Day One of the Atomic Age, I imagine during the eighty mile drive from Alamogordo to Trinity Site, New Mexico, was much like today except for the early morning rain postponing the experiment from 4:00 to 5:30 a.m. Darkness filled the elongated valley bordered by mountains of hard granite, solidified lava flows and eroded mesas. The rain was undoubtedly welcomed by the sparse yet hardy vegetation decorating the valley floor. The rare summer moisture provided relief from the searing, relentless desert heat - a brief chance to rejoice and replenish moments before disappearring in an unnatural and previously unknown manner. Except for the sound of our 200 vehicle convoy headed to Ground Zero, Day One was sunny, windless and serene, just like today.

The Spanish gave this Anasazi village the name of Pueblo de Las Humanas (a thriving pueblo) when Oñate first approached it in 1598 to accept the oath of allegiance to Spain. Largest of the Salinas pueblos, it was occupied for nearly nine centuries, 800 A.D. to 1672 A.D. Later, Spaniards called it Gran Quivira, the object of Coronado's and Oñate's futile search for gold.

Fall and winter are perfect times to trade the baster for the binoculars and head for the birds at Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge near Socorro, New Mexico. Here, a temperate Rio Grande Valley climate and 57,000 acres of wetlands, wilderness and cultivated fields comprise a comfortable stay for thousands of waterfowl and sandhill cranes seeking refuge from northerly ice-covered waters, short daylight hours, cold nights and diminishing food supplies. The population starts building in September and extends through the second week of March, when the last of the cranes starts their migration northward.

His legendary fame was similar to that of Billy the Kid, except he was on the side of the law as sheriff, marshal, district attorney, school superintendent, and mayor. At age nineteen, he established his reputation as a quick draw with a deadly aim when he held 80 Texas cowboys at bay for thirty-six hours, killing four and wounding eight.

It is late winter, a Monday afternoon, in New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande Valley. The temperature outside hovers at sixty degrees. For one person, the temptation to remove his coat and tie and play hooky from work is too compelling to resist. From Socorro, our adventurer drives south on New Mexico Highway 1 toward the entrancing and renowned Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge. He must, for obvious reasons, remain anonymous.

It was Cruz Baca's dream. Having grown up in the Riley area, then living around the high country, he wanted to ride the Rio Salado from its beginning all the way to Riley. Coming into Magdalena, New Mexico on horseback in time for the Old Timers' Reunion was an added incentive.

Socorro, a community of 9,000 in the sunny Rio Grande Valley, is the seat of Socorro County. While it is distinguished by history as one of the oldest settlements in the Southwest, its present and discernable future is based on the technology of tomorrow.

Magdalena has seen it all. From the days of lead, zinc and silver mining in the 1880s and cattle shipping when the railroad spur from Socorro reached the town in 1884 to test missies flying overhead, Magdalena has grown and shrunk and grown again.

Place Names of New Mexico by Robert Julyan indicates there are 36 places in New Mexico where St. Anthony is mentioned. However, San Antonio at the junction of US 380 and one mile east of I-25 is the only one listed on the current New Mexico map. It is located ten miles south of Socorro and ten miles north of the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge.

In the thousands of vehicles that travel Interstate 25 between Las Cruces and Albuquerque every day, some occupants have noticed a new highway sign for the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, which spans the Rio Grande a few miles north of Socorro. Not as well-known or accessible as its more famous neighbor to the south, Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, Sevilleta nevertheless occupies a special place in the hierarchy of protected lands due to its stark beauty, diversity, and research activity.

"These waters, they soothe me. I could stay here." With those words, hope dangled before a New Mexico frontier wracked with Indian wars. Though not within his traditional homeland of southeastern Arizona, Cochise, the venerated and feared Chiricahua Apache leader, liked what Ojo Caliente offered . . . sanctuary and soothing waters to mollify his spirit and body. Unfortunately, in spite of evidence that the Apache had used Ojo Caliente for generations and that they were willing to settle there peacefully, the U.S. government failed to see the benefits of establishing a permanent reservation. In fact, the Chiricahua were one of the few Apache tribes in the Southwest that did not get their own reservation. The White Mountain Apache, the Jicarilla and the Mescalero all received at least some portion of their traditional homeland as a reservation. Only the Chiricahua were forever banished from the land so dear to them. They were shipped far away to prisons in Florida, Alabama and Oklahoma, never to threaten the Southwest again. One has to wonder if the relocation could have been avoided if only the government had made good on its promise to allow the Chiricahua to live at Ojo Caliente.

Where once cattle grazed and cowboys drove their livestock to market, the Plains of San Augustin near Magdalena, New Mexico, have become a mecca for hi-tech science and astronomical research. How strange it would have seemed to those ranchers of a century ago to now find this stretch of desert occupied by these strange, tall, bowl-shaped structures pointing into the sky, never dreaming of the purpose behind them. Today, this vast, arid desert valley is now home to the most powerful radio telescope in the world, the Very Large Array. With its twenty-seven dish antennas, each connected to the other, spread out over 22 miles in a "Y" formation, the Very Large Array, or VLA, is capable of detecting extremely faint radio emissions from the distant stars.

A sequence of events can occur in the most unexpected ways. An article titled “Folklore of Lincoln County Post Offices” brought an e-mail from two sisters in Indiana who were working on their family geneology. The thread that wove New Mexico and Indiana together was that their great grandmother had been one of the postmasters of Lincoln County in the early 1900s. Although family oral history isn’t always totally reliable, Judith P. Hamilton and Kathy Anderson Goins thought their great grandmother had been postmaster (no gender quarrel in those days) in the late 1800s. However, Jim White of Farmington, NM, considered the state historian of post offices, found that Frances Baca Walters, born in 1855, became postmaster on November 16, 1901.