King of the Road - April 2010
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Claiming Victory
Place your bets on Bloomfield
Story and Photography by Lesley S. King
As I drive into Bloomfield, in northwestern New Mexico, my heartbeat speeds up. Today I’m exploring a little-known part of this region’s history. I’m journeying to Dinétah, ancestral homeland of the Navajo, which encompasses a large part of the Four Corners area and, according to their creation stories, is the birthplace of their mother, Changing Woman.
But first I explore the town of Bloomfield—home to some 7,234 residents and located 170 miles northwest of Albuquerque, on U.S. 550. It’s a place of bewildering beauty and epic history, its players armed with an iron determination to win.
Residents here spend a lot of time outdoors, explains Bernadette Smith, who moved to the area in 1957 and is now executive director of the Bloomfield Chamber of Commerce. Most notably, they fish the San Juan River east of here, one of the nation’s top fly-fishing sites. Locals also enjoy the 15,000 surface acres of water of Navajo Lake State Park, where they boat, water-ski, and camp.
DAY-TRIP TIPS What to do: SunRay Park & Casino Fishing can be arranged through: Where to dine: Where to Stay and Dine: Where to shop and peruse:
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Bernadette takes me along Bloomfield’s San Juan River Walk, a quarter-mile stretch of brick and pavement meandering under cottonwoods. As we stroll, she tells me about the town’s history: Ancestral Puebloans settled here in the 11th century. In 1877, Peter Milton Salmon homesteaded here, and soon others came to farm the lush river basin. But the substantial growth arrived in the late 1940s and early ’50s, when oil and gas production boomed. “That brought construction, and the town started really taking off,” says Smith, whose father worked in the oil fields. Today, gas production still fuels the local economy.
Bloomfield has a more recent claim to fame: It’s home to Bennie “Chip” Woolley Jr., who trained Mine That Bird, the Thoroughbred who won the 2009 Kentucky Derby as a long shot of 50 to 1. I head to the region’s racetrack, SunRay Park & Casino, where Woolley runs horses.
The smallest track in the state, with about 1,200 Thoroughbred and quarter horses running during the season, SunRay has a friendly feel. I meet racing director Lonnie Barber, who shows me the grandstand and track. “We try to make it a family-oriented deal,” he says with a cowboy twang. “People like to come out and visit with friends, and some bet. Kids enjoy the horses and hot dogs.”
Barber is an old friend of Woolley’s. “He’s like one of the family,” Barber says. “When he went to the Kentucky Derby, we were hoping he wouldn’t embarrass us—he was running against the best. But he shocked the world with that win.”
I head to Bloomfield’s prize of history, the Salmon Ruins, named after homesteader Peter Milton Salmon. Set on a meadow above the San Juan River, this Ancestral Puebloan village was built between 1088 and 1094 A.D. by people from Chaco Canyon, 45 miles to the south. Part of the great Chacoan network of settlements, it stood two stories tall and may have contained as many as 250 rooms.
Before walking through the ruins I peruse the museum, which exhibits artifacts found during the excavation as well as contemporary Native American art, including a woodcarving of Born for Water, one of Changing Woman’s twin sons. I make my way down a steep hill to Heritage Park, which displays reproductions of homes of the cultures that have inhabited the region for the past 10,000 years. I peek into an octagonal Navajo hogan, and an Apache wickiup fashioned from brush. Next I come to the four-room Salmon homestead itself, built of adobe and pine.
When I arrive at the ruins, I walk along the finely crafted rock walls of dwellings and kivas, noting the elegant Chacoan masonry, in which small stones are embedded amid larger ones. I’m joined by Larry Baker, the site’s executive director, who helped with the first excavation in the early 1970s. “Back then it was a large rubble mound obscured by sagebrush,” he says. These days, his biggest task is finding money to preserve not only Salmon, but ruins all over the region. His efforts have helped save many sites.
We climb into Baker’s SUV and head for the largely undeveloped expanse that is Dinétah. We drive east for an hour, connect to a dirt road, then hike to a canyon rim. Before us stands the stunning stone tower of the Frances Canyon Pueblito. Baker explains that pueblitos (little villages) such as this, built on boulders, pinnacles, and mesa edges between 1694 and 1750, are scattered all across this rugged terrain.
“They were dwellings, but, more importantly, defensive sites,” he says, where the Navajo could protect themselves from the Ute, Comanche, and Spanish.
We explore the stalwart tower, sticking our heads through doorways in its walls of sandstone and mud. When I step back and admire it against the brilliant turquoise sky, I can almost hear the history rattling around me. The Navajo who built this were determined to protect their homeland. They claimed these promontories, intent on surviving against formidable adversaries—an inspiring attitude that runs through Bloomfield today.
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"King of the Road" columnist Lesley S. King visits another little-known community in New Mexico each month.
