Radio vignettes on New Mexico history showcase colorful past

President William Howard Taft, Pancho Villa, Buffalo Soldier George Jordan. Gov. Charles Bent, lawman/gunslinger/lawyer/politician Elfego Baca, Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny. And Smokey Bear and HAM the Space Chimp. These are just some of the characters associated with the rich history of New Mexico. And all of them, plus many others, are subjects of two-minute oral history vignettes in a radio series produced by The New Mexico Centennial Steering Committee. The committee, working with state historian Rick Hendricks and New Mexico Arts, a division of the Office of Cultural Affairs, has produced the free Centennial Journeys series for New Mexico radio stations to use next year during the state's centennial celebration. New Mexico officially became a state on Jan. 6, 1912. The series includes "serious" history, as Stephenson puts it, about such events as President Taft signing the enabling legislation for the state, the Pueblo Revolt, Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, N.M., the Taos Revolt of 1847, the Long Walk of the Navajos and Reies López Tijerina's famous raid on the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse. But there are also several fun pieces concerning people, places and lesser-noted events in New Mexico's history. For example, there's a piece about Socorro County Sheriff Lonnie Zamora, who in 1964 came across a strange saucer-shaped aircraft and strange beings dressed in white in a remote part of his county. That was just a few years after HAM, a chimpanzee raised at an air base in Alamogordo (HAM is an acronym for Holloman Aerospace Medical), became the first primate in space. The piece on HAM contains recordings of the heroic chimp's voice in the background, as well as a clip of "Telstar," a hit song of that era. There's a report on George McJunkin, a self-educated African American cowboy who discovered a major anthropological site. The former slave's initial attempts to alert the scientific community were rebuffed. "No one paid attention to the incredible claims of this eccentric black cowboy," the recording says. But four years after McJunkin died, "skeptical anthropologists followed up in 1926 and were amazed to find the skeletons of 23 huge prehistoric bison dating back 11,000 years, along with the now famous Folsom spear point."...more