Among a handful of writing projects I'm currently pursuing is a follow-up to my 2006 book, Towns of the Sandia Mountains. I just handed in a proposal for it to my publisher on October 31, 2007.
I'm going to post most of that proposal here, for readers of this website and my erratically updated Amazon blog, because I'm really interested in hearing people's input as I work on the book, particularly people who have read the first one.
If you're not interested, don't bore yourself here, but if you are, drop me an e-mail me at mike@mystrangenewmexico.com. I'd love to hear what you have to say.
For what it's worth, this is your chance to have a say in how New Mexico history gets preserved.
Wow! How about that! Yeah!
Here goes.
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Proposed title of book: Towns of the Sandia Mountains , Volume 2
Author: Mike Smith
1. Your previous works:
In 2006, I wrote and collected the photographs for Towns of the Sandia Mountains, a regionally bestselling local history book for Arcadia Publishing. The book outlined in this proposal will serve as a follow-up to that.
Oliver Sacks, author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, declared Towns of the Sandia Mountains, “Excellent.”
Philip White, a Pushcart Prize-winning poet and author of The Clearing, has said, “The vivid photographs, descriptions, and narratives in Mike Smith's Towns of the Sandia Mountains resonate with a pathos, humor, and particularity far beyond what we expect to find in books of this kind. Towns is local history written by a person who has read Agee and the great writers of the West, and has absorbed some of their penchant for juxtaposing the smallest human detail with a meditative and informed historical sensibility. ...Not only is the book chock full of real, down to earth, small town history—the kind that can only emerge out of glimpses of real people and real lives—it also manages to make those glimpses luminous with human concern, while at the same time placing all those little-big lives against the sublime backdrop of the mountains and the desert and the vast sweep of geological time.”
And Stephen Woodworth, author of Through Violet Eyes and the nationally bestselling Violets novels, has said, “In Towns of the Sandia Mountains, Mike Smith takes a swatch of New Mexico landscape that most travelogues would gloss over in a few paragraphs and paints a captivating picture of its fascinating history and unique culture. With a combination of vivid prose and vintage photographs, Smith gives us both the scenery and the soul of the places he depicts. A whole lot of research and even more heart went into this book—a must-have for native New Mexicans and out-of-staters alike!”
Since the books’ publication, I have been a frequent contributor to New Mexico Magazine, and I have written for the New Mexico Daily Lobo, the Santa Fe Reporter, Paddler magazine, and others.
I write a regular column of strange New Mexico history and lore, “My Strange New Mexico,” for Local IQ, “Albuquerque ’s Intelligent Alternative,” and the column can also be read online at Mystrangenewnemexico.com.
This November, “The Sandias,” an hour-length documentary on the Sandia Mountains will premiere on KNME, New Mexico ’s PBS affiliate; I narrate the history portion of the film, and I served as a historical advisor to its director.
2. What geographical area will your book cover?
The proposed title for my book is Towns of the Sandia Mountains , Volume 2. I have always thought of this series as ultimately being a trilogy, should sales justify it, because there is just so much history to tell.
The Sandia Mountains are New Mexico ’s most well known mountain range, due to their proximity to Albuquerque , New Mexico ’s largest city. The Sandias are the most visited mountain range in the state, but many people also call the Sandias their home—several towns straggle across the flanks and ridges of the Sandias, many smaller communities dot the mountains as well, and even the town of Albuquerque—in its relentless outward growth—has made its way into the Sandias’ foothills.
Volume 2 of this series will include a few of the towns featured in Volume 1, though it will show a new side of them. However, it will most likely feature towns not included in the first volume even more prominently—towns such as Sedillo, which many people were upset not to see included in the original; villages such as La Madera which I would have included had there been room, and health resorts such as Casa Loma, which I only recently discovered an amazing collection of old photographs for.
