Of Route 66 , the Wild Wild West, and the ‘Long Walk’

Our stay at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas included a hot breakfast, chosen from a menu of about half a dozen options, all cooked to order rather than from a buffet – the best hotel breakfast of our trip by far. A shame then that my margarita-induced hangover prevented me from making the most of it!

This morning we continued our drive south, taking I25 for a few more miles before forking left on Highway 84 and then turning east on I40.

Santa Rosa

As we approached Santa Rosa on Interstate 40 the heavens opened and for about ten minutes we drove through a downpour so heavy that it was almost impossible to see the road or any other vehicle on it – scary stuff. Maybe the elements were finding a way to punish the road that almost destroyed one of the most iconic of all American cultural icons, Route 66. And we were here to visit the Route 66 museum, dedicated to capturing and preserving all that is most symbolic of America’s Mother Road.

The Santa Rosa section of Route 66 opened in 1930 and the town flourished with the business it brought. Motels, diners, gas stations lined the highway here, and you can still see some reminders of that era lining the historic route that runs parallel to the Interstate. I was also interested to read that Santa Rosa's stretch of Route 66 is part of film history. The film of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath was partly shot here, and the director John Ford used Santa Rosa for the memorable train scene in which Tom Joad (played by Henry Fonda) watches a freight train steam over the Pecos River railroad bridge into the sunset. The Grapes of Wrath is one of my favourite books, and I loved the film, so our visit here sent me back to watch and enjoy it again.

Route 66 Auto Museum

One of the pleasures of a US road trip for us is discovering the off-beat attractions as well as the major historic sites and natural wonders – and Santa Rosa’s Route 66 Auto Museum is an excellent example! Owner Bozo Cordova has amassed a wonderful collection of classic cars and Route 66 memorabilia, and has turned his passion into a great attraction.

Cordova grew up along Route 66 and this gave rise to a lifelong interest in cars. He started out with the model variety and worked his way up to the real thing, starting a Route 66 business, Bozo's Garage, here in Santa Rosa. But his collection of classic cars grew so much that he opened the museum to accommodate and show them off.

Even before we went inside the museum we discovered a number of vehicles parked outside worthy of attention and of our cameras. Unfortunately, although it had stopped raining just as we arrived, the sky was very leaden, so we only took a few pictures here.

Once inside we found ourselves in the large gift shop / café where we paid the $5 entry fee for the museum. This lies behind the wall that separates it from the shop and is vast! Classic cars of all kinds make up the bulk of the collection, and their elegant shapes and interesting details made for great photos. Among others we saw Chevys, Buicks, Fords, a Coupe de Ville, a Mustang and more.

There was also lots of smaller Route 66 related memorabilia, both in the museum and in the shop area, and some original signs, including the original Fat Man sign from the now defunct Club Café which was painted by Route 66 sign painter Rudolph Gonzales of ‘Signs by Rudy’ in nearby Tucumcari.

Incidentally, a few of the cars were for sale when we visited, so if you’re looking for a very big holiday souvenir this could be the place! It wouldn’t be a cheap souvenir however – the 1970 Dodge Roadrunner that caught my eye was $45,000.

There were more reasonably priced souvenirs to be browsed through in the shop which had a large collection of Route 66 related items, including t-shirts and other clothing, model cars, shot and beer glasses, various signs and of course model cars. Although we weren’t shopping it was interesting to see the additional museum items displayed here. I particularly liked some of the old photos of the road at the height of its importance.

Fort Sumner and Billy the Kid

Fort Sumner is a fairly unprepossessing town, strung out along Highway 84, but it is home to a number of different attractions, most (though not all) associated with one of New Mexico’s most notorious characters, Billy the Kid. It was near here in 1881 that Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett finally tracked down the gunfighter and shot him, as dramatised in the 1973 film. Having seen that film many years ago (OK, when it first came out!), I was keen to see the setting for myself. The next day we were to visit Lincoln Courthouse from where the Kid had made his escape, filling in another chapter in the story of his short life.

When we were here in 2011 Billy had two museums devoted at least in part to his life (one has since closed down), and even two graves! The real grave lies some miles south of town, so the enterprising owner of the museum in town has constructed a replica for those who can’t be bothered to drive any further, thereby hoping to lure them into his museum! Luckily I had done my research and knew to ignore the sign in town and to direct Chris to keep driving – east on Highway 84 and then south on Billy the Kid Road.

