Partners in peering into the past

The Bulletin has new partners to make the past come alive.

This issue launches a new partnership to highlight local history about the Mesilla Valley. Members of the Doña Ana County Historical Society will share stories about the rich heritage of our region in the upcoming “Echoes of the Past” Super Section. Echoes will run as a regular content section in the second and fourth editions of each month.

Our members look forward to working with the Bulletin and also hope to hear your reactions to these blasts from the past.

DACHS was created in 1963 to help preserve Fort Selden as its adobe ruins melted into the desert. Its members successfully lobbied for the frontier fort just north of Las Cruces to become an official New Mexican Historic Site.

Since then, DACHS has continued our work to preserve, publish, conduct field trips, and present lectures on the many peoples and events which make Las Cruces such a unique community in southern New Mexico and the Borderlands.

DACHS members include professional and public historians who are committed to making the past come alive. We are dedicated to engaging you with amazing people and events of the past which are sometimes stranger than fiction.

In the coming months, DACHS will offer articles about a man who survived the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and then moved to Las Cruces. When he died, a large parade of well-wishers accompanied his coffin to local cemetery.

Another story will be about Klein Park in the Mesquite Historic District. How did it get its name? What has it been used for? And how did the city’s first fire engine (called “Lizzie”) wind up in Klein Park?

DACHS’s “Echoes of the Past” stories will explore not just our ancient history, but more contemporary places and events like the Big Slide, the splash park on Highway 70 heading west out of town. Other writers will tackle what happened to the downtown mall, from urban renewal in the 1970s to renovation in the 2000s.

We would like to thank Bulletin executive editor Kurt Johnson for reaching out to DACHS and inviting us join him and his talented staff in exploring the known and unknown people and events of southern New Mexico. We invite you to pick up the Bulletin in the coming months not just for its excellent coverage of local news and sports, but also for its blasts from the past.

We also invite you to check out DACHS’ activities in the coming months. On April 16, Steve Kobs will talk about early movie theaters in Las Cruces, and on May 21, Steve Dobrott from the Hillsboro Historical Society will discuss the “Mountain Pride” stagecoach which served Lake City, Kingston, and Hillsboro in the 1800s.

Both these presentations take place at 7 p.m. at the WIA Building at 340 Reymond Street on the east side of Pioneer Women’s Park. On April 25, DACHS is organizing a planning meeting to share ideas about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from 10-11:30 a.m. at the Branigan Memorial Library.

Finally, DACHS is organizing a free field trip to the Paraje de San Diego 25 miles north of Las Cruces on May 9. It was a campsite on El Camino Real, the Royal Road which connected Mexico City with Santa Fe from 1598 to the 1882. For more info about this field trip, call Jon Hunner at 575-571-7777. To find out more about DACHS, visit our website at http://www.donaanacountyhistsoc.org/

For DACHS’ members, history is not just a pastime. We look forward to sharing our blasts from the local past in upcoming edition of the Bulletin.

Jon Hunner is the president of the Doña Ana County Historical Society.