3. What is the population of the entire area to be covered by your book?
Albuquerque — Population: 448,607
Placitas and Tawapa – Population: 3,452
La Madera — Population: approximately 500
Cedar Crest, Rancho Colorado , and Casa Loma — Population: 1,060
Hobbies — Population: approximately 100 (although only 12 on the actual Hobbies property)
Zuzax — Population: approximately 500
Sedillo— Population: approximately 1,000
Approximate total population: 455,219
Even without including Albuquerque—which the book certainly will—the population of the mountain towns to be addressed add up to 6,612, and that number doesn’t include the estimated 5,266 other people who live in the other Sandia towns addressed in Volume 1—people who will very likely be interested in reading about these as well, since many of these towns neighbor or overlap their own.
All of the above populations are from the 2000 U.S. census, with the exception of the populations of the communities of La Madera, Hobbies, Zuzax, and Sedillo which were unavailable. The approximate figures for those two towns come from people who have lived in each town for many years, people with realistic conceptions of how many people live there. Also, population growth in the Sandia Mountains is steady and relentless, and the above numbers are always rising.
4. Please tell us about the area to be addressed in your book, including the main sources of employment, the area’s claims to fame, and its important people, places, and events.
The Sandia Mountains have had a presence in New Mexico ’s history and prehistory for centuries. For millennia, various tribes held them sacred, made them home, or worshipped them from a distance. The Native Americans of the middle Rio Grande area called them Oku Pin, or South World Mountain . A later tribe referred to them as “ Turtle Mountain ,” and the Spanish later named them Sandia—Spanish for “watermelon”—after the melons that grew in a nearby Native American pueblo.
The mountains were formed by a major fault upheaval, and this shows in their appearance—they look as if they were literally pushed up along a single line, leaving an extreme sheer cliff face on their west side and a massive tilting mountain range everywhere else. The mountains are full of wildlife and high desert forests, and as a result of their proximity to Albuquerque , New Mexico ’s largest city, they are also New Mexico ’s most visited, most hiked, and most photographed mountain range. Over 170 miles of trails snake across them. Many of the mountains’ residents work in Albuquerque , so their residents work nearly every sort of career.
Many of these towns have been around since only shortly after the city of Albuquerque was founded in 1706. As aboriginal settlements, many of them have been around for hundreds of years before that; a few of them were Ancestral Puebloan Indian settlements hundreds of years before the Spanish ever set foot in the area, and their former presence is evidenced here by the remains of old, partially excavated pueblos, bits of trails, and even a primitive ditch system for watering crops.
In the 1700s, the Spanish established settlements at both the north and south ends of the mountains, as protective buffer zones between the raiding tribes that lived beyond the mountains and the terrified residents of the growing city of Albuquerque . In the 1700s, the residents of these towns (including the village of Placitas ) were frequently chased out of their homes by raiding Apaches and Comanches, and it was many years before communities could be reestablished or established, could grow and struggle and flourish.
Toward the southern end of the mountain range, such communities included Sedillo; farther north they included the tiny Rancho Colorado ; and to the east, one prominent one was La Madera, a wood-cutting town.
In the early 1900s, the mountains changed again. Many people in America became afflicted with tuberculosis, and many of those TB patients were heading west to escape to a dryer climate and better weather. Health Resorts such as the Well Country Camp (a.k.a. Hobbies), Casa Loma, and Cedar Crest brought a tide of Anglo settlers to the predominantly Hispanic Sandias, and soon evolved into communities of their own.
Life in the mountains continued to evolve, with quirky new additions and unscripted influxes. In the 1950s, an odd little stop was founded and named Zuzax—a made-up word chosen so it would be the last entry in the phone book—a place that featured a tourist store and a weird little chairlift that people could ride up and down a small hill. And in the late-1960s and early-1970s, the Sandia community of Placitas became the site of an infamously rowdy cluster of hippie communes, including the incredibly photogenic commune of Tawapa.
I’ve said this before, but in a way, the history of all of New Mexico is encapsulated in the history of these mountains—the Native Americans, the Spanish, the Anglos, the ranchers, the farmers, and all the strange progress of the twentieth century—and it’s easy to see that it’s a history worth exploring.