We parked in front of the Old Fort Sumner Museum (the one that is now closed) and walked around the left side of it to the small cemetery behind, in which the grave lies. It is surrounded by an iron fence, after the tombstone was stolen three times since being erected here in the 1940's. William H. Bonney, to give him his real name, is buried here with two of his ‘pals’, Tom O’Folliard and Charlie Bowdre.

Elsewhere in the cemetery is the grave of one of Billy’s victims, and also that of Lucien B. Maxwell, who bought this property (along with much of northern New Mexico) after Fort Sumner was decommissioned. It was in his son’s house, a mile away, that the shootout between Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid took place. Although there is a theory that in fact Garrett conspired with the Kid to fake the shooting, allowing him to escape to Mexico. Several other men later claimed to be Billy, though their claim was never proven. Some years ago, investigators into the claims wanted to exhume the body buried here, along with that of Billy’s mother which is buried in Silver City, and to carry out DNA testing. But the move was blocked by the mayors of Silver and Fort Sumner, so the truth may never be known.

The Old Fort Sumner Museum

Having bypassed the museum in town in order to see the actual grave, it seemed a shame not to check this one out (they sounded too similar to justify time spent at both for all but the most ardent Wild West fanatic). Admission cost us $4 and was worth it – not so much because the collection was great, but almost because it wasn’t!

And what a weird and wacky assortment it was! There were, as we expected, some items relating to Billy the Kid but also many that weren’t. Among the weirdest of the latter were a stuffed two-headed calf and a display showing a multitude of different styles of barbed wire – yes, really!

There was however an informative timeline describing the events leading up to Billy’s shooting by Pat Garrett, useful to us as we were encountering him at various places on our route through New Mexico, not necessarily in chronological order. There were also facsimiles of his surprisingly articulate letters to Governor Lew Wallace, arguing his case for clemency, and these I found the most fascinating objects on display – the two-headed calf notwithstanding!

Given our shared taste for the bizarre, we spent quite a while poking around in this small museum – it’s rather a shame it has since closed. But I guess Fort Sumner could only sustain one Billy the Kid Museum.

Bosque Redondo Memorial

It is easy to think that Fort Sumner is all about Billy the Kid and nothing more. But while the shoot-out with Pat Garrett was obviously a black day for the Kid, it is nothing in terms of suffering when compared with the fate of thousands of Native Americans, Navajo and Mescalero Apache, who were incarcerated at the fort during the Civil War. For many years their story went untold, but when we were here in 2011 a new state monument had recently been built to correct that oversight. When we visited it was still not complete, and we were almost the only people here (it was also very late in the season), so we were given a warm welcome by the rangers who not only gave us useful information on what we could see, but also told us a bit about future plans for the exhibits.

The design of the museum building is very striking, and was inspired by the traditional homes of the two tribes whose story is told here – the Navajo Hogan and the Apache tepee. Inside they were planning a series of exhibits telling that story, but in October 2011 most rooms were bare apart from the planned layout stuck on a wall. The rangers told us that they hoped all would be completed in about a year, i.e. the autumn of 2012, and checking the website it seems that there is certainly rather more to see there now.

In 2011 the main area of interest was outside, behind the building, where an interpretive trail helped us to follow the story of what happened here between 1863 and 1868. To properly bring it to life we were advised to hire the very informative audio guide, which gave us a really effective to the moving story told here. My account below is based on a transcription of that audio guide which I found on the memorial’s website at the time, albeit much shortened.

In 1854, the District Court in Santa Fe ruled that under the laws of Congress, there was no Indian country in New Mexico, and thus all Indian land in the state was opened to ranchers and farmers for the taking. The U.S. government believed that subduing the native population and settling these lands was their duty, their mission and their destiny. But the Native Americans viewed the incomers as trespassers on their land, while the settlers saw the American Indian as a threat to their new way of life.

James H. Carleton was a bright, aggressive officer who set his sights on putting his stamp on the Indian problem in New Mexico. In 1862 he obtained President Abraham Lincoln’s approval to establish a fort, which he initially justified as offering protection to settlers but later decided that the site of the fort on the Pecos River would be a good one for an Indian reservation.

