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November 22, 2006
By Ben Moffett for Mountain Mail (This also appears in SmallTownNewspapers)
SOCORRO, New Mexico (STPNS) -- The traditional media generally treats Bosque del Apache and the Festival with travel page politeness, but I’ve discovered the unvarnished truth more often comes out in the blogosphere. First, let me start with keynote speaker Julie Zickefoose’s webpage. If you read the Mountain Mail’s special section you’ll recall that she had posted a bluebird painting taken “On the Road to Magdalena” and promised to go back and take her kids, Liam and Phoebe on this year’s return trip.The bluebird photo is still in place, but she’s added a day-by-day, blow-by-blow report which makes extremely interesting reading. All of what she wrote is not necessarily favorable, although none of it is mean.
For example, she took a photo of a sign advertising a “Coyote Shoot” that was tacked to the foyer area at the front of the Owl Bar. On Friday, Nov. 17, she wrote: “New Mexico is different, a bit rough around the edges.” She said “The Owl Bar has its own charm, bathed as it is in cigarette smoke. It’s the closest watering hole to Bosque del Apache ... and as such it’s one of the only smoky bars I’ve been in where you don’t get weird looks when you walk in wearing binoculars.”Zickefoose titled her day’s writings as “Please Dispose Of Your Own Coyote,” which was on the coyote hunt sign. “The sign took a little getting used to,” she wrote. “Notice its two man teams (that are hunting). That actually makes me happy. I don’t know too many women who would sign up for this.”Owner Rowena Baca told the Mountain Mail, in her defense, that “most smokers go to the bar area” and she never knows what is posted on the foyer out front. Most people who frequent the Owl Bar probably think, as Zickefoose may, that the departure from traditional values is part of the charm of the place.Aside from those remarks, Zickefoose has nothing but good to say about her trip, including discovering live coyotes at the place where she did the bluebird painting. Her Saturday, Nov. 18, post was headlined “The Best Night of My Life.” How do you pass up a headline like that? She also gave major kudos to Socorro Springs Brewery, the local locomotives, and the Bosque del Apache. I’m selecting a quote on that for next year’s Mountain Mail Festival of the Cranes special section.I don’t have room to tell her whole story, but it would pay you to check it out. It’s illustrated with great photos of things we locals take for granted, and in general is good publicity for the entire area.* * * *Another blog, called barkingquark.spaces, also gets into the festival from a whole different perspective. The guy writing this, who I was unable to contact, wrote “as we were driving along, I noticed a few horses, some Texas Longhorn cattle, and a few cranes hanging out in a field. We pulled off and I made S take a photo of the first bird I saw.”The bird was a plastic pink flamingo held up by a triangular trailer hitch on the back of a dark pick-up truck that had seen its better days. You can find the picture at barkingquark.spaces.love.com/blog“After we left the Bosque, we decided to go to Fort Craig,” he wrote. “I had no idea what it was but ... figured it was one of those wooden soldier forts that you see in the movies. No such luck. We drove and drove on a very weird dirt road until we finally came upon a little area with picnic tables, restrooms and a small RV park area.“‘Where in the hell is the fort,’ I asked.“It seems the fort is just a bunch of rubble and ruins. I was kinda (ticked) because I thought, ‘Hell, if you have to travel down that road, the least you could do is put a snack bar out here. It was really in the middle of nowhere.“There was a warning at the trail head to watch for rattlesnakes and then the posting let you know the nearest hospital was 35 miles away. That was enough wilderness for me! We made a quick turn around a few of the ruins and then hightailed it out of there.”“Anyway, we had a lovely weekend despite the murderous meanderings of soldiers and Indians. I cannot imagine anyone every wanting to settle in this area much less just walk through the terrain. Between the rattlesnakes, the stickers and stickery brush, the rock, the heat, the lack of water, and the sand, I find it amazing that white settlers even survived. We did but it was only because of the really nice remote bathrooms.”I’ve excerpted a lot. You can (and should) read the entire post and take a look at the pink flamingo.You can reach San Antonio native Ben Moffett at benmoffett@comcast.net.
© 2008 Mountain Mail Socorro, New Mexico. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from STPNS.
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Saturday, April 5, 2008
Whooping Cranes Gone from N.M. -- But Never Say Forever
November 02, 2006
By Ben Moffett
For the Socorro Mountain Mail
SOCORRO, N.M. (STPNS) -- No whooping cranes are in Bosque del Apache’s future – not immediately, not in the long term planning, maybe not ever, according to someone who should know – Tom Stehn, whooping crane coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.For newcomers to the area, an experimental flock of the perilously endangered large, white whoopers once migrated into Bosque del Apache from nesting grounds in Gray’s Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho. The experiment failed for a number of reasons – the most important being that the whoopers were hatched under sandhill crane foster parents and never appreciated their own species. They never mated.
There were other problems, too, not the least of which was the State Game and Fish Departments in Idaho, New Mexico and along the way not wanting the whoopers to interfere with sandhill crane hunts. Another problem was that predators and power lines took a toll on the population, which climbed to about two dozen at one point.The decision to end the experiment somehow never seemed irrevocable when the last whooper finally died in 2002, somewhere between Idaho and New Mexico.
Rumors were that if a new experimental flock between Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin and Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida were to fail, the experiment would revert back to the West. Another rumor was that if the new experiment were to succeed wildly, another flock would be created here as a safety valve. Yet a third rampant rumor was that “second eggs” from whooper nests would be taken, incubated and used more abundantly to restart the Bosque del Apache flock. Maybe even a non-migratory flock could be installed at Bosque del Apache. None of the above.
“You never want to say never, but there is no thought of bringing a flock back to the Rockies,” Stehn said. Then he ticked off a list of reasons. The Game and Fish departments in this part of the world are still unfriendly to the idea. There is barely enough budget to get the current flocks flying. Any extra eggs collected would go to the eastern migratory flock or to a second flight that hangs around Florida.While predation and power lines are problems in the East as well as the West, neither have been overwhelmingly negative factors in the East. And using humans in whooping crane costumes to raise young whoopers (instead of sandhill parents) has jump-started the breeding program in the East.
This new strategy just came too late to help the Western flock.What in Socorro birders’ wildest fantasies could make it happen, Tom? “It would take a lot of loud voices, jostling, pushing and demanding, and the states would have to be a big part if it,” he said. Any such public relations push would cause the hunting community to push, jostle and demand just as stringently in opposition, he added.
Hunters don’t like whoopers because they know if they shoot an endangered species they’ll be fined and make the front page in a way they never imagined. One of the hunting lobby’s chief arguments is that the whoopers never existed naturally in this part of the world, and Stehn says you can make a case from either point of view. All in all, it looks like Socorroans will have to go East – as least as far as Texas – to see a whooper, and it’s not all that difficult.
More than 500 whoopers exist in North America now, up from a handful in the 1940s. The original Canada-to-Aransas, Texas, flock is going great guns these days with a record 2006 hatch.If anybody wants to whoop up whoopers for New Mexico, the state has a tourism-minded leader in Gov. Bill Richardson, the force behind new horse facilities, a high-speed commuter train, a spaceport, new movie studios and professional sports. Maybe he could be convinced to go after cranes. Or not. Visitors to Socorro during the Festival of the Cranes will get a chance to get all the details on whoopers from the woman who has followed the Necedah flock south to Florida for the last four years.
She’s Joan Garland and she will be a Festival of the Cranes keynote speaker at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 18, at Macey Center. The cost is $5.Garland is the education outreach coordinator of the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisc. She will present an update on the progress of the current experimental flock that is currently heading south. She’s also give details on how the cranes are raised and taught their new migration route, now in its sixth year. She’ll also take questions. To get a daily update on the progress of the eastern flock going to Florida for the winter, dial in to www.operationmigration.org.Ben Moffett is a San Antonio, N.M., native. Reach him at benmoffett@comcast.net.
© 2006 Mountain Mail Socorro, New Mexico. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from STPNS (SmallTownNewspapersNewsService).
By Ben Moffett
For the Socorro Mountain Mail
SOCORRO, N.M. (STPNS) -- No whooping cranes are in Bosque del Apache’s future – not immediately, not in the long term planning, maybe not ever, according to someone who should know – Tom Stehn, whooping crane coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.For newcomers to the area, an experimental flock of the perilously endangered large, white whoopers once migrated into Bosque del Apache from nesting grounds in Gray’s Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho. The experiment failed for a number of reasons – the most important being that the whoopers were hatched under sandhill crane foster parents and never appreciated their own species. They never mated.
There were other problems, too, not the least of which was the State Game and Fish Departments in Idaho, New Mexico and along the way not wanting the whoopers to interfere with sandhill crane hunts. Another problem was that predators and power lines took a toll on the population, which climbed to about two dozen at one point.The decision to end the experiment somehow never seemed irrevocable when the last whooper finally died in 2002, somewhere between Idaho and New Mexico.
Rumors were that if a new experimental flock between Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin and Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida were to fail, the experiment would revert back to the West. Another rumor was that if the new experiment were to succeed wildly, another flock would be created here as a safety valve. Yet a third rampant rumor was that “second eggs” from whooper nests would be taken, incubated and used more abundantly to restart the Bosque del Apache flock. Maybe even a non-migratory flock could be installed at Bosque del Apache. None of the above.
“You never want to say never, but there is no thought of bringing a flock back to the Rockies,” Stehn said. Then he ticked off a list of reasons. The Game and Fish departments in this part of the world are still unfriendly to the idea. There is barely enough budget to get the current flocks flying. Any extra eggs collected would go to the eastern migratory flock or to a second flight that hangs around Florida.While predation and power lines are problems in the East as well as the West, neither have been overwhelmingly negative factors in the East. And using humans in whooping crane costumes to raise young whoopers (instead of sandhill parents) has jump-started the breeding program in the East.
This new strategy just came too late to help the Western flock.What in Socorro birders’ wildest fantasies could make it happen, Tom? “It would take a lot of loud voices, jostling, pushing and demanding, and the states would have to be a big part if it,” he said. Any such public relations push would cause the hunting community to push, jostle and demand just as stringently in opposition, he added.
Hunters don’t like whoopers because they know if they shoot an endangered species they’ll be fined and make the front page in a way they never imagined. One of the hunting lobby’s chief arguments is that the whoopers never existed naturally in this part of the world, and Stehn says you can make a case from either point of view. All in all, it looks like Socorroans will have to go East – as least as far as Texas – to see a whooper, and it’s not all that difficult.
More than 500 whoopers exist in North America now, up from a handful in the 1940s. The original Canada-to-Aransas, Texas, flock is going great guns these days with a record 2006 hatch.If anybody wants to whoop up whoopers for New Mexico, the state has a tourism-minded leader in Gov. Bill Richardson, the force behind new horse facilities, a high-speed commuter train, a spaceport, new movie studios and professional sports. Maybe he could be convinced to go after cranes. Or not. Visitors to Socorro during the Festival of the Cranes will get a chance to get all the details on whoopers from the woman who has followed the Necedah flock south to Florida for the last four years.
She’s Joan Garland and she will be a Festival of the Cranes keynote speaker at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 18, at Macey Center. The cost is $5.Garland is the education outreach coordinator of the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisc. She will present an update on the progress of the current experimental flock that is currently heading south. She’s also give details on how the cranes are raised and taught their new migration route, now in its sixth year. She’ll also take questions. To get a daily update on the progress of the eastern flock going to Florida for the winter, dial in to www.operationmigration.org.Ben Moffett is a San Antonio, N.M., native. Reach him at benmoffett@comcast.net.
© 2006 Mountain Mail Socorro, New Mexico. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from STPNS (SmallTownNewspapersNewsService).
The Quemado Kid Is TLC Plumber, Magdalena Rancher
By Ben Moffett
(Originally published in the Socorro Mountain Mail. Copyright 2005).
It’s said that you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy, and Dale Armstrong is the perfect poster boy for that adage.
Armstrong grew up in the wide open spaces of west-central New Mexico, and after gaining a measure of financial independence in the big city, he returned to his old haunts along Highway 60. He started out as a ranch hand on the family spread near Quemado, and during his lifetime has been a gas pump jockey, pole-vaulter, college student, plumber and ultimately, the owner of a highly successful plumbing company in Albuquerque.
Armstrong completed the circuit in 1997, when he and his wife, Gail, also from Quemado, bought a ranch near Magdalena. Their goal was to give their four children a taste of the same country ambiance, lifestyle and rural values that they enjoyed.Armstrong didn’t quit his day job as owner, president and CEO of TLC Plumbing & Utility, when he returned to Magdalena, however. He makes the roughly 100 mile commute between the state’s largest city and his ranch near Magdalena twice a week, usually spending a three-day weekend at home, corresponding with the three-day weekend that all Magdalena public school students enjoy.
Armstrong began the trade in 1982 and purchased TLC Plumbing & Utility in 1989, as the owner and only employee. He lived the name – it suited his vision of what a company should stand for. It paid off. Since then, Armstrong said, the company has grown an average of 20 percent a year.Twenty years later TLC has 315 employees and continues to grow, thanks to five core values that define the company – honesty, hard work, respect, compassion, and consistency.“We’re not afraid of a hard day’s work,” Armstrong recently told PHC News, a national plumbing and heating magazine published in Illinois. “We also understand the importance of helping to build employees of strong moral character and responsibility, and to sustain commitment to the families they support.To help with that effort, Armstrong has created a four-year long training course for apprentice employees.
The 16 apprentices currently in the program attend classes on life skills and budget management (of their own money), as well as such trade basics as “Introduction to Plumbing,” among others. Apprentices are also assigned mentors from senior staff.Armstrong also likes to recruit employees with rural backgrounds, and looks up and down the Rio Grande and beyond for his apprentices.He also contributes heavily to junior livestock programs at the New Mexico State Fair and at county fairs from Socorro to Santa Fe. This year he bought Socorro County’s highest ranked pig at the State Fair, shown by Brendon Rosales.Raising animals was part of his rural training, although he wasn’t as deeply involved in the competitive aspect of it as were his siblings. “I wanted to do something (in business) when I was 15,” he said. He briefly had a wood cutting operation and soon got a job working for a service station while at Quemado High School. Upon graduation, he headed for San Juan College in Farmington, a branch of NMSU, looking to become an engineer.
“But I was in love with a Quemado girl, and decided to get married,” he said. He married the former Gail Gallaher, naturally a Quemado High product and the daughter of Dale and Mary K. Gallaher.That’s when he bought TLC. “It was an existing business shutting down and I bought the tools. I liked the catchy name and decided to keep it,“ he said.Today the Armstrong’s have four children who apparently took well to their rural environment in Magdalena.
The eldest, Kelly, is an elementary education student at the University of New Mexico and a varsity pole vaulter. She set the state pole vault record for Class A girls at Magdalena High School, and won the state title three times, following in the footsteps of dad, who tore himself away from his job to compete in the vault at Quemado. Kayla, also a varsity athlete at Magdalena, is attending Central New Mexico Community College majoring in business management.Son KC is a junior at Magdalena and a football player and pole vaulter. Kameron, the youngest, is in the seventh grade at Magdalena and a budding athlete. The whole family appears dead set on beating dad in the pole vault. He finished fifth at state in the event.Armstrong doesn’t expect to end the commute to Albuquerque anytime soon. “The ranch is just a hobby,” he said. “It’s more a way of life than a way to make a profit. It’s mostly for the kids.”
(Originally published in the Socorro Mountain Mail. Copyright 2005).
It’s said that you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy, and Dale Armstrong is the perfect poster boy for that adage.
Armstrong grew up in the wide open spaces of west-central New Mexico, and after gaining a measure of financial independence in the big city, he returned to his old haunts along Highway 60. He started out as a ranch hand on the family spread near Quemado, and during his lifetime has been a gas pump jockey, pole-vaulter, college student, plumber and ultimately, the owner of a highly successful plumbing company in Albuquerque.
Armstrong completed the circuit in 1997, when he and his wife, Gail, also from Quemado, bought a ranch near Magdalena. Their goal was to give their four children a taste of the same country ambiance, lifestyle and rural values that they enjoyed.Armstrong didn’t quit his day job as owner, president and CEO of TLC Plumbing & Utility, when he returned to Magdalena, however. He makes the roughly 100 mile commute between the state’s largest city and his ranch near Magdalena twice a week, usually spending a three-day weekend at home, corresponding with the three-day weekend that all Magdalena public school students enjoy.
Armstrong began the trade in 1982 and purchased TLC Plumbing & Utility in 1989, as the owner and only employee. He lived the name – it suited his vision of what a company should stand for. It paid off. Since then, Armstrong said, the company has grown an average of 20 percent a year.Twenty years later TLC has 315 employees and continues to grow, thanks to five core values that define the company – honesty, hard work, respect, compassion, and consistency.“We’re not afraid of a hard day’s work,” Armstrong recently told PHC News, a national plumbing and heating magazine published in Illinois. “We also understand the importance of helping to build employees of strong moral character and responsibility, and to sustain commitment to the families they support.To help with that effort, Armstrong has created a four-year long training course for apprentice employees.
The 16 apprentices currently in the program attend classes on life skills and budget management (of their own money), as well as such trade basics as “Introduction to Plumbing,” among others. Apprentices are also assigned mentors from senior staff.Armstrong also likes to recruit employees with rural backgrounds, and looks up and down the Rio Grande and beyond for his apprentices.He also contributes heavily to junior livestock programs at the New Mexico State Fair and at county fairs from Socorro to Santa Fe. This year he bought Socorro County’s highest ranked pig at the State Fair, shown by Brendon Rosales.Raising animals was part of his rural training, although he wasn’t as deeply involved in the competitive aspect of it as were his siblings. “I wanted to do something (in business) when I was 15,” he said. He briefly had a wood cutting operation and soon got a job working for a service station while at Quemado High School. Upon graduation, he headed for San Juan College in Farmington, a branch of NMSU, looking to become an engineer.
“But I was in love with a Quemado girl, and decided to get married,” he said. He married the former Gail Gallaher, naturally a Quemado High product and the daughter of Dale and Mary K. Gallaher.That’s when he bought TLC. “It was an existing business shutting down and I bought the tools. I liked the catchy name and decided to keep it,“ he said.Today the Armstrong’s have four children who apparently took well to their rural environment in Magdalena.
The eldest, Kelly, is an elementary education student at the University of New Mexico and a varsity pole vaulter. She set the state pole vault record for Class A girls at Magdalena High School, and won the state title three times, following in the footsteps of dad, who tore himself away from his job to compete in the vault at Quemado. Kayla, also a varsity athlete at Magdalena, is attending Central New Mexico Community College majoring in business management.Son KC is a junior at Magdalena and a football player and pole vaulter. Kameron, the youngest, is in the seventh grade at Magdalena and a budding athlete. The whole family appears dead set on beating dad in the pole vault. He finished fifth at state in the event.Armstrong doesn’t expect to end the commute to Albuquerque anytime soon. “The ranch is just a hobby,” he said. “It’s more a way of life than a way to make a profit. It’s mostly for the kids.”
1945 Socorro County UFO Crash a Quiet Drama
By Ben Moffett
Copyright
Published in the Socorro Mountain Mail and at Rense.com
Just before dawn on July 16, 1945, scientists detonated the world's first atomic bomb at Trinity Site, some 20 miles southeast of San Antonio, N.M. Three weeks later, on August 6 and 9, the United States brought World War II to a dramatic end by using the bomb to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On August 6, the world first learned that the Trinity event, which had frightened San Antonioans witless, was not "an ammunition magazine containing high explosives and pyrotechnics" as the military had reported. It was an atomic bomb, "death, the destroyer of worlds," in the words of project physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
It was in this crucible of suspicion and disinterest bred by familiarity that a small contingent of the U.S. Army passed almost unnoticed through San Antonio in mid-to-late August, 1945 on a secret assignment, according to two local observers.
Little or nothing has been printed about the mission, shrouded in the "hush-hush" atmosphere of the time. But according to the observers, the military detail apparently came from White Sands Proving Grounds to the east where the bomb was exploded. It was a recovery operation destined for the mesquite and greasewood desert west of Old US-85, at what is now Milepost 139, the San Antonio exit of Interstate 25.
Over the course of several days, they said soldiers in Army fatigues loaded the shattered remains of a flying apparatus onto a huge flatbed truck and hauled it away.
That such an operation took place between about Aug. 20 and Aug. 25, 1945, there is no doubt, insist two former San Antonioans, Remigio Baca and Jose Padilla, eyewitnesses to the event.
Padilla, then age 9, and Baca, 7, secretly watched much of the soldiers' recovery work from a nearby ridge. Their keen interest stemmed from being the first to reach the crash site.
What they saw was a long, wide gash in the earth, with a manufactured object lying cockeyed and partially buried at the end of it, surrounding by a large field of debris. They believed then, and believe today, that the object was occupied by distinctly non-human life forms which were alive and moving about on their arrival minutes after the crash.
They reported their findings to Jose's father, Faustino Padilla, on whose ranch the craft had crashed. Shortly thereafter, Faustino received a military visitor asking for permission to remove it.
During their school years, Jose and Remegio, best friends, would sometimes whisper about the events of that August, which occurred before any of the other mysterious UFO incidents in New Mexico, but they didn't talk to others about it on the advice of their parents and a state policeman friend.
The significance of what they saw, however, grew in their eyes over time as tales of UFOs and flying saucers multiplied across the country, especially in a ban across central New Mexico.
Among the most prominent was Socorro police officer Lonnie Zamora's April 24, 1964 on-duty report of a "manned" UFO just south of Socorro, less than 10 miles north of the heretofore unnoticed 1945 Padilla Ranch crash.
