To celebrate New Mexico's Centennial, we invited readers to share memories that resonate with the history of the state.

1910s

In the year that New Mexico became a state, my mother and father became husband and wife. They had come to the territory separately, from different parts of Texas, and they had different views of what the future might hold. My mother, Minnie Hobbs, was 11 years old when her family staked a homestead claim in southeastern New Mexico [in what would become the town of Hobbs]. She wailed to her mother that they had brought her out to desolation where there were no schools, no stores, and no friends. She was doomed to wither in loneliness and die an old maid. She missed that fate by a mile. Within a year of the Hobbses’ arrival, another dugout appeared on the prairies, near enough that Minnie could hear their dogs on a quiet night. Minnie’s brother, Berry Hobbs, visited the newcomers and came back with a favorable report. Their new neighbors, Ernest and Emma Byers, a young man and his mother, were cultured, intelligent people. . . . A friendship developed between the families and, during the next few years, between that young man and Minnie. Then, on a beautiful morning in June, Ernest came driving a black mare hitched to a new buggy with harness that had been polished to a shine. He helped Minnie into the buggy and they drove to find a preacher. In a field of wildflowers, in the brand-new state of New Mexico, they vowed loyalty to each other for a lifetime, a vow that would result in six children, a dozen grandchildren, and a tribe of great- and great-great-grandchildren. —Joe Byers, Lovington

1920s

Members of the Cole family were among the first visitors to Carlsbad Caverns.

My grandmother Audrey Cole Hunt Foster graduated from Carlsbad High School in 1924. The Cole family had moved from Louisiana to New Mexico on December 21, 1921.

I inherited some of her things: gloves, brooches, and earrings she wore to church in Artesia, and several small notebooks full of addresses, birthdays, and recipes. I was so excited when I came across her letter. I could not wait to read what these earliest visitors to the Carlsbad Caverns thought as they descended into the darkness.

I was one of the first parties that went through the caverns in fall of 1922. There were 18, the largest crowd that had ever gone in one day. We met at the old hill out at White[s] City and waited till Jim White and Lige Mitchell got there. Everyone helped push the cars up the hill. In the party were AB and Linnie Cole, me, Brantley Miller, Mr. Lucheck, his brother and wife from Malaga, two men and wives from California. One named George. Two girls and two boys that were sophomores at CHS, and another man from Carlsbad. I knew all from Carlsbad at the time.
And that, my friends, was all she wrote.
—Marilyn Fugate Gerloff, Lillian, Texas

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I was nine years old in 1929 when devastating Río Grande floods swept through Socorro County. Heavy rains fell for several days in mid-August, filling the river. As described in the August 17, 1929, Socorro Chieftain, under the headline “Flooded Río Grande Devastates Entire Towns; People Escape in Night Clothes: The first disaster occurring at 2:00 o’clock Tuesday morning (Aug. 13) when the highway bridge at San Acacia gave way sending a five-foot flood through the town, giving many only time to escape to the foot hills to the west in their night clothes.”

With my mother, Elvira, I lived in San Antonio, 12 miles south of Socorro, on the family farm operated by my grandfather, Soroabel Chavez. My young aunts went toward the river to check out talk of approaching floodwaters. They ran back in great haste. The family began loading furniture, my dolls, and other household items into a horse-drawn wagon for evacuation.

From [the village of] El Alto, the family could look down as the floodwaters swept through fields, homes, and orchards. After a few days, many adobe structures began collapsing. I remember hearing the church bell ring as the bell tower of our beloved church collapsed.—Evi Provo, Socorro

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As a young man, my father, the son of a Union Army veteran of the Civil War, left his home in the Appalachian hills of Tennessee to seek his fortune. John Wesley Newberry first worked in the engine room of a passenger ship that took him to Hawaii and Mexico. He returned Stateside in 1912 and traveled by train into the Mesilla Valley. The Organ Mountains and Picacho Peak intrigued him. He forded the Río Grande and contracted to buy a piece of mesquite-covered ground at the base of Picacho Peak.

