Sunday, December 29, 2013

Railroads


Weather: So far it’s been a bad winter; warm afternoons keep melting what little snow we have before temperatures fall in the mornings; last snow 12/22/2013; 8:25 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens, prickly pear; leaves on Apache plume, German iris, yuccas, garlic, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, Saint John’s wort, vinca, coral bells, cheat grass; rose stems green.

What’s red: Cholla, Oregon holly and coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, pinks, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow or brown: Arborvitae.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Small birds.


Weekly update: Photographs are wonderful records of the past.

I found one this week of a corn field for the settlement of Santa Cruz taken in 1872. No more specific date is given, but the corn is about a foot high and planted in four rows between irrigation furrows.


The field is southwest of the church, and just a little below. The settlement stretches out to the east, with rows of progressively higher walls. No wooden or wire fences are visible. The walls and retaining walls are rough textured like uncovered adobe. Some are four courses high, some higher. No other crops are visible.


A few years later, in 1879, John K. Hillers took a similar photograph of the Santa Clara pueblo. The garden plot in the foreground is close to what look like residences. The nearest has a wooden door and small opening for light.


There’s no date, so it is hard to know if the plants are some low-growing vegetable in mid-summer or sprouting corn. The bed has been tilted, so water can flow both across its head and down the furrows. A low wall of adobe blocks runs along the top edge to direct water. Like Santa Cruz, the plants are in four or five row segments between furrows.


Water flows through a rock-lined shallow ditch. The surplus apparently falls over the wall, and puddles below.


The original photograph is wider than the one reproduced by the Smithsonian. In the 1980s, some pueblo artist made a line drawing from the original. Edwin Tafoya colored in the bare outlines.

The drawing is double the size, with the addition all to the east. At the far end are two sets of coyote fencing around buildings. The posts are spaced and connected to single rails toward the tops.

Details of the irrigation system are not reproduced. The garden plot is level. There are rows of what, more clearly, is corn, but no furrows. The water stops at the bed, and does not drain further. It’s tidier, more like modern corn fields.


Twenty years later, in 1899, Adam Vroman retook the original photograph. A tall double-hung window has replaced the door, and a smaller window has been fitted into the opening of the near building.

The open garden plot has been broken into small enclosures surrounded by coyote fences. The posts are spaced and have irregular heights. Like the earlier photograph, they are held to single rails toward the tops. The gates are made from boards, salvaged from packing crates.

At the time, the picture was taken, the visible areas are bare of plants, suggesting they were used for animals. The ditch no longer is visible, but a shrub as tall as the buildings is growing in the area where it drained.

There also are rows of coyote fencing around the far edges of the settlement. The crops may be in the area beyond the photograph.


Between the two sets of photographs, the ones from the 1870's and the one from 1899, the railroads arrived, the Atkinson, Topeka and Santa Fe in Lamy in 1879, the Denver and Rio Grande in the new settlement of Española in 1880. They brought more than the convenience of windows, canned foods, and milled flour.

The railroads needed lumber for their ties. Harry Buckman began logging to the south on the Vigil land grant. Camilla Trujillo reproduced a photograph of logs cut on the Mora Grant to the north. They were waiting to be washed down the Embudo River to the Rio Grande and, from there, on down below Española. 300 men were paid wages to buy those windows, canned goods, and other products available in stores near the tracks.


In town, Frank Bond rented sheep to local men to raise, in return for credit in his store. He placed so many animals, the land in many areas was overgrazed.

He and other merchants offered store credit for ristras of chili pods. The market converted must of the diverse agricultural land into monoculture, with crops raised by women and children while the men were away with the flocks.

Bond’s sheep and the loggers changed the environment, while the stores’ credit practices turned many local men into indebted peons. The land was abused everywhere. We’re still seeing the results in the forest fires that plague areas where all the trees are the same age.

At the same time, the processed foods provided more dietary security in years of drought. Fewer children died young. More adults lived longer. The population expanded, adding to pressures on the land. But, the land no longer was as critical for survival. It could be used for housing.


Notes:
Photograph of Santa Cruz by H. T. Hiester, 1872, and one of Embudo taken by T. Harmon Parkhurst. Both are in Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, and reproduced in Camilla Trujillo, Española, 2011

Photographs of Santa Clara by John K. Hillers, 1879, and Adam C. Vroman, 1899, in Handbook of North American Indians, volume 9, Southwest, edited for the Smithsonian Institution by Alfonzo Ortiz, 1979. Trujillo reproduces a smaller section of the Hillers photograph.