Jose and Remigio were long gone from the area by the time UFOs and flying saucers became news, and although both kept up with Socorro County events, they lost contact and never discussed the emerging phenomenon with each other.
Reme moved to Tacoma, Wash., while still in high school and Jose to Rowland Heights, Calif. Then, two years ago, after more than four decades apart, they met by chance on the Internet while tracking their ancestry. It was then their interest in the most intriguing event of their childhood was rekindled.
During one of the conversations, Remegio and Jose decided to tell their story to veteran news reporter Ben Moffett, a classmate at San Antonio Grade School who they knew shared their understanding of the culture and ambience of San Antonio in the forties and fifties, and who was familiar with the terrain, place names, and people. This is their story as told to Moffett.
***
By Ben Moffett
Mountain Mail
benmoffett@att.net
SAN ANTONIO, N.M. -- The pungent but pleasing aroma of greasewood was in the air as Jose Padilla, age 9, and friend, Remigio Baca, 7, set out on horseback one August morning in 1945 to find a cow that had wandered off to calf.
The scent of the greasewood, more often called creosote bush today, caught their attention as they moved away from this tiny settlement on their horses, Bolé and Dusty. The creosote scent is evident only when it is moist, and its presence on the wind meant rain somewhere nearby.
So, as they worked the draws on the Padilla Ranch, they were mindful of flash flooding which might occur in Walnut Creek, or side arroyos, if there were a major thunderstorm upstream. Gully-washers are not uncommon in late summer in the northern stretches of the Chihuahuan Desert of central New Mexico, especially along the foothills of the Magdalena Mountains looming to the west.
Despite minor perils associated with being away from adults, it was a routine outing for Jose and Reme. It was not odd to see youngsters roam far afield doing chores during the war years. "I could ride before I could walk," said Jose in a recent interview. "We were expected to do our share of the work. Hunting down a cow for my dad wasn't a bad job, even in the August heat."
At length, they moved into terrain that seemed too rough for the horses hooves, and Jose decided to tether them, minus bridles, allowing them to graze. He had spotted a mesquite thicket, a likely place for a wayward cow to give birth, and they set off across a field of jagged rocks and cholla cactus to take a look. As they moved along, grumbling about the thorns, the building thunderheads decided to let go. They took refuge under a ledge above the floodplain, protected somewhat from the lightning strikes that suddenly peppered the area.
The storm quickly passed and as they again moved out, another brilliant light, accompanying by a crunching sound shook the ground around them. It was not at all like thunder. Another experiment at White Sands? No, it seemed too close. "We thought it came from the next canyon, adjacent to Walnut Creek, and as we moved in that direction, we hear a cow in a clump of mesquites," said Reme. Sure enough, it was the Padilla cow, licking a white face calf.
A quick check revealed the calf to be healthy and nursing, and the boys decided to reward themselves with a small lunch Jose had sacked, a tortilla each, washed down with a few swigs from a canteen, and an apple.
As they munched, Jose noticed smoke coming from a draw adjacent to Walnut Creek, a main tributary from the mountains to the Rio Grande.
Ignoring their task at hand, the two boys headed toward it, and what they saw as they topped a rise "stopped us dead in our tracks," Reme remembers. "There was a gouge in the earth as long as a football field, and a circular object at the end of it." It was "barely visible," he said, through a field of smoke. "It was the color of the old pot my mother was always trying to shine up, a dull metallic color."
They moved closer and found the heat from the wreckage and burning greasewood to be intense. "You could feel it through the soles of your shoes," said Reme. "It was still humid from the rain, stifling, and it was hard to get close."
They retreated briefly to talk things over, cool off, sip from the canteen and collect their nerve, worried there might be casualties in the wreckage.
Then they headed back toward the site. That's when things really got eerie. Waiting for the heat to diminish, they began examining the remnants at the periphery of a huge litter field. Reme picked up a piece of thin, shiny material that he says reminded him of "the tin foil in the old olive green Phillip Morris cigarette packs."
"It was folded up and lodged underneath a rock, apparently pinned there during the collision," said Reme. "When I freed it, it unfolded all by itself. I refolded it, and it spread itself out again." Reme put it in his pocket.
Finally they were able to work their way to within yards of the wreckage, fearing the worst and not quite ready for it. "I had my hand over my face, peeking through my fingers," Reme recalled. "Jose, being older, seemed to be able to handle it better."
As they approached they saw, thought they saw, yes, definitely DID see movement in the main part of the craft.
"Strange looking creatures were moving around inside," said Reme. "They looked under stress. They moved fast, as if they were able to will themselves from one position to another in an instant. They were shadowy and expressionless, but definitely living beings."
Reme wanted no part of whoever, whatever was inside. "Jose wasn't afraid of much, but I told him we should get out of there. I remember we felt concern for the creatures. They seemed like us-children, not dangerous. But we were scared and exhausted. Besides it was getting late."
The boys backtracked, ignoring the cow and calf. It was a little after dusk when they climbed on their horses, and dark when they reached the Padilla home.
Faustino Padilla asked about the cow, and got a quick report. "And we found something else," Jose said, and the story poured out, quickly and almost incoherently. "It's kind of hard to explain, but it was long and round, and there was a big gouge in the dirt and there were these hombrecitos (little guys)."
Their tale unfolded as Jose's father listened patiently. "They were running back and forth, looking desperate. They were like children. They didn't have hair," Jose said
"We'll check it out in a day or two," Faustino said, unalarmed and apparently not worried in the least about survivors or medical emergencies. "It must be something the military lost and we shouldn't disturb it. Leave your horse here, Reme, and Jose and I will drive you home, since it's so late."
Two days later at about noon, state policeman Eddie Apodaca, a family friend who had been summons by Faustino, arrived at the Padilla home. Jose and Reme directed Apodoca and Jose's dad toward the crash site in two vehicles, a pick-up and a state police car. When they could drive no further, they parked and hiked to the hillside where the boys had initially spotted the wreckage.
As they topped the ridge, they noted the cow and calf had moved on, probably headed for home pasture, then they walked the short distance to the overlook. For a second time, Jose and Reme are dumbfounded.
The wreckage was nowhere to be seen.
"What could have happened to it?" Reme asked.
"Somebody must have taken it," Jose responded defensively.
Apodoca and Faustino stared intently but unaccusingly at Jose and Reme, trying to understand. They headed down the canyon nonetheless, and suddenly, "as if by magic," in Reme's words, the object reappeared.
"From the top of the hill, it blended into the surroundings," Reme explained recently. "The sun was at a different angle, and the object had dirt and debris over it," which he speculated may have been put there by someone after the crash.
Apodoca and Faustino led the way to the craft, then climbed inside while Jose and Reme were ordered to stay a short distance away. "I can't see the hombrecitos," Reme offered.
"No," replies Jose. "But look at these marks on the ground, like when you drag a rake over it."
"The huge field of litter had been cleaned up," Reme recalled. "Who did it, and when, I have no idea. Was it the military? Using a helicopter? Or the occupants?"
The main body of the craft, however, remained in place with odd pieces dangling everywhere.
Now it was time for the adults to lecture Reme and Jose, Reme remembers. "Listen carefully. Don't tell anyone about this," Reme quoted Faustino as saying. "Reme, your dad just started working for the government. He doesn't need to know anything about it. It might cause him trouble."
Faustino also worked for the government at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the ranch itself was on leased federal land. Faustino was a patriotic man and honest to a fault in his dealing with the federal government, according to Jose.
"The government calls them weather balloons," the state policeman chipped in. "I'm here to help Faustino work out the recovery with the government. They'll want this thing back."
"But this isn't like the weather balloons we've seen before," said Reme. "They were little, almost like a kite."
"You're right, Reme. Este es un monstruso, que no Eddie?" Faustino said.
"Yeah, it's big for sure," the state policeman acknowledged.
"And the hombrecitos?" Reme persisted.
"Maybe you just thought you saw them," said Faustino. "Or maybe somebody took them, or they just took off."
Then they headed home. The cow and calf also grazed their way back in a day or two.
Next week: The story continues with the military's removal of the wreckage, while Jose and Reme, equipped with binoculars, spy on their every move, including the soldiers slipping off to the Owl Bar for a little diversion.
Jose and Reme also look back at the incident from the perspective of time. Was the object that required a flatbed truck and an "L" extension a weather balloon, or an alien craft from space or from another dimension?
The two men, now in their mid to late 60s, still have a piece of the craft and know where other parts were buried by the military.
Reme also speculates about how the 1945 incident fits in with the many sightings that were later reported in a ban across central New Mexico and elsewhere, giving rise to a UFO and "flying saucer" phenomenon that is still debated today.
New Mexico 1945 UFO Crash, Part II
Ben Moffett, Socorro Mountain Mail, published 11-6-03
Note: This Story May Not Be Reproduced In Part Or Whole In Any Media Without Written Permission of Author - editor
In mid August, 1945, before the term "flying saucer" was coined, Remigio Baca, age 7, and Jose Padilla, 9, were first on the scene of the crash of a strange object on the Padilla Ranch west of San Antonio, a tiny village on the Rio Grande in central New Mexico.
Both Remigio, or "Reme" as his friends called him, and Jose, believe they saw "shadowy, childlike creatures" in the demolished, oblong, circular craft when they arrived at the scene, well before anyone else.
The U.S. Army told the public nothing about it, and told the Padilla family it was a "weather balloon," according to Reme and Jose, now in their mid 60s. And the two men insist the Army went to great lengths to keep the operation under wraps, even concocting a cover story to mask their mop-up mission on the ranch.
The recovery operation actually started two days after Reme, Jose, Jose's father, Faustino, and state policeman Eddie Apodaca, a family friend, visited the site on August 18, 1945. It was then that a Latino sergeant named Avila arrived at the Padilla home in San Antonito, a tiny southern extension of San Antonio.
After some small talk, Sgt. Avila got down to business. According to Reme's and Jose's recollection, and what they learned subsequently from Faustino, the conversation went something like this:
"As you may know, there's a weather balloon down on your property," Avila said. "We need to install a metal gate and grade a road to the site to recover it. We'll have to tear down a part of the fence adjoining the cattle guard."
"Why can't you just go through the gate like everybody else?" asked Faustino.
"Well, the problem is that your cattle guard is about 10 feet wide, and our tractor trailer can't begin to get through there," said the sergeant. "We'll compensate you, of course."
The sergeant also asked for a key to the gate until the military could install its own. He also wanted help with security. "Can you make sure nobody goes to the site unless they are authorized. And don't tell anyone why we're here."
"What should I tell them?" Faustino asked.
"You can tell them the equipment is here because the government needs to work a manganese mine west of here," the sergeant said.
"That was to justify the presence of road-building equipment," said Reme in a recent interview. "It wasn't until decades later, on the Internet, that I learned the Army told a lot of fibs along about that time. I found another manganese mine story was used to cover a UFO incident on the west side of the Magdalenas near Datil in 1947, about the time of the Roswell UFO incident."
