Southern New Mexico Travel and Tourism Information: Activities, Attractions, History, and Culture - Articles - People

Victoria Louise Massey

no@spam.com (Phyllis Eileen Banks) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 16:23:24 PDT

Her name was Victoria Louise Massey.She was born in Midland, Texas in 1902.

But her musical career began in 1918 in Roswell. She dropped the name "Victoria" andformed a band with her father, Henry Massey, her husband, Milt Mabie and her two brothers, Allen and Curt Massey.At that time it was called the Massey Family Band but later it became Louise Massey and the Westerners.Their home at 209 W. Alameda Street was modest and attractive.It was here that the Redpath Chautauqua auditioned the group.

The Chautauqua Caravans signed up the nation's artists, actors, actresses, musicians, and speakers and then took them on tours to small towns and sparsely populated areas all across the United States.President Theodore Roosevelt called the annual Chautauqua "The most American thing about America."It was our radio, TV, theater rolled into one in those days.

The group was taken to Kansas City and coached for a few weeks.Their style was a lilting kind of western music and Louise would never call it "hillbilly."She composed My Adobe Hacienda with Lee Penny and it was a "crossover" hit, listed on both "hillbilly" and pop charts simultaneously, and was on the Lucky Strike Hit Parade for 11 weeks.Other of their well-known songs were:South of the Border, When the White Azaleas Start Blooming,In a Little Spanish Town, Ramona, and It Happened in Monterey.Louise's repertoire included many songs in Spanish that were very popular.

The Apache Kid

no@spam.com (James W. Hurst) — Fri, 28 Mar 2003 03:40:41 PST

High in the San Mateo Mountains of the Cibola National Forest in New Mexico is Apache Kid Peak, and one mile northwest as the crow flies, at Cyclone Saddle, is the Apache Kid gravesite. The hiker who comes across the marked site in such a remote area may wonder who the Kid was, and perhaps will ask himself why, so far from the usual tourist attractions, such an elaborate memorial has been assembled. In the story of the Apache Kid, much of it fact and part of it legend, rests one of the Southwest's many intriguing sagas.

Robert H. Goddard, space pioneer

no@spam.com (Phyllis Eileen Banks) — Tue, 21 Jan 2003 03:43:28 PST

Space of all kinds surround Roswell. Wide open spaces, Robert H. Goddard's space experiments, and the crash of a UFO. Has the beginning of space exploration here been overshadowed with all the hype of the UFO crash in 1947? Probably. At the Houston Space Center and Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center, Robert Hutchings Goddard is known as the Father of Space Exploration.

Martin Price - modern day Mountain Man

no@spam.com (Dutch Salmon) — Sat, 11 Jan 2003 04:03:48 PST

The Gila National Forest of Southwest New Mexico encompasses more than three million acres in a contiguous block of largely untrammeled terrain, an area larger than some Eastern states. Near the center of this last great wilderness in the Southwest, in a cave a few miles downstream from where Sapillo Creek meets the main branch of the Gila River in northern Grant County, Martin Price made his new home in June of 1983. He brought with him a subsistence lifestyle and the myth of the mountain man.

Mildred Cusey - madam entrepreneur

no@spam.com (C. A. Gustafson) — Sat, 11 Jan 2003 03:55:38 PST

The history of humanity is a long and complex one. When stripped of all the manifold facts and figures, it really comes down to two key fundamentals: food and sex. Food sustains the living, while sex insures the continuity of that living. Mildred Cusey spent most of her life engaged in the professional aspects of both basics. She was early caterer for the former and later entrepreneur of the latter.

Mountain Men of the Gila

no@spam.com (Dutch Salmon) — Sat, 11 Jan 2003 03:50:23 PST

In his grip on the imagination, psyche and national character, the mountain man rivals the cowboy as the archetypal American Hero. In the Southwest the mountain man reached his zenith, and held his lifestyle longest, in the region's last great wilderness - the Gila country of southwest New Mexico. Here within the mountains and canyons of the Gila, San Francisco and Mimbres Rivers, the mountain man era lasted well into the 20th century.

John Chisum - Cattle King of the Pecos

no@spam.com (Phyllis Eileen Banks) — Fri, 10 Jan 2003 04:30:45 PST

Although Juan de Onate is credited with bringing the first cattle into New Mexico from old Mexico, it was John Chisum and men of his ilk who made the cattle industry an economic force in the 1860s.

Jos� Chavez y Chavez - Hombre Muy Malo

no@spam.com (James W. Hurst) — Fri, 10 Jan 2003 04:05:40 PST

In the days of the Old West, New Mexico was home, at one time or another, to many of the more colorful desperadoes. The Clantons, William Bonney, Jesse Evans, William "Curley Bill" Brocius, Clay Allison, Doroteo "El Tigre" Sains, Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum, John "King of the Rustlers" Kinney, Jim Miller, and Johnny Ringo are a relatively small sample. Because of its remoteness and proximity to the Mexican border, Southern New Mexico attracted a large number of outlaws: violent men who lived from the labor of others, who were quick to kill, and for whom the conventions of settled society meant little. A man who fit the mold of New Mexican outlaw, and has been largely ignored by historians and folklorists, was José Chavez y Chavez.

Victorio

no@spam.com (Drusilla Claridge) — Thu, 09 Jan 2003 22:07:01 PST

Victorio's Mimbres Apaches were concentrated family units which had once populated the Mimbres and Gila Rivers, and Mogollon Mountains. Through attrition from contact with encroaching Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers, their numbers dwindled, and in 1870 the Mimbres Apaches were given a small reservation, Ojo Caliente or Warm Springs, northwest of present Truth or Consequences.

Geronimo's surrender - Skeleton Canyon, 1886

no@spam.com (James W. Hurst) — Thu, 09 Jan 2003 21:46:39 PST

On May 17, 1885, Mangus (son of Mangus Colorado), Chihuahua, Nachite, old Nana, the shaman Geronimo, and their followers fled the San Carlos reservation in Arizona in an attempt to regain the freedom they had known before the reservation system was instituted by the United States government. The restrictions of reservation life were difficult for these semi-nomads, and they longed for the openness of the land the Spaniards had called Apacheria. Although the Chiracahuas could not have foreseen it, this was to be their last attempt to recapture the old ways that many of their cousins had already forsaken.