5. What time span does your book cover, and what is your thematic focus?
Most of the book's photographs will range from the 1890s to the late-1950s, with the exception of the Tawapa chapter which will focus on the 1960s and ‘70s. Earlier images will be included as well.
The thematic focus of Volume 1 was, at least in part, the impermanence of people on the land, and how quickly things seem to change when considered as part of the life of the Earth itself. That book began and ended with examinations at the mountains’ geology, and this book, Volume 2, will do the same with the mountains’ biology.
I plan to use a discussion of the Great Fire of 1815—a fire that burnt down much of the mountains’ forests—to examine how the people of the Sandias are merely one part of a larger network of life in the mountains.
And, of course, the focus will also be on telling a good, overall history of the entire area using the photos as a framework. I want this book to be a reminder to people that they are a part of something much bigger—a bigger history, a bigger world, a world that’s inescapable and all around them—and exciting.
6. Please include a preliminary outline of the chapter topics.
Like Volume 1, this book will be structured as a driving tour—a course that can actually be driven or that can simply be used to give the reader a clear idea of where these towns are. The book’s course will begin in Albuquerque, where the last volume ended, drive to the mountains’ northern end, wind along a dirt road to the mountains’ eastern face, and slip down along its southern edge, ending in the community of Sedillo, at an ideal spot to look back at the mountains’ wooded eastern side and reflect on the towns and their connectedness to the world.
I have a low tolerance for New Age rhetoric, so all such reflections will hopefully come more from the perspective of an ecologist than from anything else.
It should be noted that all of this outline and these chapters are only tentative, and will almost certainly evolve, as did the outline of Volume 1. It may still be that the mountain settlement of Ellis Ranch will become one of the book’s ten chapters, or that historic archeological excavations done at the prehistoric settlement of Pa’ako will be featured, or that enough photographs might surface of the communities of Forest Park , Zamora , Rincon, or Kent that I could be coerced into including them.
If any of the above towns do end up with their own chapters, it will either be the towns of Placitas or Hobbies that will be cut.
For now, however, the book’s intended chapters are as follows. Every chapter will begin with a historic map showing that chapter’s town.
i. Introduction
1. Albuquerque .
Without the city of Albuquerque , the history of the Sandias would be very different indeed, as almost all of these towns have been born of it. Also, Albuquerque itself is now moving eastward, moving into the mountains. This chapter will address areas passed over in Volume 1—such as high-wire workers building the aerial tram up the mountains’ west face, World War II planes practicing with the mountains as a backdrop, historic views from the Peak, picnics at the CCC-built campgrounds, a Dust Bowl-era dust storm as seen from the mountains, and a little hideaway known today as Supper Rock. Starting with Albuquerque will also offer me a good chance to establish the mountains, to establish Albuquerque as the mountain towns’ precursor, and to begin the history in a somewhat chronological order.
2. Placitas.
One of the oldest towns in the Sandia Mountains , Placitas began as a protective outpost charged with stopping central New Mexico ’s native tribes from raiding Albuquerque ’s cattle, women, and children. The town was featured in Volume 1, but in this book the chapter will focus more on its Hispanic settlers, whereas the first volume contained more photos of its more recent Anglo settlers.
3. Tawapa.
Tawapa was perhaps the main commune of the Placita area’s fascinating collection of 1960s and ’70s-era hippie communes. Since writing Volume 1 and a pair of articles about these communes, I have been almost inundated with newly surfaced photographs of these communes, in particular of Tawapa. This is a fascinating chapter of mountain history that people seem to be very interested in.
4. La Madera .
Founded in the 1850s as a suburb of the nearby mining town of San Pedro , the village of La Madera almost appeared in Volume 1, but ultimately lost out to Hobbies. Originally a timber-hauling community, La Madera is also particularly known for its abundance of supernatural lore—telling of witches, mysterious lights, and shape-shifting evildoers.