"I know for sure that the cover story was at least the second piece of misinformation they gave out in a month," noted Reme, a former Marine, chuckling and referencing the acknowledged false press release used to cover the Trinity atom bomb explosion as the first.
It wasn't long after the sergeant's departure that the Army was on the scene with road building equipment. Long before the road was graded, however, soldiers were at the site, carrying scraps of the mangled airship to smaller vehicles that were able to immediately get close to the scene.
Although they were warned by their father to stay away from the area, Jose, sometimes with Reme, and sharing a pair of binoculars, watched from hiding as the military graded a road and soldiers prepared for the flatbed's arrival. Jose actually made off with a piece, which is still in their possession.
"The work detail wasn't too efficient," said Reme, who noted from his experience in the Marines that military parts had numbers and were carefully catalogued. "The soldiers threw some of the pieces down a crevice, so they wouldn't have to carry them," he said. "Then they would kick dirt and rocks and brush over them to cover them up."
According to Jose, four soldiers were stationed at the wreckage at all times, with shift changes every 12 hours. "One stayed at a tent as a guard and listened to the radio. I could hear the music. They'd work for an hour and then lock the gate, climb in their pick-ups and go to the Owl Café, where they'd look for girls. I know because one of my (female) cousins who was there told me."
Once the flatbed was in place, the soldiers used wenches to hoist the intact portion of the wreckage in place. "They had to build an L-shaped frame and tilt it to get it to fit into the tractor-trailer, because it bulged out over one side," Jose said. "They finally cut a hole in the fence at the gate that was 26 feet long to get it out."
Off it went, shrouded under tarps, through San Antonio and presumably to Stallion Site on what is today White Sands Missile Range, where, according to Reme, it still may be today.
**
Was this clandestine operation undertaken to recover a weather balloon? Or, as Jose and Reme contend, was it something far more mysterious?
"I think the term 'weather balloon' was a euphemism, a catch-all for anything and everything that the government couldn't explain, said, Reme.
Reme and Jose knew about typical military weather balloons. "My father and I found about seven of them before and after the 1945 crash," Jose remembers. "We always gathered them up and gave them back to the military. They were nothing but silky material, aluminum and wood, nothing like what we found in that arroyo in 1945."
"Those weather balloons were not much more than big box kites," said Reme. "They sure couldn't gouge a hole in the ground. Remember, in 1945, despite the bomb, we weren't all that sophisticated. The Trinity Site bomb, Fat Man, was transported on a railroad car to the site. Radar was primitive or non-existent in some places. Maybe the military knew what they had, maybe they didn't, maybe they couldn't say."
Reme and Jose are convinced, and they say Faustino soon came to join in their belief, that the object on the ranch was no mere weather balloon, but an object of mystery. Faustino, however, had no interest in challenging the status quo, nor did state policeman Apodaca, whatever his beliefs were.
And why would a mere sergeant be sent to negotiate with Faustino Padilla on a mission that involved something more than a routine weather balloon flight. "He wore sergeant stripes," Reme said. "That doesn't necessarily mean he was a sergeant. And he was Latino. He was sent to San Antonio because he could communicate with the locals."
Finally, why would the military allow such cavalier treatment of the wreckage, if it were a foreign or alien craft with scientific value?
"I don't know if they knew what they had," Reme said. "It was a fairly crude craft with no parts numbers on it, and the piece we have, we were told is not remarkably machined even for 1945. But there's nothing that says aliens have to travel in remarkable spaceships.
"Given what we know about distances in the universe, space travel seems far-fetched, I'll grant you. Perhaps they got here by some method we can't fathom and they manufactured a crude object here to get around in this atmosphere. We hear about other dimensions, and parallel universes.
"I don't know much about those things. But I do know what I saw, which was some unlikely looking creatures at the crash site. I know that later other people in the area reported similar things. And I know the government was interested in keeping it quiet."
Reme has studied the UFO phenomenon in his spare time over the years, especially as it pertained to New Mexico. "The military opened the door at Roswell, and then they closed it," he said, referring to a July, 1947 report by the Roswell Air Force Base information office about the crash and recovery of a "flying disc" that they reported had been bouncing around the sky. Then the base retreated by reporting it was merely a "radar tracking balloon" that had been recovered.
Details of the Roswell event can be found in a 19-page Freedom of Information Act request by the late New Mexico Congressman Steve Schiff and released by the General Accounting Office July 28, 1995. It can be found on the Internet at http://www.conspire.com/ds/gao2.html).
The Roswell crash, which along with the sighting of a UFO south of Socorro by city policeman Lonnie Zamora in 1964, are the two most famous of a string of UFO reports over central New Mexico and in all of UFO lore.
From 1946 through 1949, 25 UFO sightings that "may have contained extra-terrestrial life" were reported worldwide by the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Of those, seven came from New Mexico, including one near Magdalena (1946), Socorro (1947), Roswell (actually near Corona), July 4, 1947, Plains of San Agustin (Catron County), July 5, 1947, Aztec, 1948, White Sands, 1949 and Roswell again, 1949. Another was in the pattern, too, on the Hopi Reservation of Arizona in 1947.
"There was a pattern of sightings and incidents in a ban across New Mexico. Socorro and San Antonio are right at the center," notes Reme. "Our 1945 sighting just adds to that base of information. It's intriguing to say the least. If you were an eyewitness it becomes even more intriguing."
Reme and Jose are excited enough to tell their story after more than 55 years, even knowing the problems that plagued Lonnie Zamora after his spotting a UFO near Socorro, less than 10 miles away, in 1964.
Jose and Reme would like to see an excavation of the crevice where a few odds and ends from their "alien craft" were tossed. The crevice was recently covered up by a bulldozer doing flood control work.
And they'd like to have the part they have from the wreckage examined more closely. They are not eager to surrender it to anyone, however. "I've heard from others that if you give it up to the government, you stand a good chance of not getting it back," Reme said.
A second piece, which Reme likened to the "tin foil in a cigarette pack," is gone. "I used it to stop a leak in a brass pipe under a windmill at our house in San Antonio in the early 50s," he said. "I used it to fill the stripped threads on two pieces of pipe."
Reme said he regrets using it now, but it was handy. "I kept in for years in an old Prince Albert (tobacco) can in the pump house, and it was the nearest thing available." Reme said the foil stopped the leak in the pipe for years. The windmill is now gone and the property is no longer owned by the family.
Finally, Jose and Reme were asked why they decided to tell the tale today, after nearly 60 years.
"It's something you can never get out of your head," said Reme. "When we saw it, we had never heard the term UFO, and 'flying saucers' didn't become a part of the language until June of 1947 when a pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported nine objects in a formation in the area of Mount Rainier.
"We didn't invent this phenomenon," said Reme. "We experienced it. Others have apparently had similar experiences. I believe Jose and I have an obligation to add our information to the mix."
BIOSRemigio Baca of Gig, Harbor, Wash., was born in San Antonio in October,1938, to Evarista Serna and Alejandro Baca. He attended San Antonio Grade School and Socorro High until he transferred to Stadium High in Tacoma, Wash., in his freshman year.
Reme served in the Marines for six years during the Vietnam War, worked as a tax compliance officer for the Washington Department of Revenue, and was involved in Washington politics. A meeting with Vernon Jordan, national chairman of the Urban League, encouraged him to get into politics, which he did with enthusiasm.
Reme was instrumental in the election of the famous scientist and Nixon administration politician Dixy Ray Lee to the governorship of Washington as a Democrat, and served on Ray's executive staff.
In that role, he helped get qualified Latinos in administrative positions in government. When Lee was defeated, Reme became an insurance agent in Tacoma, moved to California for awhile as an independent insurance broker in Oxnard, Santa Paula and Santa Barbara, and retired in Gig Harbor, a suburb of Tacoma.
He has been married for years to Virginia Tonan, a classical pianist and teacher.
He has been back to San Antonio many times, and has relatives in Socorro County.
Jose Padilla was born in San Antonito in November, 1936, to Faustino and Maria Padilla, attended first San Antonito Grade School and then San Antonio Grade School when San Antonito's school burned down. He also attended the Luis Lopez Grade School for a time. He made first communion with Reme Baca at the San Antonio Church.
While at Socorro High he left to join the National Guard at age 13, when very young children were allowed to sign up because of the World War II death toll in the New Mexico Guard. After leaving San Antonio, Jose continued guard duty in Van Nuyes Calif., Air National Guard, and when the unit was activated, spent time in Korea.
He married his wife, Olga, and served with the California Highway Patrol for 32 years as a safety inspector. The Padillas have three boys, including a son, Sam, who lives in Contreras, near La Joya, and he has numerous relatives in Socorro and vicinity.
(Editor's note: Thanks to the Mountain Mail for allowing us to run this piece by Ben Moffett. The newspaper, which covers Socorro and Catron County in rural New Mexico, is rapidly gaining a reputation as a "good news" newspaper with strong editorial pages which come from both the left and the right, innovative pieces on such locally controversial subjects as rooster fighting, gay rights, and, yes, UFOs, and such locally important ones as birding, farming and ranching. -- www.rense.com.
Copyright
Published in the Socorro Mountain Mail and at Rense.com
Just before dawn on July 16, 1945, scientists detonated the world's first atomic bomb at Trinity Site, some 20 miles southeast of San Antonio, N.M. Three weeks later, on August 6 and 9, the United States brought World War II to a dramatic end by using the bomb to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On August 6, the world first learned that the Trinity event, which had frightened San Antonioans witless, was not "an ammunition magazine containing high explosives and pyrotechnics" as the military had reported. It was an atomic bomb, "death, the destroyer of worlds," in the words of project physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
It was in this crucible of suspicion and disinterest bred by familiarity that a small contingent of the U.S. Army passed almost unnoticed through San Antonio in mid-to-late August, 1945 on a secret assignment, according to two local observers.
Little or nothing has been printed about the mission, shrouded in the "hush-hush" atmosphere of the time. But according to the observers, the military detail apparently came from White Sands Proving Grounds to the east where the bomb was exploded. It was a recovery operation destined for the mesquite and greasewood desert west of Old US-85, at what is now Milepost 139, the San Antonio exit of Interstate 25.
Over the course of several days, they said soldiers in Army fatigues loaded the shattered remains of a flying apparatus onto a huge flatbed truck and hauled it away.
That such an operation took place between about Aug. 20 and Aug. 25, 1945, there is no doubt, insist two former San Antonioans, Remigio Baca and Jose Padilla, eyewitnesses to the event.
Padilla, then age 9, and Baca, 7, secretly watched much of the soldiers' recovery work from a nearby ridge. Their keen interest stemmed from being the first to reach the crash site.
What they saw was a long, wide gash in the earth, with a manufactured object lying cockeyed and partially buried at the end of it, surrounding by a large field of debris. They believed then, and believe today, that the object was occupied by distinctly non-human life forms which were alive and moving about on their arrival minutes after the crash.
