Steven W. Kohlhagen's Blog: Where They Bury You and Related Topics, page 6
March 23, 2014
Visiting Blog from Jackson Lowry: “How the Wild West Was Destroyed”
Thanks so much to Jackson Lowry for this intriguing guest blog. Sad to reveal that we all have to wait seven long months for his next book, “The Great West Detective Agency.” Happy to report that it’s already available for pre-order on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Great-Detective...
Here goes—comments welcome. Thanks Jackson.
How the Wild West Was Destroyed
Leland Stanford hammered in the gold spike at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869. This was the first of five transcontinental railroads to be finished. Lost in the thrill of this, but not to New Mexico, the second transcontinental road was honored with a silver spike at Deming, NM on March 8, 1881. (The town’s name comes from Mary Ann Deming Crocker, the wife of railroad magnate Charles Crocker.)
And two more of the transcontinental railroads also passed through New Mexico, one coming through Santa Fe to Albuquerque and then due west across the Continental Divide and the other from the Texas Panhandle down to Las Cruces and then across to the Pacific.
Off these roads hundreds of miles of spur lines were laid, to the White Oak gold mines, to Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains to bring down timber for ties, to build Elephant Butte Reservoir supplying irrigation and drinking water for the Mesilla Valley and into Texas, to take away cattle and crops in a birth of continental trade–for a state that was and is mostly empty, transportation became easy. With it the Wild West and the isolation needed for “elbow room” died a swift death. Settlers pushed out the drover, the frontiersman and the gunfighter (and replaced him with a different kind of criminal–the land swindler and the tax collector and others who steal without necessarily using six-guns). Gold was exhausted quickly, but mining took on a different face. Coal mines fed the insatiable maws of the locomotives. Played out coal mines can still be found in almost-ghost towns in Tijeras Canyon east of Albuquerque. Copper became increasingly important at Santa Rita and Raton. The burgeoning flow from these mines needed the rails to move base metals to bigger markets. And they did with increasing frequency.
In the span of twenty years after the silver spike was driven, the closing of the west was complete in New Mexico and the birth of commerce and took hold. Stagecoaches could hardly compete with the rails and a man could go from Albuquerque to the Pacific and back in the same time it once took to simply leave New Mexico Territory on horseback. Life became different. It became downright civilized.
Or almost so. As Territorial Governor Lew Wallace once observed, “`All calculations based on our experiences elsewhere fail in New Mexico.” There was (and is) still plenty of frontier left in the state to make for intriguing stories, but the days of Billy the Kid and Black Jack Ketchum are gone.
Here goes—comments welcome. Thanks Jackson.
How the Wild West Was Destroyed
Leland Stanford hammered in the gold spike at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869. This was the first of five transcontinental railroads to be finished. Lost in the thrill of this, but not to New Mexico, the second transcontinental road was honored with a silver spike at Deming, NM on March 8, 1881. (The town’s name comes from Mary Ann Deming Crocker, the wife of railroad magnate Charles Crocker.)
And two more of the transcontinental railroads also passed through New Mexico, one coming through Santa Fe to Albuquerque and then due west across the Continental Divide and the other from the Texas Panhandle down to Las Cruces and then across to the Pacific.
Off these roads hundreds of miles of spur lines were laid, to the White Oak gold mines, to Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains to bring down timber for ties, to build Elephant Butte Reservoir supplying irrigation and drinking water for the Mesilla Valley and into Texas, to take away cattle and crops in a birth of continental trade–for a state that was and is mostly empty, transportation became easy. With it the Wild West and the isolation needed for “elbow room” died a swift death. Settlers pushed out the drover, the frontiersman and the gunfighter (and replaced him with a different kind of criminal–the land swindler and the tax collector and others who steal without necessarily using six-guns). Gold was exhausted quickly, but mining took on a different face. Coal mines fed the insatiable maws of the locomotives. Played out coal mines can still be found in almost-ghost towns in Tijeras Canyon east of Albuquerque. Copper became increasingly important at Santa Rita and Raton. The burgeoning flow from these mines needed the rails to move base metals to bigger markets. And they did with increasing frequency.
In the span of twenty years after the silver spike was driven, the closing of the west was complete in New Mexico and the birth of commerce and took hold. Stagecoaches could hardly compete with the rails and a man could go from Albuquerque to the Pacific and back in the same time it once took to simply leave New Mexico Territory on horseback. Life became different. It became downright civilized.