5. Rancho Colorado .
Named for the bright red (“ colorado ”) dirt that makes up its shaley hillsides, Rancho Colorado is a small Hispanic settlement on the edge of the town of Cedar Crest . Juan Garcia, an eccentric old-timer once owned the entire community, and since the late-1950s or so has become better known as being the home of Bella Vista, a shambling compound of a restaurant owned by two cantankerous Italian brothers.
6. Cedar Crest.
Founded as a health resort for tuberculosis patients in the 1920s, Cedar Crest was a favorite chapter in Volume 1. There, however, the focus was primarily on the town’s founder, with almost nothing said about all that happened after his era, from the 1930s onward. This will tell that story’s next chapter.
7. Casa Loma.
Casa Loma Mountain Lodge was another tuberculosis resort that turned into a community, founded in the 1920s. The settlement’s history was previously thought to be lost, but at a recent book signing of mine, a man approached me with a photo album of dozens and dozens of photographs, newspaper clippings, and personal notes about Casa Loma and the time he spent there in the 1930s. This chapter makes me excited to write this book.
8. Hobbies.
In Volume 1, the little mountain settlement of Hobbies was featured, with an emphasis on its earliest years, when it was known as the Well Country Camp. This chapter would continue that saga, but with more of a focus on time when it was first sold to a man named Earl Pawlee and when it was later passed on the Hobbies family—a time which is also interesting, and which also produced some terrific images.
9. Zuzax
Founded around 1956 by Herman Ardans, a curio shop owner and eccentric entrepreneur, Zuzax featured a strange little store, a somewhat pointless chairlift, and the word “ZUZAX” arranged in giant white letters on a hillside, a word still somewhat visible today. Today, Zuzax is more of a freeway exit than anything, but the area is residential, and many people express curiosity about the name.
10. Sedillo.
I’ve experienced more anger from people about not including Sedillo in Volume 1 than I would have ever thought possible. Sedillo is very historic little town, with an old church and cemetery, and with a unique history as a minor stopping point on old Route 66. Numerous developments have recently sprung up throughout the area, on the eastern fringe of the mountains, where the mountains slope away into the plains, and it seems people would certainly like to hear about this town’s history. Ending here will also give me a great opportunity to look back at the mountains’ eastern forests and reflect—and perhaps to end on a beautiful old postcard of the mountains from the other side.
ii. Selected Bibliography
iii. Index
7. Please write a one-page summary (at least 500 words) of the proposed content of your book. Be sure to discuss the historical and cultural content of the book, little-known historical facts associated with the area, people and places of special interest, and outstanding images you plan to include.
Today, with more than 500,000 people living in the city of Albuquerque, it’s not uncommon for many residents to treat the imposing Sandia Mountains cresting over them as little more than scenery, as something to drive past on the way to work or to navigate by when heading east.
But to the citizens of early Alburquerque though, back when the city had an extra R in its name and was more of a villa, those mountains must have sometimes seemed like an enemy fortress in their backyard—with every canyon and corner filled with waiting Apaches, and every spire and rocky tower topped with an Indian scout. To those early Spanish citizens, every day held the possibility of bands of determined Apache warriors descending from the mountains to seize the city’s livestock, crops, women, and children—and those fears were often justified.
In the 1760s, protective outposts were founded, including Placitas at the mountains’ northern end, but these towns were repeatedly evacuated, the Spanish government began taking away granted property from anyone who refused to stay on it, and the towns were abandoned and then resettled decades later, spawning suburbs and other settlements such as Rancho Colorado and Sedillo. Seeing that the mountains were a habitable and welcoming place to live, settlers moved into the mountains from the mining community of San Pedro and founded the village of La Madera , and in the early 1900s, everything changed yet again.
In the 1920s, tuberculosis patients began moving up into the Sandias en masse. The hot, dry climate seemed perfect for what ailed them, and soon whole towns were populated by the formerly ill. The town of Cedar Crest was especially affected by this wave of settlers since it was founded as a TB resort by a consumptive booster, and the communities of Casa Loma and Hobbies were founded as resorts as well.