They reported their findings to Jose's father, Faustino Padilla, on whose ranch the craft had crashed. Shortly thereafter, Faustino received a military visitor asking for permission to remove it.
During their school years, Jose and Remegio, best friends, would sometimes whisper about the events of that August, which occurred before any of the other mysterious UFO incidents in New Mexico, but they didn't talk to others about it on the advice of their parents and a state policeman friend.
The significance of what they saw, however, grew in their eyes over time as tales of UFOs and flying saucers multiplied across the country, especially in a ban across central New Mexico.
Among the most prominent was Socorro police officer Lonnie Zamora's April 24, 1964 on-duty report of a "manned" UFO just south of Socorro, less than 10 miles north of the heretofore unnoticed 1945 Padilla Ranch crash.
Jose and Remigio were long gone from the area by the time UFOs and flying saucers became news, and although both kept up with Socorro County events, they lost contact and never discussed the emerging phenomenon with each other.
Reme moved to Tacoma, Wash., while still in high school and Jose to Rowland Heights, Calif. Then, two years ago, after more than four decades apart, they met by chance on the Internet while tracking their ancestry. It was then their interest in the most intriguing event of their childhood was rekindled.
During one of the conversations, Remegio and Jose decided to tell their story to veteran news reporter Ben Moffett, a classmate at San Antonio Grade School who they knew shared their understanding of the culture and ambience of San Antonio in the forties and fifties, and who was familiar with the terrain, place names, and people. This is their story as told to Moffett.
***
By Ben Moffett
Mountain Mail
benmoffett@att.net
SAN ANTONIO, N.M. -- The pungent but pleasing aroma of greasewood was in the air as Jose Padilla, age 9, and friend, Remigio Baca, 7, set out on horseback one August morning in 1945 to find a cow that had wandered off to calf.
The scent of the greasewood, more often called creosote bush today, caught their attention as they moved away from this tiny settlement on their horses, Bolé and Dusty. The creosote scent is evident only when it is moist, and its presence on the wind meant rain somewhere nearby.
So, as they worked the draws on the Padilla Ranch, they were mindful of flash flooding which might occur in Walnut Creek, or side arroyos, if there were a major thunderstorm upstream. Gully-washers are not uncommon in late summer in the northern stretches of the Chihuahuan Desert of central New Mexico, especially along the foothills of the Magdalena Mountains looming to the west.
Despite minor perils associated with being away from adults, it was a routine outing for Jose and Reme. It was not odd to see youngsters roam far afield doing chores during the war years. "I could ride before I could walk," said Jose in a recent interview. "We were expected to do our share of the work. Hunting down a cow for my dad wasn't a bad job, even in the August heat."
At length, they moved into terrain that seemed too rough for the horses hooves, and Jose decided to tether them, minus bridles, allowing them to graze. He had spotted a mesquite thicket, a likely place for a wayward cow to give birth, and they set off across a field of jagged rocks and cholla cactus to take a look. As they moved along, grumbling about the thorns, the building thunderheads decided to let go. They took refuge under a ledge above the floodplain, protected somewhat from the lightning strikes that suddenly peppered the area.
The storm quickly passed and as they again moved out, another brilliant light, accompanying by a crunching sound shook the ground around them. It was not at all like thunder. Another experiment at White Sands? No, it seemed too close. "We thought it came from the next canyon, adjacent to Walnut Creek, and as we moved in that direction, we hear a cow in a clump of mesquites," said Reme. Sure enough, it was the Padilla cow, licking a white face calf.
A quick check revealed the calf to be healthy and nursing, and the boys decided to reward themselves with a small lunch Jose had sacked, a tortilla each, washed down with a few swigs from a canteen, and an apple.
As they munched, Jose noticed smoke coming from a draw adjacent to Walnut Creek, a main tributary from the mountains to the Rio Grande.
Ignoring their task at hand, the two boys headed toward it, and what they saw as they topped a rise "stopped us dead in our tracks," Reme remembers. "There was a gouge in the earth as long as a football field, and a circular object at the end of it." It was "barely visible," he said, through a field of smoke. "It was the color of the old pot my mother was always trying to shine up, a dull metallic color."
They moved closer and found the heat from the wreckage and burning greasewood to be intense. "You could feel it through the soles of your shoes," said Reme. "It was still humid from the rain, stifling, and it was hard to get close."
They retreated briefly to talk things over, cool off, sip from the canteen and collect their nerve, worried there might be casualties in the wreckage.
Then they headed back toward the site. That's when things really got eerie. Waiting for the heat to diminish, they began examining the remnants at the periphery of a huge litter field. Reme picked up a piece of thin, shiny material that he says reminded him of "the tin foil in the old olive green Phillip Morris cigarette packs."
"It was folded up and lodged underneath a rock, apparently pinned there during the collision," said Reme. "When I freed it, it unfolded all by itself. I refolded it, and it spread itself out again." Reme put it in his pocket.
Finally they were able to work their way to within yards of the wreckage, fearing the worst and not quite ready for it. "I had my hand over my face, peeking through my fingers," Reme recalled. "Jose, being older, seemed to be able to handle it better."
As they approached they saw, thought they saw, yes, definitely DID see movement in the main part of the craft.
"Strange looking creatures were moving around inside," said Reme. "They looked under stress. They moved fast, as if they were able to will themselves from one position to another in an instant. They were shadowy and expressionless, but definitely living beings."
Reme wanted no part of whoever, whatever was inside. "Jose wasn't afraid of much, but I told him we should get out of there. I remember we felt concern for the creatures. They seemed like us-children, not dangerous. But we were scared and exhausted. Besides it was getting late."
The boys backtracked, ignoring the cow and calf. It was a little after dusk when they climbed on their horses, and dark when they reached the Padilla home.
Faustino Padilla asked about the cow, and got a quick report. "And we found something else," Jose said, and the story poured out, quickly and almost incoherently. "It's kind of hard to explain, but it was long and round, and there was a big gouge in the dirt and there were these hombrecitos (little guys)."
Their tale unfolded as Jose's father listened patiently. "They were running back and forth, looking desperate. They were like children. They didn't have hair," Jose said
"We'll check it out in a day or two," Faustino said, unalarmed and apparently not worried in the least about survivors or medical emergencies. "It must be something the military lost and we shouldn't disturb it. Leave your horse here, Reme, and Jose and I will drive you home, since it's so late."
Two days later at about noon, state policeman Eddie Apodaca, a family friend who had been summons by Faustino, arrived at the Padilla home. Jose and Reme directed Apodoca and Jose's dad toward the crash site in two vehicles, a pick-up and a state police car. When they could drive no further, they parked and hiked to the hillside where the boys had initially spotted the wreckage.
As they topped the ridge, they noted the cow and calf had moved on, probably headed for home pasture, then they walked the short distance to the overlook. For a second time, Jose and Reme are dumbfounded.
The wreckage was nowhere to be seen.
"What could have happened to it?" Reme asked.
"Somebody must have taken it," Jose responded defensively.
Apodoca and Faustino stared intently but unaccusingly at Jose and Reme, trying to understand. They headed down the canyon nonetheless, and suddenly, "as if by magic," in Reme's words, the object reappeared.
"From the top of the hill, it blended into the surroundings," Reme explained recently. "The sun was at a different angle, and the object had dirt and debris over it," which he speculated may have been put there by someone after the crash.
Apodoca and Faustino led the way to the craft, then climbed inside while Jose and Reme were ordered to stay a short distance away. "I can't see the hombrecitos," Reme offered.
"No," replies Jose. "But look at these marks on the ground, like when you drag a rake over it."
"The huge field of litter had been cleaned up," Reme recalled. "Who did it, and when, I have no idea. Was it the military? Using a helicopter? Or the occupants?"
The main body of the craft, however, remained in place with odd pieces dangling everywhere.
Now it was time for the adults to lecture Reme and Jose, Reme remembers. "Listen carefully. Don't tell anyone about this," Reme quoted Faustino as saying. "Reme, your dad just started working for the government. He doesn't need to know anything about it. It might cause him trouble."
Faustino also worked for the government at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the ranch itself was on leased federal land. Faustino was a patriotic man and honest to a fault in his dealing with the federal government, according to Jose.
"The government calls them weather balloons," the state policeman chipped in. "I'm here to help Faustino work out the recovery with the government. They'll want this thing back."
"But this isn't like the weather balloons we've seen before," said Reme. "They were little, almost like a kite."
"You're right, Reme. Este es un monstruso, que no Eddie?" Faustino said.
"Yeah, it's big for sure," the state policeman acknowledged.
"And the hombrecitos?" Reme persisted.
"Maybe you just thought you saw them," said Faustino. "Or maybe somebody took them, or they just took off."
Then they headed home. The cow and calf also grazed their way back in a day or two.
Next week: The story continues with the military's removal of the wreckage, while Jose and Reme, equipped with binoculars, spy on their every move, including the soldiers slipping off to the Owl Bar for a little diversion.
Jose and Reme also look back at the incident from the perspective of time. Was the object that required a flatbed truck and an "L" extension a weather balloon, or an alien craft from space or from another dimension?
The two men, now in their mid to late 60s, still have a piece of the craft and know where other parts were buried by the military.
Reme also speculates about how the 1945 incident fits in with the many sightings that were later reported in a ban across central New Mexico and elsewhere, giving rise to a UFO and "flying saucer" phenomenon that is still debated today.
New Mexico 1945 UFO Crash, Part II
Ben Moffett, Socorro Mountain Mail, published 11-6-03
Note: This Story May Not Be Reproduced In Part Or Whole In Any Media Without Written Permission of Author - editor
In mid August, 1945, before the term "flying saucer" was coined, Remigio Baca, age 7, and Jose Padilla, 9, were first on the scene of the crash of a strange object on the Padilla Ranch west of San Antonio, a tiny village on the Rio Grande in central New Mexico.
Both Remigio, or "Reme" as his friends called him, and Jose, believe they saw "shadowy, childlike creatures" in the demolished, oblong, circular craft when they arrived at the scene, well before anyone else.
The U.S. Army told the public nothing about it, and told the Padilla family it was a "weather balloon," according to Reme and Jose, now in their mid 60s. And the two men insist the Army went to great lengths to keep the operation under wraps, even concocting a cover story to mask their mop-up mission on the ranch.
The recovery operation actually started two days after Reme, Jose, Jose's father, Faustino, and state policeman Eddie Apodaca, a family friend, visited the site on August 18, 1945. It was then that a Latino sergeant named Avila arrived at the Padilla home in San Antonito, a tiny southern extension of San Antonio.
After some small talk, Sgt. Avila got down to business. According to Reme's and Jose's recollection, and what they learned subsequently from Faustino, the conversation went something like this:
"As you may know, there's a weather balloon down on your property," Avila said. "We need to install a metal gate and grade a road to the site to recover it. We'll have to tear down a part of the fence adjoining the cattle guard."