Or almost so. As Territorial Governor Lew Wallace once observed, “`All calculations based on our experiences elsewhere fail in New Mexico.” There was (and is) still plenty of frontier left in the state to make for intriguing stories, but the days of Billy the Kid and Black Jack Ketchum are gone.
January 30, 2014
KIT CARSON: ‘GREAT AMERICAN HERO’ or ‘VILLAIN OF NAVAJO HISTORY’?
Thanks to Andrea Downing for the great blog: http://andreadowning.com Free autographed copy to best comment on Andrea's blog site.
January 16, 2014
PBS interview on Santa Fe, Kit Carson, the Indian and Civil Wars and historical fiction novel Where They Bury You:
PBS interview on Santa Fe, Kit Carson, the Indian and Civil Wars and historical fiction novel Where They Bury You:
January 11, 2014
Santa Fe Fandangos
Episode 728 | Web Extra Steve Kohlhagen - YouTube
Author Steve Kohlhagen talks about the history of fandangos in Santa Fe, featured in his novel "Where They Bury You."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1fqFVl5fgU&a...
Author Steve Kohlhagen talks about the history of fandangos in Santa Fe, featured in his novel "Where They Bury You."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1fqFVl5fgU&a...
December 22, 2013
Did You Know---Cheyenne Indians?
From 1837-1891 there were 21 total battles between the U.S. Army and all Indians in the United States and its Territories in which 10 or more U.S. soldiers were killed. There were at most 3,800 Cheyennes scattered across the Great Plains during that time period. Maybe 800-900 warriors. Of those 21 battles, the Cheyenne Indians were the opposition in 9.
Truly, until they and their allies were overwhelmed by the sheer size of the U.S. Army, the Cheyenne were the greatest cavalry warriors of their time.
Truly, until they and their allies were overwhelmed by the sheer size of the U.S. Army, the Cheyenne were the greatest cavalry warriors of their time.
December 15, 2013
Did You Know?
George Armstrong Custer was famous in both the Civil War and the Indian Wars for attacking without the benefit of reconnaissance. But did you know that his success was dubbed by contemporary journalists as “Custer Luck”? That was, of course, BEFORE………….well, you could have guessed That!
December 3, 2013
November 22, 2013
November 14, 2013
Did You Know
Did you know that Herman Melville mentioned Kit Carson as one of the great American frontiersman in “Moby Dick”?
Kit Carson and Methodist minister John Chivington found themselves on the same side in 1862 when Chivington stumbled upon and destroyed the Confederate supply train in the decisive moment of the New Mexico Civil War battles. Two and a half years later, in, arguably, the most despicable act in American history, in a dawn surprise attack Chivington’s Colorado volunteers massacred Black Kettle’s peaceful village of Cheyennes who were flying an American flag and a white flag of peace. Carson testified on this as follows: “Jis to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds, up thar at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children. You call sich soldiers Christians, do ye? And Indians savages? What der yer ‘spose our Heavenly Father, who made both them and us, thinks of these things? I tell you what, I don’t like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I’ve fought ‘em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would.”
Kit Carson and Methodist minister John Chivington found themselves on the same side in 1862 when Chivington stumbled upon and destroyed the Confederate supply train in the decisive moment of the New Mexico Civil War battles. Two and a half years later, in, arguably, the most despicable act in American history, in a dawn surprise attack Chivington’s Colorado volunteers massacred Black Kettle’s peaceful village of Cheyennes who were flying an American flag and a white flag of peace. Carson testified on this as follows: “Jis to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds, up thar at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children. You call sich soldiers Christians, do ye? And Indians savages? What der yer ‘spose our Heavenly Father, who made both them and us, thinks of these things? I tell you what, I don’t like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I’ve fought ‘em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would.”
October 27, 2013
Synopsis and Review of "Where They Bury You"
A nice synopsis and review of Where They Bury You" can be found here: http://ushistoryfiles.wordpress.com/2...
Where They Bury You and Related Topics
Discussions of historical fiction in the American West and any other topics people want to comment on (18th Century Native Americans? Kit Carson? Apaches? Navajos? Cheyennes? baseball? chocolate?)
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