Rooted in rivalry

The Museum of New Mexico was founded 100 years ago this week in a political movida over the use of the Palace of the Governors. Early in the 20th century, the Palace housed two museums — a private one focusing on history and another focusing on archaeology. Lawyer and territorial politician LeBaron Bradford Prince started the history museum in 1883. But in the years leading up to statehood, educator-turned-archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett edged out Prince's dominion over the Palace as the first director of the state museum system. In 1883, Prince got permission for the society to use two rooms for a museum on the east side of the Palace after the Territorial Legislature left for the new Capitol. Four years later, when the Territorial Law Library moved to new quarters, the society expanded into its space. From 1889 to 1893, Prince served as territorial governor — a job that included an apartment in the Palace. Hewett, nicknamed "El Torro," grew up on farms in Illinois and Missouri, attended college in Missouri, taught school and worked as a superintendent of public schools in Missouri and Colorado, and earned a master's degree in "pedagogy" from the Colorado Normal School in Greeley, where he served as a department head. New Mexico rancher and lawyer Frank Springer, head of the Board of Regents of the newly formed New Mexico Normal School (now New Mexico Highlands University) in Las Vegas, N.M., was so impressed by the young educator that he hired him as the school's president in 1898...Santa Fe New Mexican