"Why can't you just go through the gate like everybody else?" asked Faustino.
"Well, the problem is that your cattle guard is about 10 feet wide, and our tractor trailer can't begin to get through there," said the sergeant. "We'll compensate you, of course."
The sergeant also asked for a key to the gate until the military could install its own. He also wanted help with security. "Can you make sure nobody goes to the site unless they are authorized. And don't tell anyone why we're here."
"What should I tell them?" Faustino asked.
"You can tell them the equipment is here because the government needs to work a manganese mine west of here," the sergeant said.
"That was to justify the presence of road-building equipment," said Reme in a recent interview. "It wasn't until decades later, on the Internet, that I learned the Army told a lot of fibs along about that time. I found another manganese mine story was used to cover a UFO incident on the west side of the Magdalenas near Datil in 1947, about the time of the Roswell UFO incident."
"I know for sure that the cover story was at least the second piece of misinformation they gave out in a month," noted Reme, a former Marine, chuckling and referencing the acknowledged false press release used to cover the Trinity atom bomb explosion as the first.
It wasn't long after the sergeant's departure that the Army was on the scene with road building equipment. Long before the road was graded, however, soldiers were at the site, carrying scraps of the mangled airship to smaller vehicles that were able to immediately get close to the scene.
Although they were warned by their father to stay away from the area, Jose, sometimes with Reme, and sharing a pair of binoculars, watched from hiding as the military graded a road and soldiers prepared for the flatbed's arrival. Jose actually made off with a piece, which is still in their possession.
"The work detail wasn't too efficient," said Reme, who noted from his experience in the Marines that military parts had numbers and were carefully catalogued. "The soldiers threw some of the pieces down a crevice, so they wouldn't have to carry them," he said. "Then they would kick dirt and rocks and brush over them to cover them up."
According to Jose, four soldiers were stationed at the wreckage at all times, with shift changes every 12 hours. "One stayed at a tent as a guard and listened to the radio. I could hear the music. They'd work for an hour and then lock the gate, climb in their pick-ups and go to the Owl Café, where they'd look for girls. I know because one of my (female) cousins who was there told me."
Once the flatbed was in place, the soldiers used wenches to hoist the intact portion of the wreckage in place. "They had to build an L-shaped frame and tilt it to get it to fit into the tractor-trailer, because it bulged out over one side," Jose said. "They finally cut a hole in the fence at the gate that was 26 feet long to get it out."
Off it went, shrouded under tarps, through San Antonio and presumably to Stallion Site on what is today White Sands Missile Range, where, according to Reme, it still may be today.
**
Was this clandestine operation undertaken to recover a weather balloon? Or, as Jose and Reme contend, was it something far more mysterious?
"I think the term 'weather balloon' was a euphemism, a catch-all for anything and everything that the government couldn't explain, said, Reme.
Reme and Jose knew about typical military weather balloons. "My father and I found about seven of them before and after the 1945 crash," Jose remembers. "We always gathered them up and gave them back to the military. They were nothing but silky material, aluminum and wood, nothing like what we found in that arroyo in 1945."
"Those weather balloons were not much more than big box kites," said Reme. "They sure couldn't gouge a hole in the ground. Remember, in 1945, despite the bomb, we weren't all that sophisticated. The Trinity Site bomb, Fat Man, was transported on a railroad car to the site. Radar was primitive or non-existent in some places. Maybe the military knew what they had, maybe they didn't, maybe they couldn't say."
Reme and Jose are convinced, and they say Faustino soon came to join in their belief, that the object on the ranch was no mere weather balloon, but an object of mystery. Faustino, however, had no interest in challenging the status quo, nor did state policeman Apodaca, whatever his beliefs were.
And why would a mere sergeant be sent to negotiate with Faustino Padilla on a mission that involved something more than a routine weather balloon flight. "He wore sergeant stripes," Reme said. "That doesn't necessarily mean he was a sergeant. And he was Latino. He was sent to San Antonio because he could communicate with the locals."
Finally, why would the military allow such cavalier treatment of the wreckage, if it were a foreign or alien craft with scientific value?
"I don't know if they knew what they had," Reme said. "It was a fairly crude craft with no parts numbers on it, and the piece we have, we were told is not remarkably machined even for 1945. But there's nothing that says aliens have to travel in remarkable spaceships.
"Given what we know about distances in the universe, space travel seems far-fetched, I'll grant you. Perhaps they got here by some method we can't fathom and they manufactured a crude object here to get around in this atmosphere. We hear about other dimensions, and parallel universes.
"I don't know much about those things. But I do know what I saw, which was some unlikely looking creatures at the crash site. I know that later other people in the area reported similar things. And I know the government was interested in keeping it quiet."
Reme has studied the UFO phenomenon in his spare time over the years, especially as it pertained to New Mexico. "The military opened the door at Roswell, and then they closed it," he said, referring to a July, 1947 report by the Roswell Air Force Base information office about the crash and recovery of a "flying disc" that they reported had been bouncing around the sky. Then the base retreated by reporting it was merely a "radar tracking balloon" that had been recovered.
Details of the Roswell event can be found in a 19-page Freedom of Information Act request by the late New Mexico Congressman Steve Schiff and released by the General Accounting Office July 28, 1995. It can be found on the Internet at http://www.conspire.com/ds/gao2.html).
The Roswell crash, which along with the sighting of a UFO south of Socorro by city policeman Lonnie Zamora in 1964, are the two most famous of a string of UFO reports over central New Mexico and in all of UFO lore.
From 1946 through 1949, 25 UFO sightings that "may have contained extra-terrestrial life" were reported worldwide by the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Of those, seven came from New Mexico, including one near Magdalena (1946), Socorro (1947), Roswell (actually near Corona), July 4, 1947, Plains of San Agustin (Catron County), July 5, 1947, Aztec, 1948, White Sands, 1949 and Roswell again, 1949. Another was in the pattern, too, on the Hopi Reservation of Arizona in 1947.
"There was a pattern of sightings and incidents in a ban across New Mexico. Socorro and San Antonio are right at the center," notes Reme. "Our 1945 sighting just adds to that base of information. It's intriguing to say the least. If you were an eyewitness it becomes even more intriguing."
Reme and Jose are excited enough to tell their story after more than 55 years, even knowing the problems that plagued Lonnie Zamora after his spotting a UFO near Socorro, less than 10 miles away, in 1964.
Jose and Reme would like to see an excavation of the crevice where a few odds and ends from their "alien craft" were tossed. The crevice was recently covered up by a bulldozer doing flood control work.
And they'd like to have the part they have from the wreckage examined more closely. They are not eager to surrender it to anyone, however. "I've heard from others that if you give it up to the government, you stand a good chance of not getting it back," Reme said.
A second piece, which Reme likened to the "tin foil in a cigarette pack," is gone. "I used it to stop a leak in a brass pipe under a windmill at our house in San Antonio in the early 50s," he said. "I used it to fill the stripped threads on two pieces of pipe."
Reme said he regrets using it now, but it was handy. "I kept in for years in an old Prince Albert (tobacco) can in the pump house, and it was the nearest thing available." Reme said the foil stopped the leak in the pipe for years. The windmill is now gone and the property is no longer owned by the family.
Finally, Jose and Reme were asked why they decided to tell the tale today, after nearly 60 years.
"It's something you can never get out of your head," said Reme. "When we saw it, we had never heard the term UFO, and 'flying saucers' didn't become a part of the language until June of 1947 when a pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported nine objects in a formation in the area of Mount Rainier.
"We didn't invent this phenomenon," said Reme. "We experienced it. Others have apparently had similar experiences. I believe Jose and I have an obligation to add our information to the mix."
BIOSRemigio Baca of Gig, Harbor, Wash., was born in San Antonio in October,1938, to Evarista Serna and Alejandro Baca. He attended San Antonio Grade School and Socorro High until he transferred to Stadium High in Tacoma, Wash., in his freshman year.
Reme served in the Marines for six years during the Vietnam War, worked as a tax compliance officer for the Washington Department of Revenue, and was involved in Washington politics. A meeting with Vernon Jordan, national chairman of the Urban League, encouraged him to get into politics, which he did with enthusiasm.
Reme was instrumental in the election of the famous scientist and Nixon administration politician Dixy Ray Lee to the governorship of Washington as a Democrat, and served on Ray's executive staff.
In that role, he helped get qualified Latinos in administrative positions in government. When Lee was defeated, Reme became an insurance agent in Tacoma, moved to California for awhile as an independent insurance broker in Oxnard, Santa Paula and Santa Barbara, and retired in Gig Harbor, a suburb of Tacoma.
He has been married for years to Virginia Tonan, a classical pianist and teacher.
He has been back to San Antonio many times, and has relatives in Socorro County.
Jose Padilla was born in San Antonito in November, 1936, to Faustino and Maria Padilla, attended first San Antonito Grade School and then San Antonio Grade School when San Antonito's school burned down. He also attended the Luis Lopez Grade School for a time. He made first communion with Reme Baca at the San Antonio Church.
While at Socorro High he left to join the National Guard at age 13, when very young children were allowed to sign up because of the World War II death toll in the New Mexico Guard. After leaving San Antonio, Jose continued guard duty in Van Nuyes Calif., Air National Guard, and when the unit was activated, spent time in Korea.
He married his wife, Olga, and served with the California Highway Patrol for 32 years as a safety inspector. The Padillas have three boys, including a son, Sam, who lives in Contreras, near La Joya, and he has numerous relatives in Socorro and vicinity.
(Editor's note: Thanks to the Mountain Mail for allowing us to run this piece by Ben Moffett. The newspaper, which covers Socorro and Catron County in rural New Mexico, is rapidly gaining a reputation as a "good news" newspaper with strong editorial pages which come from both the left and the right, innovative pieces on such locally controversial subjects as rooster fighting, gay rights, and, yes, UFOs, and such locally important ones as birding, farming and ranching. -- www.rense.com.
Re-Dedication of Coronado State Monument
By Ben Moffett
(This story, plus photos, appears in Desert USA at http://www.desertusa.com/mag06/apr/coranado.html
Justin Rinaldi was among those in attendance when New Mexico’s Coronado State Monument, on the outskirts of Bernalillo, north of Albuquerque, was dedicated amid great fanfare on May 29, 1940. It was New Mexico’s flagship event of the 400th anniversary of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s exploratory expedition into the Southwest.
Also among those on hand for the 1940 dedication were Governor John E. Miles and Don Juan Francisco de Cárdenas, the Ambassador of Spain. Rinaldi, then a sophomore at Bernalillo High, performed for them, other assembled dignitaries and an overflow crowd. Outfitted as a conquistador in Coronado’s expedition, he marched and danced on a huge outdoor stage during a reenactment of the Spanish explorer’s arrival.
