November 6 has twice been an election day that changed New Mexico, and both times the result reached into the Enchanted Circle. On this date in 1906, voters in Red River, Taos, and Questa helped decide whether New Mexico would enter the Union at all. Twenty-two years later, on this same date, New Mexico sent the first Hispanic American to the United States Senate. Today we follow those two votes from Main Street and the Baldy goldfields to the ski slopes and the old St. James Hotel in Cimarron.
Click to see more photos of New Mexico statehood
Red River Town & Main Street
Picture Main Street on election day in 1906. That is the honest setting for today in Red River, though no single Main Street event is tied to this exact date. The town had begun in the 1870s, when miners from Elizabethtown drifted over the pass, and by 1895 it was a booming camp of about three thousand people. Mining peaked in 1897, and by 1905 the ore and crowds had thinned, yet the town held on, known for summer cool and trout fishing. Its 1906 voters were miners, merchants, and fishing guides.
Mining & the Gold Rush
For mining, November meant winter closing in, as the Baldy Mountain discovery shows. In October 1866, just weeks before this date, soldiers Larry Bronson and Pete Kinsinger and a soldier called Kelley were working a copper showing on Baldy Mountain, above the future Elizabethtown, when Kelley panned gold from creek gravel. The three explored for a few days, carved the words DISCOVERY TREE into a ponderosa pine, and descended to Fort Union because winter comes early on those slopes. The secret leaked during the idle winter, and when the snow melted in the spring of 1867, the Moreno Valley gold rush was on.
Founding Families, Characters & Legends
Our second exact date belongs to a genuine New Mexico character. On November 6, 1928, voters elected Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo to the United States Senate, filling the vacancy left by Senator Andrieus A. Jones, who had died in office. Larrazolo, born in Chihuahua, Mexico, on December 7, 1859, had already served as the fourth governor of New Mexico after his election in 1918. His victory made him the first Hispanic American, and the first Mexican American, to serve in the Senate. Poor health kept his service brief, from December 7, 1928, to March 3, 1929, but the door he opened never closed again.
Skiing & Winter
Early November is preseason in Red River, as it has been since the town bet its future on winter. In the autumn of 1959, Oklahoma businessman Stokes E. Bolton and his wife, Billie, were finishing the Red River Ski Area, building lift towers from surplus steel taken from oil derricks. The area opened in December 1959 and gave a summer resort town a second season. An earlier attempt had fared worse, opening on December 7, 1941, the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and closing the same day. When snowmaking crews do their November work today, they repeat a ritual now more than six decades old.
Enchanted Circle Towns & Places
Here is the lead story, a true November 6 event. In June 1906, Congress passed a joint statehood plan that would have merged New Mexico and Arizona into one state, to be called Arizona, with its capital at Santa Fe. An amendment gave voters in each territory the final say. New Mexico voted in favor, by 26,195 votes to 14,735, but Arizona rejected the union decisively, by 16,265 against to 3,141 in favor, and a no vote in either territory killed the plan. Because Arizona said no on this date, New Mexico kept its own name and its road to becoming the forty-seventh state on January 6, 1912.
The Land, Weather & Wildlife
November weather wrote itself into Eagle Nest Dam, the Circle’s biggest work of engineering. Charles Springer conceived and largely financed the arched dam across the Cimarron River, engineer Willis Ranney designed it, and crews of about 150 men began work in late 1916, with major construction in early 1918. The dam’s National Register nomination records what every November threatened: severe winter freezes in 1919 and 1920 made it impossible to lay cement for much of the year, and wartime shortages slowed the job further. Completed in late 1920, the dam stored water for more than 40,000 acres in eastern Colfax County, and Eagle Nest Lake was born.
Roads, Stage Lines & Travel
Our road item carries its real date plainly: November 11, 1926, five days from today, not November 6. On that date the United States Numbered Highway System was first designated, and U.S. Route 64 entered the map with its western end at Capulin, New Mexico. In 1933 the route was extended to Santa Fe by way of Taos, replacing the old U.S. 485. Today U.S. 64 still carries travelers through Taos, past Eagle Nest Lake, and down Cimarron Canyon, over ground stage lines had worn long before.
Living History & Heritage
Living history brings us to Cimarron, and another real date stated plainly: November 1, 1875, five days before today’s date. In Lambert’s saloon, the building that became the St. James Hotel, Clay Allison confronted Pancho Griego, who had been suggesting that Allison had a hand in the recent lynching of Cruz Vega. Allison fired twice and killed Griego, then turned himself in and was acquitted on a plea of self-defense. The St. James still stands on the Santa Fe Trail in Cimarron, still open to visitors, and the National Park Service notes that the old bar’s tin ceiling still carries its bullet holes.
So November 6 in the Enchanted Circle is a day about choosing. In 1906 the voters around Wheeler Peak said yes to statehood, and history answered with a New Mexico that kept its own name. In 1928 they helped send Larrazolo to the Senate. Walk Main Street this week, and you walk through the results of both choices.