On September 27th 1862 Carleton ordered Colonel Kit Carson [whom we had ‘met’ in Taos] to kill all Apache men and take the women and children captive. Among those captured was Chief Cadete, who was ushered to Santa Fe for peace talks and unequivocal surrender. Facing certain annihilation, and tricked into thinking they would be given a new reservation in their own country, Cadete agreed to Carleton’s terms and surrendered. But instead the surviving Mescalero Apache (almost 500 of them) were forced to leave their homeland and were exiled to Fort Sumner, more than 100 miles away.

General Carleton now turned his attention to solving the ‘Navajo problem’. On June 15th 1863, he issued the order to Carson to attack the Navajo. During the winter of 1863-1864, Carson’s New Mexico Volunteers ravaged the countryside, killing Navajo, burning crops and orchards, killing livestock, destroying villages, and contaminating water sources. This scorched earth campaign of Carson’s, designed to starve the Navajo into submission, was named by the Navajos ‘The Fearing Time.’

With no food, and nowhere left to hide, the starving Navajos were gathered at Fort Defiance, near modern day Grants in the north west corner of the state and forced to march to the Bosque Redondo reservation some 400 miles away, through dangerous river crossings and other hazards. Over several marches, between the summer of 1863 and the winter of 1866, 11,500 Navajo were sent to Bosque Redondo. Around 8,500 arrived; some others escaped and fled west, some were captured by slave traders, and many died along the way. This time of suffering is remembered as ‘The Long Walk.’

By March 1863, there were over 400 Mescalero Apache at the reservation. By the end of 1864, they were joined by more than 8,500 Navajo. The Army had only planned for 5,000 to be there, so there were shortages of food, water, and shelter. Fighting between the Mescalero and Navajo, who had never lived in close proximity to one another, was constant. The Mescalero came from a life in densely forested mountains where game and edible plants were plentiful. The Navajo had huge flocks of sheep and goats and came from a country where good grazing, and good food and water were plentiful. Here both tribes were essentially slave labourers. The Navajos would refer to this time and place as ‘hwééldi’, translated as ‘the place of suffering.’

By September 1864, the minority Apaches considered the Navajos enemies, and believed that if the Army could not provide a separate reservation from them, they should no longer be bound by their promise to stay on the reservation. Chief Cadete and his people put a careful plan into action. If everybody left at once, he decided, most might get away. By late October, before winter set in, they were ready. On November 3, 1865, all 400 Mescalero Apache deserted the fort and began their exodus back to their own country. As the normal evening campfires burned, they slipped away into the night. Only nine of them, who were either too old or sick to travel, remained to keep the campfires burning in order to fool the military into thinking that all was normal. Carleton undertook several pursuits, and accounts indicate a number of Mescalero men, women, and children were killed, but most escaped.

The Navajo remained here for three more years. In the spring of 1868, General William T. Sherman and Colonel Samuel F. Tappan arrived at Fort Sumner to negotiate a new treaty with the Navajo leaders, led by Chief Barboncito, who had been the last Navajo Chief to surrender in 1866. The Treaty of 1868 was signed in a field between the Fort and the site of the memorial. By definition, a treaty can only be signed by two nations. Thus, the Treaty of 1868 established, under Federal Law, the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation. The Navajo were allowed to return to their original homelands in the Four Corners Region.

I have reproduced all of this in some detail as the best way of giving you an idea of what we listened to as we walked the interpretive trail. Interspersed with the historical facts were many moving quotes from members of the two tribes, and some traditional music. It was a fairly short walk (maybe a mile in total) but there was a lot to take in and we took our time doing it. As we walked I got a strong sense of what the Navajo and Mescalero Apache suffered here, and also of a quiet satisfaction that at last that suffering and their history is being accorded the respect it deserves.

The Navajo Treaty Memorial

As the sign on the marker at the spot where the Navajo treaty was signed says,

‘Cage the badger and he will try to break from his prison and regain his native hole. Chain an eagle to the ground and he will strive to gain his freedom, and though he fails, he will lift his head and look up to the sky which is home... and we want to return to our mountains and plains, where we used to plant corn, wheat, and beans.’

We had planned to spend the night in Fort Sumner, but with no accommodation pre-booked and plenty of time left in the day after our visit here, we decided instead to push on to the next town on our route, Roswell. But having devoted so much of this page to the harrowing story of Bosque Redondo (as it deserves, I hope readers will agree), I will save that very different place for my following entry …