Rinaldi, now age 80, returned on March 11, 2006 for the re-dedication of the monument, which protects the ruins of the Tiguex Puebloan village of Kuaua. It is located on a bluff fast against the west bank of the Rio Grande, overlooking the fabled El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro – the Royal Road to the Interior Lands – across the river. With Rinaldi was his grandson, also named Justin Rinaldi, a high school sophomore who was experiencing some of what his grandfather had in 1940.
Young Rinaldi soon learned, if he didn’t know already, that the 2006 re-dedication was more than the just-completed renovation of the visitor center at the monument. It was also an anniversary celebration of two events significant to historians and the people of the desert Southwest—the 75th anniversary of state legislation creating the state monuments system, and the 100th anniversary of the Antiquities Act, the landmark federal law that authorizes a U. S. President to declare historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest to be national monuments if they are located on lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States.
Both acts served to build a foundation and precedent for historic preservation in the United States, according to National Park Service historian Richard Sellars, Ph.D., keynote speaker at the re-dedication.
“The acts provided momentum for the preservation of the pre-history and history of this country,” said Sellars. “They were particularly important catalysts in the Southwest. It was rampant vandalism of ancient archaeological sites that spurred Congress to pass the Antiquities Act in 1906, resulting in the creation of many national monuments in the Southwest.”
In a roundabout way, the early legislation also nurtured a kernel of generational pride in Southwest history and culture—as exemplified by the Rinaldis. It fired political support for such legislation as the 1968 National Historic Trails Act and, by extension, the addition of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail in October, 2000, as well as other trails across the Southwest and the nation. The new historic trail, in turn, fostered a chain of fresh interest along its length, including new construction. El Camino Real International Heritage Center is one example. (See www.desertusa.com/mag05/dec/nm_m1.html) Support associations such as El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Trail Association also sprang up.
Grandfather Rinaldi, an alum of the University of New Mexico and Regis University, went on to become a writer and “amateur historian,” in his words, intent on instilling the history of “tierra adentro,” into new generations not only of his extended family, but beyond. “As a student of history, especially the history of New Mexico, I have made a special effort to speak to young people from grade school to the university level in hopes they will realize that U. S. history doesn’t revolve around the eastern seaboard,” he said.
The younger Rinaldi understands where his grandfather is coming from, having taken a class in New Mexico history in the seventh grade at Bernalillo Middle School. “I’ve been to the state monument before,” he said. “And I was eager to return with my grandfather, whose stories I have heard many times.”
Such proud traditions as those exhibited by the Rinaldis were likely enabled not only by legislation, but also by those behind it—a cadre of Southwest historians and archaeologists hell-bent on examining historic and prehistoric sites and making their findings available to the public.
They were spearheaded by Edgar Lee Hewett, nicknamed “El Toro” because of his controversial, flamboyant style and tenacity toward discovery and preservation. Hewett led the excavation of the Kuaua Ruins at Coronado. He was instrumental in writing the Antiquities Act and facilitating its passage. The act was then adopted almost word for word in the 1935 legislation creating New Mexico’s state monuments. Other notable preservationists or archaeologists of the day, famous across our desert Southwest, were Adolph Bandelier, Alfred Kidder, Neil Judd and Jess Nusbaum.
Hewett was also instrumental in the founding of Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park. In 1907 he helped establish and was the first director of the School of American Archaeology in Santa Fe. In 1909 he established the Museum of New Mexico as the education and public outreach division of the school—all before New Mexico became a state in 1912.
The year-long 75th anniversary celebration, honoring Hewett, his peers and latter-day leaders of state parks, was set in motion by José Cisneros, director of New Mexico State Monuments, as an educational tool to lure both adults and young people into the monuments for the purpose of learning about their heritage. Cisneros selected the re-dedication of Coronado State Monument as the kick-off event because the recent renovation naturally focused attention on the historic events that happened there.
Those who attended the re-dedication, sponsored by a new support group, Friends of Coronado State Monument, discovered that the Pueblo Revival style John Gaw Meem Visitor Center had acquired a modern heating and cooling system and a state of the art sewage system. New viga ends were added, replacing rotted ones. Most important to art buffs was the renovation of the Kuaua Room, including updated lighting. The room contains some of the treasured kiva murals discovered during 1935 excavation work by archaeologist Gordon Vivian.
Vivian and his crew knew they had found something extraordinary when an uplifted hand and a portion of a mask painted on a layer of plaster in a kiva became visible. The figure was one of hundreds, dating to the 16th century, that appeared on the kiva walls as excavation progressed. Today the delicate murals, moved to the visitor center and other locations for preservation purposes, are regarded as among the finest examples of prehistoric mural art in the United States.
The Kuaua story at the site, in fact, is so compelling compared to Coronado’s short stay that had the monument been opened at any time other than on the 400th anniversary of Coronado’s expedition, it would likely have been named “Kuaua.”
The village was occupied by generations of Kuauans who began building the multi-storied village in the early 1300s. By the 1500s, 1200 rooms of adobe construction connected together to form the village, one of about a dozen Tiwa-speaking sites located along a 30-mile corridor on the Rio Grande. The villages held a strategic position on the pre-European trails that utilized the river resources, and were a superb zone for prehistoric commerce.
But in February, 1540, an event occurred that would permanently change the way of life for the Kuaua, their neighbors on the Rio Grande, and beyond. About 1400 miles to the south, an army led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado departed the frontier town of Compostela, Mexico, in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Cíbola.
The Coronado expedition spent two winters, 1540-41 and 1541-42, and left in the spring of 1542. The Coronado party was initially welcomed, but acts of brutality by the Europeans and resultant retaliation by the Tiwa people ultimately resulted in warfare and the Kuaua way of life was never the same, despite a respite from European contact until the late 16th century, when Spanish exploration resumed.
Much of what is known about Kuaua is the result of historical records, including Spanish journals written by members of the Coronado expedition. Other vital information came from the late 19th and early 20th century excavations and from oral histories by modern descendants of the Tiguex people.
Members of both nearby Sandia Pueblo, whose original language is Tiwa, and Santa Ana Pueblo, whose original language is Keresian, claim ties to Kuaua, and often appear at special events at the monument.
Today’s visitor will find a walking trail behind the visitor center that goes through some of the restored ruins, including a reconstructed kiva, where artifacts from a hands-on teaching collection can be held. This is part of the monument’s effort to educate school children about their history.
To promote education, Cisneros said special 75th anniversary events will be held throughout 2006 at each of the six monuments in New Mexico’s system, including the three units situated along El Camino Real. In addition to Coronado, there is Fort Selden, near Las Cruces, and the newly-opened El Camino Real International Heritage Center, between Truth or Consequences and Socorro.
“When you put children, or adults for that matter, in an historic setting, all the senses kick in and what is learned is not soon forgotten,” said Cisneros, who during his career has served as superintendent of such historic sites as San Antonio Missions, Bandelier and Gettysburg. “It’s easier to learn about the Kuaua when you stand inside a kiva, rather than when you read about a kiva in a textbook.
“The real trick is getting them there,” Cisneros noted. “Special events such as the Coronado re-dedication are helpful. Working closely with teachers is important, too.”
For additional information, contact:Coronado State Monument(10 miles north of Albuquerque)485 Kuaua RoadBernalillo, New Mexico
(This story, plus photos, appears in Desert USA at http://www.desertusa.com/mag06/apr/coranado.html
Justin Rinaldi was among those in attendance when New Mexico’s Coronado State Monument, on the outskirts of Bernalillo, north of Albuquerque, was dedicated amid great fanfare on May 29, 1940. It was New Mexico’s flagship event of the 400th anniversary of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s exploratory expedition into the Southwest.
Also among those on hand for the 1940 dedication were Governor John E. Miles and Don Juan Francisco de Cárdenas, the Ambassador of Spain. Rinaldi, then a sophomore at Bernalillo High, performed for them, other assembled dignitaries and an overflow crowd. Outfitted as a conquistador in Coronado’s expedition, he marched and danced on a huge outdoor stage during a reenactment of the Spanish explorer’s arrival.
Rinaldi, now age 80, returned on March 11, 2006 for the re-dedication of the monument, which protects the ruins of the Tiguex Puebloan village of Kuaua. It is located on a bluff fast against the west bank of the Rio Grande, overlooking the fabled El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro – the Royal Road to the Interior Lands – across the river. With Rinaldi was his grandson, also named Justin Rinaldi, a high school sophomore who was experiencing some of what his grandfather had in 1940.
Young Rinaldi soon learned, if he didn’t know already, that the 2006 re-dedication was more than the just-completed renovation of the visitor center at the monument. It was also an anniversary celebration of two events significant to historians and the people of the desert Southwest—the 75th anniversary of state legislation creating the state monuments system, and the 100th anniversary of the Antiquities Act, the landmark federal law that authorizes a U. S. President to declare historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest to be national monuments if they are located on lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States.
Both acts served to build a foundation and precedent for historic preservation in the United States, according to National Park Service historian Richard Sellars, Ph.D., keynote speaker at the re-dedication.
“The acts provided momentum for the preservation of the pre-history and history of this country,” said Sellars. “They were particularly important catalysts in the Southwest. It was rampant vandalism of ancient archaeological sites that spurred Congress to pass the Antiquities Act in 1906, resulting in the creation of many national monuments in the Southwest.”
In a roundabout way, the early legislation also nurtured a kernel of generational pride in Southwest history and culture—as exemplified by the Rinaldis. It fired political support for such legislation as the 1968 National Historic Trails Act and, by extension, the addition of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail in October, 2000, as well as other trails across the Southwest and the nation. The new historic trail, in turn, fostered a chain of fresh interest along its length, including new construction. El Camino Real International Heritage Center is one example. (See www.desertusa.com/mag05/dec/nm_m1.html) Support associations such as El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Trail Association also sprang up.
Grandfather Rinaldi, an alum of the University of New Mexico and Regis University, went on to become a writer and “amateur historian,” in his words, intent on instilling the history of “tierra adentro,” into new generations not only of his extended family, but beyond. “As a student of history, especially the history of New Mexico, I have made a special effort to speak to young people from grade school to the university level in hopes they will realize that U. S. history doesn’t revolve around the eastern seaboard,” he said.
The younger Rinaldi understands where his grandfather is coming from, having taken a class in New Mexico history in the seventh grade at Bernalillo Middle School. “I’ve been to the state monument before,” he said. “And I was eager to return with my grandfather, whose stories I have heard many times.”
Such proud traditions as those exhibited by the Rinaldis were likely enabled not only by legislation, but also by those behind it—a cadre of Southwest historians and archaeologists hell-bent on examining historic and prehistoric sites and making their findings available to the public.
They were spearheaded by Edgar Lee Hewett, nicknamed “El Toro” because of his controversial, flamboyant style and tenacity toward discovery and preservation. Hewett led the excavation of the Kuaua Ruins at Coronado. He was instrumental in writing the Antiquities Act and facilitating its passage. The act was then adopted almost word for word in the 1935 legislation creating New Mexico’s state monuments. Other notable preservationists or archaeologists of the day, famous across our desert Southwest, were Adolph Bandelier, Alfred Kidder, Neil Judd and Jess Nusbaum.