Businessmen such as the founder of the little dot on the map known as Zuzax came to the mountains in the 1950s, to benefit from the popularity of Route 66, where it skirted the mountains’ southern edge, and in the 1960s and ‘70s hippies settled all around Placitas, in communes such as Tawapa.
What’s most amazing about the history of these towns, is that for all the obscurity one has to wade through to discover it all, the past of the towns has never really gone. It’s everywhere, all around, and this book will serve as another invaluable tool to residents and visitors to these mountains to help them recognize that, to show them where to look.
8. Please submit 20 sample images (photocopies will suffice at this stage) from the collection of images you plan to use, along with detailed captions consisting of between 50 and 70 words for each image. Consider the variety and clarity of the images you plan to submit, as it will give us a greater understanding of the scope of your collection. Attach the images and captions to this proposal form.
While compiling photographs for Volume 1, I acquired high-resolution scans for almost 1,200 historic images, only 201 of which I used in the first book. Some of the best of those that I haven’t used will be featured in the second volume, but I also plan on relentlessly tracking down even more images to make the book as good as it can be.
I do not want this to be a B-sides compilation. I want this to be as good or better than the first volume. I want this book to matter, and not to be some sort of cheap cash-in on the first book’s regional success.
If acceptable, for this step of the proposal I’d like to simply refer you to Volume 1. While not the same images I plan to use in Volume 2—those will be completely different—they are certainly, for the most part, “from the collection of images” that I plan to use. If you still feel that you require additional images, I will gladly send them along with a hard copy of this proposal.
9. Is your area considered a popular tourist destination? If so, which features attract visitors and during which times of year?
The Sandia Mountains are the most visited mountain range in New Mexico . In the winter people visit them for skiing, cross-country skiing, and inner tubing, and in the summer they visit them for hiking and mountain biking. During all times of the year people pass through them while driving the more scenic route between Santa Fe and Albuquerque , or ride the aerial tramway to their highest peak.
10. How many visitors does the area receive each year?
According to the National Wilderness Preservation System and Wilderness.net, an estimated two million people visit the Sandia Mountains every year. Most of
These ride the tram up, many others visit to hike and camp in the mountains’ wilderness, and still others visit to eat at the mountain towns’ restaurants, or to stay at their hostels or bed-and-breakfasts.
11. Are there competing books that already examine the history of your area?
The first volume of Towns of the Sandia Mountains is really the only book out there that examines and explores the history of the Sandia Mountains ’ towns for a general audience, and I wouldn’t exactly consider it competition. If anything, sales of this book will lead to sales of that one, and vice versa.
There are a handful of other books and articles about various aspects of the Sandia Mountains and their towns, but these either deal with the subject only in passing or as part of a larger subject, or they are written in anthropologic or archeological jargon and not intended for the average reader.
So, in short: no. Not really.
12. Please indicate how your book will offer something different to the market.
Towns of the Sandia Mountains , Volume 2 will be the second book ever to compile and combine archival photos of the towns of the Sandia Mountains . It will be the very first to tell the stories of such towns as Casa Loma, Zuzax, and Sedillo, the first to photographically document Rancho Colorado, La Madera, and the later years of Hobbies and Cedar Crest, and the first to collect historic images of the Placitas hippie communes, a subject that people seem to be incredibly interested in.
People who live in the towns will love it. People who drive up on the weekends will love it. And it will be a resource to students of the area for years to come, as the first volume—already used as a textbook at East Mountain High School —has become already. This area has a history worth exploring further, but right now it’s boxed up in people’s attics and in archives. This book will bring it all to light.
This book will benefit from the existence of Volume 1. Its readers will be this book’s readers. Its fans will be this book’s fans.
Everything that worked in the first volume, that people enjoyed, will be done again in Volume 2. And the few things that didn’t—won’t.
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Again, feel free to share your thoughts on this, by e-mailing me at mike@mystrangenewmexico.com; include "Volume 2" in the heading.
Thanks for taking part in this!