In 1917, he returned to the area with his bride, Rachel Ellen Simpson, the daughter of a pioneer family living in the Texas Panhandle. Together with Mexicans living in the Village of Old Picacho, they cleared the land of mesquite, dug irrigation canals, and made adobes for their home, barns, and outbuildings. Crops of alfalfa, cotton, and corn were planted, along with fruit trees. The first pecan trees were planted in 1921.
In 2002, the Newberry Farm was granted the distinction of being a Cultural Property of the State of New Mexico. The beautiful farm is now the home of John and Rachel’s descendants.—Virginia Taylor, Fairacres

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1930s

Ever been to a rattlesnake derby? I didn’t think so. Not many people have. In the 1930s, there was one in Carlsbad every spring. There was a man named “Snaky” Campbell. He caught the rattlesnakes. Hundreds of them. Don’t ask me how. The derby racecourse was a big circle about 100 feet across. Around the edge were about 300 stakes [set] a foot apart. The spaces between the stakes were numbered. If you wanted to gamble, you bought one or more of the spaces for cash, $1 to $5. Snaky lowered a rope attached to a big wire basket with about 100 snakes in it into the center of the circle. Then he emptied it out, and the snakes crawled to the edge of the circle and through the spaces between stakes. Spectators around the circle called out the number of the space when a snake went between the pegs. Prizes went to the first, second, and third snakes through the spaces. I never won a prize—didn’t have much money to bet. But for a teenage boy during the Great Depression, it was great fun to watch. —Ray Sage, Las Cruces

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My dad lost his job at the drugstore in Albuquerque during the Great Depression. He got another job at a drugstore in Tucumcari, so my family moved there. We lived on Route 66. This was during the Dust Bowl. We saw those poor “Okies” drive by in their old cars and trucks with everything they owned piled on top. It was so sad.

When we were at school and the teachers saw the dust clouds billowing in the sky, they sent us home for the day. Mother would take strips of material moistened in starch and put them around the windows to try to keep the dust out. It was impossible to do. The dust just seemed to sift in. After the storm, we’d have to use the broom and dustpan to scoop up all the dust. I will never forget seeing those rolls of dust coming our way and having to cope with them. —Carlita Zummo, Port Arthur, Texas

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1940s

In 1946, at age six, my love for New Mexico, specifically Valmora, began. Valmora Industrial Sanatorium was a tuberculosis sanatorium where my dad was being treated for asthma by Doc Carl H. Gellenthien. I had no idea of the [future] historical significance of Valmora.

To me, this beautiful valley became my personal ranch and heaven. The cottages were home. In the hospital, Doc provided tetanus shots [which were our] passports to the Mora River swimming hole. Blue sky, pure air, delicious aromas of vegetation, mesas, and special people made this a paradise.

We kids invented a primitive carnival that provided entertainment for the patients sunning and healing on the recreation-hall porch. It consisted of surprised animals and lizards in homemade cages, and games, including penny pitching.

Rare side trips to Katie Hand’s Watrous Mercantile for bubble gum, to a Las Vegas rodeo, a Hillcrest restaurant for a hamburger, and an afternoon at Fort Union, where we pretended to be soldiers, were all highlights.

Too soon, these future treasured memories were tucked away as our family boarded the Super Chief at the flag stop to return to Chicago. My passionate love for New Mexico was born in Valmora and continues to grow. One can only hope the rich history of Valmora will never be forgotten.—Lynne Ryan, Littleton, Colorado

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Santa Fe Fiesta is among my fondest memories. Every year, the northeast corner of the Plaza is where Tio Vivo stood—a wonderful old handcrafted merry-go-round. Two older men sat in the center—one to turn the crank that spun us round and round, and one to play the fiddle. It was magical! The Plaza in those days was truly the center of town. It contained a bank, grocery store, two pharmacies (with fountains), two restaurants, department stores, shoe stores, a jewelry store, the five-and-dime, and the trading post. The Indians sold their wares along the old Palace of the Governors.La Fonda and St. Francis Cathedral were special attractions even then.—Eleanor Donohoe Titus, Florence, Colorado

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Every knows the Unser family, of Albuquerque, is one fo the first families of car racing. But did you know that the family was initialy able to invest in racing thanks to selling their donkeys?

We moved to Albuquerque in 1946, when I was four. Within a year of our arrival, my father decided to buy a donkey for me to ride at our place on Río Grande Boulevard. He bought the donkey from Bobby Unser [who would go on to become a champion race-car driver]. In 1997, I was on a fishing trip near Chama with two of my longtime friends. We ran into Bobby, who was dining with his wife. We got to talking, and friends hauled out a book about the Unser  legacy. There was a picture of my old donkey, Star, along with two other donkeys that were sold to get the money for the family’s first racing car.—Louis Lagrave, Cave Creek, Arizona

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1950s

A four-pound black bear cub became the living symbol Smokey Bear (formerly known as Smokey the Bear). He was rescued in May 1950 from a forest fire in the Capitán Mountains of south central New Mexico. The cub was removed from a burnt pine tree by a 19-year-old soldier from Fort Bliss, Texas—who was also a member of the firefighting team.

My dad, Ray Bell, Deputy Warden with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, flew the cub from Capitán to Santa Fe. After veterinarian Dr. Ed Smith treated the cub’s blistered feet, Dad brought the cub to our home in Santa Fe. Ruth, my mother; Judy, my four-year-old sister; and

I, then 15, nursed the cub back to health. Harold Walter took photographs of Judy with the cub and submitted the photographs to the Santa Fe New Mexican. A reporter submitted the pictures via Associated Press to all the newspapers in the U.S. with the headline: “Smokey the Bear has been found.”

The United States Forestry Department then promoted the bear cub as the national living symbol for the fire-prevention program called Smokey Bear. The cub was flown to the National Zoo, in Washington, D.C., in June 1950.

Congress gave Smokey his own zip code, 20252, to handle the huge volume of mail he was receiving. Upon his death, on November 9, 1976, he was returned to Capitán, where he is buried in Smokey Bear Historical Park.—Donald Bell, Las Cruces

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I not only two-stepped to the Western swing of Dick Bills and the Sandia Mountain Boys, I sang with them. I was ten years old when I sang with Dick Bills and band members Judy Campbell Bills; a teenaged Glen Campbell; Glen’s older brother, Gene Campbell; and Ted Lunsford. Dick Bills’s band played at the Hitching Post (a bar and dance floor on Central Avenue in Albuquerque), and they also had a radio show and a weekly television show on KOB-TV. Judy had had an all-girl Western band before this, and Glen Campbell (before he formed his own band and became famous with his hit “Gentle on my Mind”) had recently come from Arkansas to join the group. The group played a combination of Western and popular music. They began and ended the TV show with their theme song, “Good Ole County Music Played by the Sandia Mountain Boys.”

Brenda Lee had just made her first big hit, and it was a popular idea to have a young female singer on the show. There’s where I came in. I remember wearing the popular Western clothes of the time. Everyone on the show wore the “Dale Evans–Roy Rogers” look. I remember singing songs such as “Dear Hearts and Gentle People,” “Buttons and Bows,” and “If I Knew You Were Coming.” It was live TV in those days—no retakes. The studio set of KOB-TV was a painted black-and-white backdrop of a corral with barns in the background. It had real bales of hay around the edges. A buckboard was periodically used on the set. There was no need for color because television sets were only black-and-white.—Peggy Lewis Nelson, Las Cruces

Barbara Jean Yazzie-Curtis

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Our family was from Shiprock. My siblings and I grew up on the Navajo reservation. There were four of us—myself, my two brothers, and my sister. My mother, Barbara J. Curtis, was very protective of all of us. She loved us unconditionally, with discipline and good values. The Northern Navajo Fair was held every year in our town, dating back many years. We always had a parade, usually on a Saturday morning, along with a midway, exhibits, food stands, and a Ye’ii-Bi-Chie. In 1953, the fair board decided it was time for a beauty queen to represent the fair. My mother was selected for her beauty, intelligence, youthfulness; she was a fitting choice to represent the fair. She was the first-ever [Northern Navajo Fair] beauty queen, with a long line of successors since 1953. She was also a registered nurse who served her people faithfully with compassion and diligence for more than 40 years, until her retirement. We lost her in November 1999.—Darrell C. Curtis, Surprise, Arizona

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I first met the young artist Rudy (R. C.) Gorman on the campus of Arizona State College (now Northern Arizona University) in 1955, when we were undergraduates returning from the military and the Korean War. Little did I realize that this aspiring artist would become an international figure.
Over the years, I visited R. C. Gorman often at his Navajo Gallery, in Taos, and was honored to have lunch at his home with him and my wife. R. C. was always very generous. He made sure that I received a copy of any art book that was published about his work, and he always personally autographed with a message any of his posters that were released.

I had the honor of representing the president of Northern Arizona University during an awards ceremony at the New Mexico Capitol, where, in 1989, R. C. was recognized as an outstanding artist. What a night! R. C. was also awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Northern Arizona University at commencement the same year. It was a proud day for me to witness one of my classmates receiving this honor. It took me back to our freshman days.

On January 5, 2007, I received one of R. C.’s headbands from his sister, Donna Scott. The headband rests in a frame with a photo of R. C. and me, along with a great collection of works that he gifted to me. I will never forget the friendship that Rudy and I had for more than 50 years. When he died [in 2005], the state of New Mexico lost one of its sons, and the nation and world lost a truly talented and generous man.—Charles D. Pilon, Phoenix, Arizona

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1960s

Polo players take to the field at Peter Hurd's ranch. Hurd himself once played on the San Patrico Polo Snake Killers.

I played polo almost every weekend during the summer at painter Peter Hurd’s San Patricio Ranch for 40 years. There was a magic about the place. Our club drink was tequila and orange juice, Pete’s own concoction. We had polo parties on the Hondo River with Pete playing “La Coca Cola Rue”on his guitar. Rancher Robert O. “Bob” Anderson provided the players with America’s best arena field and a great watering hole, the Tinnie Mercantile.
I was there when Andreetta drove hurriedly to the polo field on a Sunday, just as we started the match. She asked me to tell Pete that President Lyndon B. Johnson was sending a plane to fly him to Johnson City, where the president was to sit for his official White House portrait. I told Pete to tell the SOB never to disrupt our Sunday polo match again. But we had to find a substitute player to take Pete’s place.

Johnson said the portrait was “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” So Pete gave the painting to the Smithsonian Institution. Pete told this story on himself. Later, Pete was stopped by a highway patrolman and asked to show his driver’s license. The patrolman, after studying it, said Pete’s license photo was the ugliest thing he ever saw. It was a local joke.

Pete called himself a painter and an artist. I called him a polo player and an artist. Pete and Bob Anderson were the most wonderful friends and interesting humans, certainly in the Hondo Valley. —Murray Samuell Jr., Tularosa

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I graduated from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces in 1961. In December 1960, I was elated to be a cheerleader for the undefeated Aggie team at the Sun Bowl Football Game for the second consecutive year. These games were unforgettable events both for me and for NMSU.

The football seasons at NMSU from 1959- to 1960 and 1960 to 1961 were notorious, as NMSU had two years of outstanding football records. An article about the Aggie football team appeared in Sports Illustrated magazine, in the  November 7, 1960 issue with the headline “the team the pros watch.” Three 1961 graduates from that team were closely watched by the pros and were drafted by professional football teams. They were Charley Johnson (to the St. Louis Cardinals), Pervis Atkins (to the Los Angeles Rams), and Bob Gaiters (to the New York Giants). Danny Villanueva, who graduated in 1960, also played for the Los Angeles Rams.

Having a record of this kind had not happened before nor since at New Mexico State University—or to any other college football team in New Mexico. —Mary Jane Kennedy Lent, Fullerton, California

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The year was 1963, and the place was the sandy banks of the Pecos River where it flows through Carlsbad, my hometown. Six of my friends—Judy, Jeanne, Barbara, Carol, Brenda, Suzanna—and I stood with our slalom water skis strapped to our feet, ropes coiled in our hands, ready to step onto the water. We were part of the Diamond Jubilee performance that occurred every weekend through that summer to celebrate Carlsbad’s 75th anniversary. Our flags, grasped tightly in our hands, waved briskly in the breeze, crowds lined the shores of the Carlsbad municipal beach, the engine roared, and we “yanked from the bank” to begin the show. During the performance, the Carlsbad Ski Cats treated spectators to six-person pyramids, acrobatic stunts performed by girls perched on men’s shoulders, skiers pirouetting on short trick skis, and a chorus line of teenage girls performing graceful moves. Judy even thrilled the crowd when she skied barefoot, a stunt that was practically unheard of at that time. Here in our desert oasis, far from the shores of the Atlantic, New Mexico had its own version of the famous water-ski shows of Cypress Gardens, Florida.—Katy Gaffney, Albuquerque

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1970s

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1980s

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1990s

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2000s

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