Slow Down: Famous N.M. Women Noted Here

I drive a lot, and I do it with a purpose: to get there quickly and directly. I’ve never understood wanderers, meanderers, let’s-stop-for-lunchers and lookie-loos.

Buckling in for a typical weekend trip goes like this: iPod plugged into the speakers, cruise control set to legal-speed-plus-five or 10, and no stopping until we get there — exceptions made for acute emergencies, such as running low on gas or being seized by the sudden need for a Peanut Buster Parfait from the Pojoaque Dairy Queen.

Only recently has it occurred to me what I’ve missed. It’s not bathroom breaks or roadside stands or charming little lunch spots. It’s historical markers imparting information on important people, geologic formations, town sites, battlegrounds and other interesting pieces of our historical puzzle.

You’ve noticed these markers. They’re brown signs hanging in big frames of chunky vigas, and they usually sit at a pullout on the side of the highway so you can roll up and get a little education without even rolling down the window.

If you do pull over, say, south of Grants, you can learn that those black rocks all around you are lava, along with the rather alarming fact that they blew up through a nearby volcanic vent only about 1,000 years ago.

Or if you happen to spot a sign while motoring through Las Cruces, you could find that you’re passing by the spot where Sheriff Pat Garrett was murdered. Or winding through the Enchanted Circle in Taos County, you could pull over and learn that Palo Flechado means “tree pierced with arrows,” which gives you a little perspective on how well people have gotten along around there.

Here’s a historical fact that you would never see on a historical marker: Up until a few years ago, of the hundreds of markers sprinkled throughout the state, there wasn’t a single one devoted solely to a woman.

Thanks to the efforts of the New Mexico Women’s Forum, $330,000 from state lawmakers, a few years’ work and the cooperation of a host of state offices, that oversight has been righted, which means there are now even more reasons to pull over and take a look.

More than 60 reasons, actually.

Starting in 2007, the Historic Women Marker Initiative began adding biographies of some of New Mexico’s most interesting and important women, at least from a historical perspective, to the roadsides.

You won’t find living women on these markers, but you’ll find cowgirls, educators, ranchers, potters, painters, healers, businesswomen, and at least one warrior and bank president.

New markers continue to be added, including two approved by the state’s Cultural Properties Review Committee just weeks ago: one memorializing Inez Bushner Gill (among the original staff of the Legislative Council Service) and Maralyn Budke (the first female director of the Legislative Finance Committee) for installation at the state Capitol; the other for Virginia Gutierrez (potter and Nambé Pueblo’s first female lieutenant governor) for installation along N.M. 503 in Nambé.

Barbara Sims of Missoula, Mont., takes a break at La Bajada rest area and checks out one of the New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative markers there. (ADOLPHE PIERRE-LOUIS/JOURNAL)

Some of the markers honor women who are part of the everyday vocabulary of New Mexico.

Georgia O’Keeffe is acknowledged as “one of America’s great and most celebrated painters of the twentieth century” on a marker in view of the red cliffs on U.S. 84 near Ghost Ranch.

Laura Gilpin, the outstanding photographer, is memorialized on a marker along Interstate 25 at the top of La Bajada, looking out on a scene ripe for her viewfinder.

The highlights of the career of Pablita Velarde, the Santa Clara Pueblo painter who found international fame, are enumerated on a marker along N.M. 30 on pueblo land.

But many of the women identified on markers — probably most of them— are lesser-known, and that makes finding their stories along the roadsides ever more fun.

I had never heard of Little Sister Lozen. Her marker on U.S. 70 on the Mescalero Apache reservation informs us she fought alongside her brother, Warm Springs Apache Chief Victorio. In addition to being a warrior, she was a medicine woman and died a prisoner in 1889.

And I had somehow missed learning about Josephine Cox Anderson, “The Angel of the Pecos,” whose marker on U.S. 62/180 east of Carlsbad tells us that during the flu epidemic of 1918 she managed to minister to the ill in tents along the Pecos River and didn’t lose one patient.

I was delighted to see that cowgirls Dessie Sawyer and her daughter, Fern, share two sides of a marker in the town of Tatum in southeastern New Mexico. Both women were fine riders and inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. It’s not included on Fern Sawyer’s marker (and I wouldn’t expect it to be) that Fern once gave me a powerful migraine headache by barreling through the mountain roads near Ruidoso with me in the passenger seat of her Cadillac and then let me sleep it off in her guest room.

Remembering that wild ride with a New Mexico legend brings me to a resolution for this new year — to not be in such a rush to get to the destination and take a little time to stop and read the markers.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com.

— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal