajax is shorter than you expect when you see it close up. They had a fat missile called a Little Joe. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently it was just used in doing space program tests. They have a Mercury capsule shell you can sit inside to get a feel for the scale. They had the actual rocket sled that Stapp rode in 1954 and was for a short time the fastest man alive without ever leaving the ground. He also was so beat up by what were effectively winds of over 200 miles per hour that his eyes were blackened and his face badly bruised by the whole affair. There is also the grave of the first guy America ever sent into space, at least the first guy who walked on two legs. This, of course, was Ham, the chimpanzee. More on Ham later. (Actually, we did not see the grave right away. It was the last thing we saw when we left.) After walking through the garden we wrote in our logs until the museum opened.
The museum is four stories. We went up to the top. There were models of many spacecraft, American and Soviet. A woman, apparently a cleaning woman, saw us there and started telling us about the space program, starting with Ham since there was a rather poor model of Ham in the bindings. Apparently the woman had several members of her family involved with the space program and had a lot of stories to tell, starting with chimps Ham and Enos, the first two American astronauts. Ham loved humans; Enos hated them. Ham was very cooperative; Enos really had to be forced to cooperate. Ham came back friendly and happy; Enos hated humans all the more for the torture they'd put him through. Ham was just overjoyed to see familiar humans again. Apparently Ham rebelled only once. After his flight they wanted to let reporters photograph Ham in his capsule so they tried to strap him in again. No way! I imagine Ham thinking, 'What?! Are you out of your minds? I let you strap me in there once before. It was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life. I went through a long time of pain and horror and confusion. No way are you going to do something like that to me again.' Ham won.
Well, the museum has lots of exhibits like spacecraft models, documentary photos, models of the lunar lander and the moon buggy, mockups of satellites, artists' and engineers' conceptions of space stations going back to Chesley Bonestall, taped sounds of blastoffs, information about the 50th anniversary of the A-4 (Aggregate- 4, also known as Vergettungswaffe-2 or just V-2).
After that we headed out for Lincoln, best known for the Lincoln County War. There have been a lot of small wars in New Mexico. They were things like range wars. But the best known local war was about competition between two stores on one street in Lincoln. Each store was owned by pairs of ranchers who were wouldbe cattle barons. One pair were the ranchers L. G. Murphy and J. J. Dolan. The other pair were newcomers to Lincoln, Alexander McSween and John Turnstall. Murphy and Dolan had hired some ne'erdo -wells to rustle cattle from McSween and Turnstall to help convince them to move out and abandon their store. One of these punks was a sixteen-year-old born in New York City, but who lived several places since his father died and his mother remarried. This was Billy Bonney.
One day in 1875 Billy ran into John Turnstall, the man he was trying to drive out of the country. Turnstall was a cultured Englishman and ironically the two men found they liked each other. Bonney immediately switched sides and became devoted to the only man who'd ever liked and respected him.
Then Murphy--who had an in with local law enforcement--sent a supposed 'posse' made up of his remaining punks to arrest Turnstall, claiming he'd rustled cattle. Turnstall objected, but to avoid bloodshed yielded his gun to the posse. The punks then shot down Turnstall in cold blood. Bonney, who now went by the nickname Billy the Kid, swore to kill his former friends who'd made up the posse and also the sheriff who'd authorized their actions. Billy organized several men loyal to the dead Turnstall and to McSween into his own posse-gang which he designated 'regulators.' He was the youngest, but also the angriest and the meanest, so they followed him.
In a sequence of ambushes and gunfights, Billy and his regulators made good his threat, saving the sheriff and a deputy to kill last.
The new sheriff, Dad Peppins, a former deputy, trapped Billy and his fourteen regulators in McSween's mansion with McSween. For three (or five) days the house was peppered with gunfire by a combination of a huge posse and the local cavalry who showed up with a cannon trained on the house. The commander of the cavalry ordered a cease fire and threatened to blow up the mansion if Billy, McSween, and the regulators did not surrender. To help Billy decide, Peppins set fire to the house. McSween surrendered and was shot down in cold blood. Billy killed his killer and--against amazing odds--escaped.
President Hayes had had enough and replaced the governor of New Mexico with Civil War general Lew Wallace (author of BEN HUR). Billy agreed to let himself be arrested and then to turn state's evidence on anyone who'd killed in the war so far. But Billy lost faith in Wallace and escaped again.
Again a posse caught up with Billy. After a siege, Billy gave up and asked to talk with the posse's leader. Instead, he shot the leader and the rest of the posse retreated.
Wallace appointed an old friend of Billy's, Pat Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County. Garrett was able to corner Billy and his current gang. Starving them out, he got Billy to surrender. Billy was tried and found guilty in Mesilla, New Mexico. Garrett sent his top two guns, J. W. Bell and Bob Ollinger, to take Billy back to Lincoln and to guard him there. Billy was placed in leg irons and shackles. It clearly was the end for Billy. Bell treated Billy decently; Ollinger was a sadist who used to ride for Murphy and Dolan. |
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