Hewett was also instrumental in the founding of Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park. In 1907 he helped establish and was the first director of the School of American Archaeology in Santa Fe. In 1909 he established the Museum of New Mexico as the education and public outreach division of the school—all before New Mexico became a state in 1912.
The year-long 75th anniversary celebration, honoring Hewett, his peers and latter-day leaders of state parks, was set in motion by José Cisneros, director of New Mexico State Monuments, as an educational tool to lure both adults and young people into the monuments for the purpose of learning about their heritage. Cisneros selected the re-dedication of Coronado State Monument as the kick-off event because the recent renovation naturally focused attention on the historic events that happened there.
Those who attended the re-dedication, sponsored by a new support group, Friends of Coronado State Monument, discovered that the Pueblo Revival style John Gaw Meem Visitor Center had acquired a modern heating and cooling system and a state of the art sewage system. New viga ends were added, replacing rotted ones. Most important to art buffs was the renovation of the Kuaua Room, including updated lighting. The room contains some of the treasured kiva murals discovered during 1935 excavation work by archaeologist Gordon Vivian.
Vivian and his crew knew they had found something extraordinary when an uplifted hand and a portion of a mask painted on a layer of plaster in a kiva became visible. The figure was one of hundreds, dating to the 16th century, that appeared on the kiva walls as excavation progressed. Today the delicate murals, moved to the visitor center and other locations for preservation purposes, are regarded as among the finest examples of prehistoric mural art in the United States.
The Kuaua story at the site, in fact, is so compelling compared to Coronado’s short stay that had the monument been opened at any time other than on the 400th anniversary of Coronado’s expedition, it would likely have been named “Kuaua.”
The village was occupied by generations of Kuauans who began building the multi-storied village in the early 1300s. By the 1500s, 1200 rooms of adobe construction connected together to form the village, one of about a dozen Tiwa-speaking sites located along a 30-mile corridor on the Rio Grande. The villages held a strategic position on the pre-European trails that utilized the river resources, and were a superb zone for prehistoric commerce.
But in February, 1540, an event occurred that would permanently change the way of life for the Kuaua, their neighbors on the Rio Grande, and beyond. About 1400 miles to the south, an army led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado departed the frontier town of Compostela, Mexico, in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Cíbola.
The Coronado expedition spent two winters, 1540-41 and 1541-42, and left in the spring of 1542. The Coronado party was initially welcomed, but acts of brutality by the Europeans and resultant retaliation by the Tiwa people ultimately resulted in warfare and the Kuaua way of life was never the same, despite a respite from European contact until the late 16th century, when Spanish exploration resumed.
Much of what is known about Kuaua is the result of historical records, including Spanish journals written by members of the Coronado expedition. Other vital information came from the late 19th and early 20th century excavations and from oral histories by modern descendants of the Tiguex people.
Members of both nearby Sandia Pueblo, whose original language is Tiwa, and Santa Ana Pueblo, whose original language is Keresian, claim ties to Kuaua, and often appear at special events at the monument.
Today’s visitor will find a walking trail behind the visitor center that goes through some of the restored ruins, including a reconstructed kiva, where artifacts from a hands-on teaching collection can be held. This is part of the monument’s effort to educate school children about their history.
To promote education, Cisneros said special 75th anniversary events will be held throughout 2006 at each of the six monuments in New Mexico’s system, including the three units situated along El Camino Real. In addition to Coronado, there is Fort Selden, near Las Cruces, and the newly-opened El Camino Real International Heritage Center, between Truth or Consequences and Socorro.
“When you put children, or adults for that matter, in an historic setting, all the senses kick in and what is learned is not soon forgotten,” said Cisneros, who during his career has served as superintendent of such historic sites as San Antonio Missions, Bandelier and Gettysburg. “It’s easier to learn about the Kuaua when you stand inside a kiva, rather than when you read about a kiva in a textbook.
“The real trick is getting them there,” Cisneros noted. “Special events such as the Coronado re-dedication are helpful. Working closely with teachers is important, too.”
For additional information, contact:Coronado State Monument(10 miles north of Albuquerque)485 Kuaua RoadBernalillo, New Mexico
Friday, April 4, 2008
Socorro Art Scene Sizzles
By Ben Moffett (originally published by the Socorro media Mountain Mail and Steppin' Out
What sizzles in Socorro County more than its famous burgers?If you believe New Mexico Magazine (October, 2006 issue) its "the sizzlin' Socorro art scene."Noted Western writer Johnny D. Boggs heaped high praise on virtually every attraction in Socorro in a three-page story, but the headline and text proclaiming the state of "sizzle" of the art scene was the grabber.Given much of the credit was the Fullingim-Isenhour-Leard Galleries.Of course, Socorro residents already know about Socorro's remarkable tourism explosion in recent years, kicked off two decades ago by Bosque del Apache's Festival of the Cranes, which fueled an increase in art and a market for it.It was about a year ago (Nov. 2006) when I wrote that Socorro "isn't noted for its art colony -- not quite, not yet. But it seems to be moving in that direction."Voila! One of my predictions has come true, sanctified by New Mexico Magazine and author Boggs. I wanted to hear more, so I called him.He offered this assessment, off the cuff: "I love Socorro and the area, and not just the green chile cheeseburgers or the view of the Bosque. The quality of the artwork, and the galleries, was a pleasant surprise. I never know what to expect when I'm traveling to do one of these 'artscape' stories, but Socorro has a lively art scene, and a lot of friendly people."This is particularly exciting for Socorro because New Mexico Magazine has such an upscale and high-toned audience -- not unlike Steppin' Out in that regard now that I think of it -- and it reaches an audience both inside and outside the state.Most importantly, subscribers are already motivated to visit the places the magazine features, or they wouldn't be reading it in the first place.While concentrating on the arts scene, Boggs' story covers the gamut of new attractions and old, including the obligatory "Bosque and burgers," which was the sub headline.I won't go over the entire list of attractions the story touches on, except to note Boggs' excitement over the art colony and his recognition of "Socorro County Arts", a group of about 20 artists with a wide range of talents..."The writer makes his case in convincing fashion, quoting several artists on the local scene and touching most of the tourist bases including Magdalena's popular London Frontier Theater Company.Boggs goes into some detail describing the Fullingim-Isenhour-Leard Galleries (http://www.figalleries.com/) and how it got started."Six years ago, (Natasha) Isenhour (http://www.gallerynatasha.com/), a transplanted geologist-turned-painter from North Carolina, teamed up with sculptor Sharon Fullingim (http://www.fullingimstudio.com/) -- who has moved from carving soap figures as a child to copperplate etchings, stone and lost-was bronze sculptures as an adult -- decided to open an art gallery in Socorro."Along the way they picked up pastel painter Skeeter Leard (http://www.skeeterart.com/), a professional artist since 1953 who specializes in birds. (Yes, she was drawn to Socorro by Bosque del Apache). More recently, painter Margi Lucena (http://www.lucenastudios.com/) joined the group and helped take over the Adobe Loft Studios upstairs. 'This is what I've wanted to do all my life,' Lucena said."Boggs noted that Leard gives the building credit for the galleries' success. It's in the historic Juan José Baca House at 113C West Abeyta Street. "The historic structure, which dates to the 1840's, was in crumbling ruins before reconstruction," Boggs wrote."The building is very happy because it did not fall down," Leard says, "so when people come in here, there's something in the air."But Boggs doesn't buy Leard's explanation entirely. He seems to favor Isenhour's explanation that the artists don't consider they are part of a co-op but a partnership of four artists, who do different work while complementing each other.
What sizzles in Socorro County more than its famous burgers?If you believe New Mexico Magazine (October, 2006 issue) its "the sizzlin' Socorro art scene."Noted Western writer Johnny D. Boggs heaped high praise on virtually every attraction in Socorro in a three-page story, but the headline and text proclaiming the state of "sizzle" of the art scene was the grabber.Given much of the credit was the Fullingim-Isenhour-Leard Galleries.Of course, Socorro residents already know about Socorro's remarkable tourism explosion in recent years, kicked off two decades ago by Bosque del Apache's Festival of the Cranes, which fueled an increase in art and a market for it.It was about a year ago (Nov. 2006) when I wrote that Socorro "isn't noted for its art colony -- not quite, not yet. But it seems to be moving in that direction."Voila! One of my predictions has come true, sanctified by New Mexico Magazine and author Boggs. I wanted to hear more, so I called him.He offered this assessment, off the cuff: "I love Socorro and the area, and not just the green chile cheeseburgers or the view of the Bosque. The quality of the artwork, and the galleries, was a pleasant surprise. I never know what to expect when I'm traveling to do one of these 'artscape' stories, but Socorro has a lively art scene, and a lot of friendly people."This is particularly exciting for Socorro because New Mexico Magazine has such an upscale and high-toned audience -- not unlike Steppin' Out in that regard now that I think of it -- and it reaches an audience both inside and outside the state.Most importantly, subscribers are already motivated to visit the places the magazine features, or they wouldn't be reading it in the first place.While concentrating on the arts scene, Boggs' story covers the gamut of new attractions and old, including the obligatory "Bosque and burgers," which was the sub headline.I won't go over the entire list of attractions the story touches on, except to note Boggs' excitement over the art colony and his recognition of "Socorro County Arts", a group of about 20 artists with a wide range of talents..."The writer makes his case in convincing fashion, quoting several artists on the local scene and touching most of the tourist bases including Magdalena's popular London Frontier Theater Company.Boggs goes into some detail describing the Fullingim-Isenhour-Leard Galleries (http://www.figalleries.com/) and how it got started."Six years ago, (Natasha) Isenhour (http://www.gallerynatasha.com/), a transplanted geologist-turned-painter from North Carolina, teamed up with sculptor Sharon Fullingim (http://www.fullingimstudio.com/) -- who has moved from carving soap figures as a child to copperplate etchings, stone and lost-was bronze sculptures as an adult -- decided to open an art gallery in Socorro."Along the way they picked up pastel painter Skeeter Leard (http://www.skeeterart.com/), a professional artist since 1953 who specializes in birds. (Yes, she was drawn to Socorro by Bosque del Apache). More recently, painter Margi Lucena (http://www.lucenastudios.com/) joined the group and helped take over the Adobe Loft Studios upstairs. 'This is what I've wanted to do all my life,' Lucena said."Boggs noted that Leard gives the building credit for the galleries' success. It's in the historic Juan José Baca House at 113C West Abeyta Street. "The historic structure, which dates to the 1840's, was in crumbling ruins before reconstruction," Boggs wrote."The building is very happy because it did not fall down," Leard says, "so when people come in here, there's something in the air."But Boggs doesn't buy Leard's explanation entirely. He seems to favor Isenhour's explanation that the artists don't consider they are part of a co-op but a partnership of four artists, who do different work while complementing each other.
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