Several New Mexico sites featured in 'Space Age Adventures'

NEW MEXICO SITES HIGHLIGHTED

New Mexico — and the American Southwest — figure prominently in a new book that propels readers to travel into space … without leaving Mother Earth. This engrossing resource book and travel guide is titled “Space Age Adventures: Over 100 Terrestrial Sites and Out of This World Stories” by Mike Bezemek.

The 100-plus sites are located in the lower 48 states. Bezemek’s guidance makes it easy for readers to plan their own adventures into these Space Age sites. He guides them to NASA space centers, telescope observatories, impact craters and atomic testing grounds.

Bezemek enlivens the book with his storytelling, which are mini profiles of many historical figures and snapshots that shine a light on, for example, the development of space travel. Eight Land of Enchantment sites are in the book. They are the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo; White Sands Missile Range Museum and Missile Park; Spaceport America in Truth or Consequences; Roswell Museum; the International UFO Museum and Research Center, also in Roswell; the Very Large Array in Socorro; and two sites in Albuquerque — the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science and the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History.

The University of Nebraska Press is the publisher. Bezemek also wrote three other books that combine stories with travel guides. One of them is “Discovering the Outlaw Trail: Routes, Hideouts and Stories from the Wild West.”

Several New Mexico sites featured in 'Space Age Adventures'

NEW BOOK ON THE LLANO ESTACADO

Historian Paul H. Carlson is the author of “Heaven’s Harsh Tableland: A New History of the Llano Estacado.” The high-staked plain, as it is called in English, covers more than 48,000 square miles in eastern New Mexico and western Texas. The book notes that the Llano Estacado began forming five to 10 million or more years ago “when pebbles, gravel, silt and dirt washed out of the Rocky Mountains.” The book is a historical survey beginning with the first peoples in prehistoric times and moving to discussions of Native American tribes, Spanish explorers, traders, Anglo settlers, farmers, ranchers, artists and even athletes. The book also considers the history of the buffalo and other pertinent subjects.

Among the New Mexico communities on the Llano Estacado are Clovis, Portales, Lovington, Hobbs and Eunice.

In a sidebar, the book devotes almost two pages to the various explanations of the origin of Llano Estacado’s name. Regardless of which explanation may be correct, Carlson finds the tableland “a stunning, beguiling place, attractive in many ways with a mystic quality about it.”

Carlson is an emeritus professor of history at Texas Tech University and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Texas A&M University Press published the book.

— By David Steinberg/For the Journal