Colored rendering of Hillers’ photograph by Edwin Tafoya (Tan-day), copyrighted 1978. The person who sold me the drawing did not know if Tafoya or someone else had created the original line drawing.

"Sharecropping with Sheep," in US Dept of Interior, Tewa Basin Study, volume 2, 1935, reprinted by Marta Weigle as Hispanic Villages of Northern New Mexico, 1975.


Photographs: Taken over the past several years in Santa Cruz and in my general neighborhood. None were taken on pueblo land.

1-2 Corn field and its ditch.

3 Area southwest of Santa Cruz church where original photograph may have been taken.

4 Terraced housing southwest of Santa Cruz church.

5 Spaced rows of peppers.

6 Back of pepper field with ditch feeding it water.

7 Main ditch just above the pepper ditch.

8-9 Corn field at base of Santa Cruz church hill and its ditch.

10-11 Corn field with its irrigation pipe and the feeding ditch. Another crop is to the left. It was a dry year, and they had abandoned the crops.


12-13 Corn field and its ditch.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Roads


Weather: Snow on the solstice, but not enough to seep into the ground; 8:25 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens, prickly pear; leaves on Apache plume, German iris, yuccas, garlic, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, Saint John’s wort, vinca, coral bells, cheat grass; rose stems green.

What’s red: Cholla, Oregon holly and coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, pinks, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow or brown: Arborvitae.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Small birds wintering in the area.


Weekly update: I’ve been driving around the past few weeks doing something I promised myself I would do someday: look more closely at the houses, walls, and outbuildings that have survived from earlier times. As I’ve tried to photograph walls, I’ve been struck by regional differences that are more related to topography than to culture or government.

When I lived in Ohio, I drove to Philadelphia several times on business related to finishing my degree. I often took Route 30 through Lancaster, Gettysburg and Chambersburg west to Pittsburgh. Roads and settlements had evolved together. Both were old, dating back to Revolutionary times.

In Lancaster, and in settlements west of Pittsburgh, old buildings survived. Barns and fences had been replaced as agricultural needs changed. But some old houses still stood. The one below, then an inn, began as a log structure. The stone building was added later, with a separate entrance.


At Pittsburgh, traffic transferred to the Ohio river. In southwestern Ohio, early settlers depended on tributaries and canals. Early houses were built on bluffs overlooking the waterways. When roads were built, the historic buildings were stranded.

Closer to the Great Lakes, the land had been flattened by the glaciers. The Northwest Ordinance decreed the land be surveyed before it was settled. Roads followed section lines. Settlers built along roads to get wheat to market. In northeastern Ohio and my part of Michigan, early houses can still be seen on rural roads that haven’t been moved or been abandoned. Houses with Greek Revival details probably go back to the 1820s in Ohio, and to the 1830s in southern Michigan.


New Mexico is arid. The earliest infrastructure efforts were directed toward building acequias to make land arable. Their banks served as thruways for locals. Roads between settlements were rudimentary.

When automobiles arrived, roadways around Santa Cruz were narrow. People moved their houses for better access. Builders widened where they could. Shoulders don’t exist today, but ditches sometimes parallel roads. Traffic is heavy. Drivers are impatient with needs to slow down. Few places are safe enough to pull over and take pictures. There aren’t even places to walk.

When they built the road to Taos, engineers avoided the settlement. The highway was routed between the river and village. Business and homes flocked to the road. Traffic became congested. Tourists balked at the delays.


Then taxes were increased to match land values. People subdivided their land. Heirs sold to developers. Before I moved here, that fluorescence had peaked. Only a few post-World War II houses or early businesses remained between parking lots for newer stores.  The pink house stands next to the building above.


North of San Juan pueblo, the highway goes through bad lands. Small roads and unmarked private drives connect them with settlements nearer the river. It may be road builders learned. The paths also may have arisen from a respect for the land. I’m told in Egypt, after the Aswan dam was built, roads were constructed along the edges of the badlands. The purpose of the dam was to bring more land under cultivation. Roads were not allowed to interfere with that end.

On the western side of the Río Grande, the railroad arrived before highways. A rudimentary road was carved along the edge of the badlands. People built new houses along the road. Whatever is nearer the river is now invisible, reachable only by private drives. Beyond that, the Corps of Engineers has taken control of the flood plains.


