The Truth Behind the Saguaro Saga
WHOEVER PLANTED the 18-foot saguaro cactus in front of the Sierra Grande Lodge, in Truth or Consequences, must have been a dreamer. The saguaro serves as an object lesson in beating the…
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Ice, Ice, Baby
WHEN 17-YEAR-OLD CLAUDIUS DIPO ALAM came to the U.S. from Indonesia as a professional soccer player, he had no clue what a paleta was. But a decade or so later, he couldn’t get enough of the Mexican…
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What We're Reading: Molly
THE TITLE CHARACTER in Kevin Honold’s lyrical Molly (Autumn House Press) is a waitress working out a hardscrabble but vastly imaginative life in a trailer on a mesa in New Mexico in 1968. She dubs her…
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Datebook: June 2022
ANCESTRAL PUEBLO PEOPLE KNEW what was up—the sky—and they built their world around it. At Aztec Ruins National Monument, the structures left behind by the Animas River Valley’s largest Indigenous…
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From Suffering to Survival at Bosque Redondo Memorial
"I HAVE SEEN A LOT OF PEOPLE SAY it’s sad,” a recent visitor wrote on a whiteboard filled with responses to the new permanent exhibition Bosque Redondo: A Place of Suffering, a Place of Survival. “I…
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Bite into the History of the Green Chile Cheeseburger
The Origin Story No one can say for certain who was the first to slap green chile and cheese on a hamburger. (We can say that this person was a genius.) Most experts agree that the Original Owl Bar &…
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Back to the Indigenous Future
FIRED BY TEMPERATURES of more than 2,000 degrees, a warrior emerges from a monolithic portal adorned with Indigenous symbols. A blood-red bust faces the courtyard of the Inn and Spa at Loretto…
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Soak Up Some Hot Springs History
THE OPENING OF A ROADSIDE HOT SPRINGS might not seem like an occasion for tears. But when the mineral baths on NM 65 outside Las Vegas, New Mexico, reopened last fall after 18 months of Covid-related…
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What We're Reading: Sky Rider
ON JULY 4, 1882, six-foot-tall, 225-pound Park Van Tassel lifted off from Albuquerque’s Old Town in a hot-air balloon that was dangerously inflated at only two-thirds capacity. It was the first…
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Datebook: April 2022
THE GATHERING OF NATIONS—North America’s largest powwow—is traditionally held in spring. This year, the season of rebirth gives the event special meaning. After two years of pandemic-related hiatus…
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