My Strange New Mexico

These mountainside communes housed an eclectic population of restless youth from around the world—poor kids, wealthy heirs, idealists, addicts, and self-proclaimed “dope smoking, vegetarian Jesus freaks.”   These youth wanted to…

On the western edge of Albuquerque stand five calm, reddish black volcanoes, all in a line.  These volcanoes—JA, Black, Vulcan, Butte, and Bond Volcanoes—divide the city from the mostly empty desert…

Allegedly the history of life on Earth and life in dimensions parallel to our own, Oahspe attracted an international group of followers who became known as Faithists. In October of 1884, 20 of…

The story is a simple, although strange, one.  It is repeated often, with many variations, among New Mexico's understandably tiny diving community.   Just about 120 miles east of Albuquerque, on…

It was December, 1961, in the desert just southeast of Carlsbad.  Tufts of dry grass bent low beneath a winter wind, sand swirled across a desert plain, and here and…

Mr. Edwards was a successful Taos businessman who rode a good horse, carried hundreds of dollars in his pockets, and traveled using mules to carry his belongings.  In the fall…

Judging from the things for sale in almost all New Mexico gift shops and tourist traps, this entire state of ours is tan and turquoise, prefers its red chili coated in weatherproofing…

Drive eighteen miles west of the central New Mexico village of Los Lunas, and you drive into a world of dirt, and rocks, and little else.  In the middle of…

Perhaps the most distrusted name in news today, the Weekly World News, is a black-and-white supermarket tabloid featuring entertaining and untrue stories, with headlines that vary from the impossible to the deranged. …

Painted in 1940 by Chicago artist Warner Sallman, Head of Christ was a luminous, brown-and-gold-toned oil painting of the head and shoulders of Jesus Christ.  It was said to possess an almost…