After the Denver and Rio Grande failed, a better road was needed north to Chama. It was built through, not beside, the badlands.

Once roads were built, something happened here that did not happen in the north. Roads weren’t simply abandoned, they deliberately were closed. The ranch road beside my house, once went to Jaconita. As soon as I put up my fence, the ranch owner had the pueblo close the road with a gate linking my fence to my neighbor’s.


It’s still possible to walk along the road - it’s only been closed twenty years. However, when you get near the ranch, the road is closed again.


People with ATVs and wire cutters don’t let fences stop them. There’s an opening in the fence. Its possible to continue walking the road. While the road to the ranch was paved with arroyo sand, after trucks made that possible, the continuation is closer to the condition of much earlier roads.


Ditches have been upgraded, but new landowners do not see them as thoroughfares. Each year, major domos have problems getting access to some. Many have been enclosed by border fences. Some have been deliberately blocked.


As I said, this is not simply a matter of culture. If you take the road to Angel Fire or Route 64 from Tres Piedras to Tierra Amarilla, the roads are like the one through the mountains east of Pittsburgh. They avoid the most valuable land. Instead, they hug the highlands, with creeks below.


Here and there, older structures have survived the weather. Topography is not destiny, but it is one of the fates whispering to the adventurer. You know where early fields had to be located, but you can’t get there. What you may see of what survives is highly restricted. Draw no conclusions. The evidence is concealed.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Rock Wall Stones


Weather: Sun now comes in my window and blinds me around 7:45 in the morning; what snow fell disappeared before the morning temperatures fell; last snow 12/09/2013; 8:31 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens, prickly pear; leaves on Apache plume, German iris, yuccas, garlic, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, Saint John’s wort, vinca, coral bells, cheat grass; rose stems green.

What’s red: Cholla, Oregon holly and coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, pinks, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s yellow or brown: Arborvitae.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Small birds wintering in the area.


Weekly update: One of the more interesting things about rock walls are the stones themselves.

Anthropologists often try to identify the sources for the flint and obsidian used in arrowheads and other tools. When it is some distance from where the points were found, they posit some kind of division of labor between tribal groups and trade.

The important trait of rocks is they are heavy. Until motorized transport, only a very wealthy man in the Española area could have had them moved any distance by ox cart or horse drawn wagon.

Most of the material used in walls is volcanic, which can be found just north of town. River rocks also are used, but are less common.

When I’m driving by, I use a simple characteristic to determine which is which. If the surface looks porous or rough, it’s probably volcanic.


Most are lava, but one wall looks like tuff, rock consolidated from volcanic ash.


If it looks smooth, I assume it’s igneous.


When the stones are something else, they imply some unique history. When the man who lived next to the tuff wall wanted his own, he tried to find the same, but all he matched was the color. The darker rock on the right is denser than the tuff. The mason used different techniques for laying the stones and topping the wall.

Another built his wall from a deep reddish-brown stone. The wall was there when I moved here in the early 1990's. I would guess they were brought when road work was being done somewhere in the north. How the person got access to them is another story.


More recently, decorative rocks have become a style promoted by the mass media. Someone has even opened an outlet here for architectural stone.


Some rocks are beginning to appear in walls, that probably have been brought from afar. Sometimes, these are so narrow and uniform, they had to have been sliced by a rock saw.


The rocks used to line arroyo walls are less interesting when you drive by, but also aren’t natives. The Corps of Engineers probably specifies igneous rather than volcanic rock, since it would absorb less water. They could come from the Sangre, or be trucked in from elsewhere.



Photographs: Photographs taken in the area in the past several years. One below is a close-up of one of the rocks in the above picture.


Sunday, December 08, 2013

Stone Walls


Weather: Our lower elevation protected us from some of the cold, snow, and freezing fog that affected Los Alamos and Santa Fé; last snow 12/08/2013; 8:31 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper, arborvitae and other evergreens, cholla and other cacti; leaves on Apache plume, roses, fern bushes, Oregon holly, German iris, yuccas, garlic, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, Saint John’s wort, vinca, coral bells, Dutch clover, sweet pea, bouncing Bess, cheat grass.

What’s red: Coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, pinks, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Small birds wintering in the area.


Weekly update: Coyote fences often are used for utilitarian purposes. When one wishes a boundary marker with status, walls are preferred. Those influenced by Santa Fé erect stucco block walls. Locals build stone walls.

The defining characteristic of the walls is the mortar is emphasized. European-influenced masons tend to value themselves on the invisibility of the glue that holds stones together.

Here it is emphasized by adding a red or dark charcoal powder to the cement.


Even when the mortar is natural, it is emphasized by extending it from the surface of the wall.


Most of the walls are low, usually three to four feet high, with a smooth top.


They’re often too low to be functional barriers against anything except rabbits. Humans, dogs, even chickens, can get over them. Cars tend to come out the worse when they run into them, but a mason usually has to make repairs.

Many have added iron work fences to the tops.


This has become so common, recent walls are built with stone posts to anchor the additions.

When iron isn’t available, some have used wooden posts.


This is less a continuation of the early fur trader’s fort than a re-invention. When a culture confronts similar problems with the same tool kit, it is likely to produce the same solutions.

Photographs: Photographs taken in the area in the past several years.

Sunday, December 01, 2013

Coyote Fence Variations


Weather: Snow has been melting, aided by an inversion that trapped the heat; last snow 11/24/2013; 8:29 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper, arborvitae and other evergreens, cholla and other cacti; leaves on Apache plume, roses, fern bushes, Oregon holly, German iris, yuccas, garlic, hollyhocks, winecup mallow, Saint John’s wort, vinca, coral bells, Dutch clover, sweet pea, bouncing Bess, cheat grass.

What’s red: Coral beardtongue leaves.

What’s grey or blue: Four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, pinks, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums, aptenia.

Animal sightings: Some sort of gray bird, smaller than a robin with pear shape, perhaps a young dove or pigeon.


Weekly update: When I drove north last week looking for coyote fences, I realized I would be lucky to find anything old. Wood is perishable.

Construction techniques suggest the farther west of the Río Grande, the more traditional the methods. Around Ojo Caliente, where people erected fences to protect their privacy and property from tourists, fence posts are lashed to wooden rails or existing fences.


In Taos, the posts are nailed, sometimes to boards, sometimes to logs. It’s faster, and thus cheaper, if you’re hiring someone to do the work.


In Taos, the posts may be uniform in diameter and closely spaced,


or widely spaced and irregular.


The choice is aesthetic in Taos, where irregular fences are associated with the "real past." Scarcity of wood before trucks may have driven that fence, not preference. A few years ago, a woman who was getting ready to move to family land near Canjilion, north and west of Ojo, said she was laying out the posts to ensure they were as tight as possible. That was the mark of a good fence.


Many fences that appear irregular are tall. The bases are closely spaced, but the tops taper into irregularity. They are the ones most likely to have irregular heights. The bottom is intended to stop intruders, the top to discourage leapers.


The greatest variety in construction techniques appears around Española. One that probably dates from the early 1950s has posts tied, one by, one to guy wires.


Another has a wire looped around each post to secure them against barbed wire.

 
Everywhere, it’s still possible to find ad hoc fences built in the spirit of the originals, the ones that gave them the name associated with individuals living outside the established community.


Photographs:
1. Route 96, 20 November 2013. Rail fence, with posts lashed in area near house. Beyond, particle board shelter with lean-to log roof.

2. Española, 21 November 2013. Tree corner post with posts tied to guy wire cable.

3. Ojo Caliente, 20 November 2013. Original wire mesh fence with horizontal log along top and lashed posts.

4. Taos, 21 November 2013. Posts nailed from front to large-diameter log rail.

5. Taos, 21 November 2013. Same fence as #4, closely spaced posts, sawn to an even height.

6. Taos, 21 November 2013. Irregularly spaced, narrow posts nailed from back to horizontal boards.

7. Ojo Caliente, 20 November 2013. Same fence as #3. Closely spaced, narrow, tall posts.

8. Rancho de Taos, 21 November 2013. Rail timber upright, notched to hold horizontal logs. Posts nailed from the front, closely spaced at base, tapering above.

9. Española, 21 November 2013. Same fence as #2. Posts individually tied to cable.

10. Española, 27 November 2013. Barbed wire fence with posts attached with loops.

11. Española, 20 November 2013. Barbed wire fence probably existed when a gas station was built next door. Bark board and logs were placed against and nailed to diagonals on one side and horizontal boards on the other.


12. Española, 20 November 2013. Close up of #11.