Rest Stop in New Mexico

Rest Stop #1 off the highway of history

Before we move from the Colonial to the Revolutionary War period, now is a good time to pull into a rest stop and take a break from the histories of the Parks. Let’s talk about my upcoming road trip. In mid-May, I hit the road, visit our Parks, and continue to write about the history of the United States through the lens of the National Parks. Later in this post, you will see the tentative itinerary of my west coast travels.

My trusty ship for part of the western part of my travels is the HMS Beagle, a twenty-four foot Winnebago that my trusting friends Nancy and Peter are letting me use. Here’s several photos of it on a shake-down cruise in the mountains of southern New Mexico in April.

To the left is the HMS Beagle on the road to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Below is the Beagle at Faywood Hot Springs on the shakedown cruise. Of course, it is named after Darwin's ship which carried him to a new understanding of our world.

The Beagle is a sweet ride. This mini-home has a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and a table where I can write while looking out into our National Parks. Throughout my journeys, I will camp in the heart of our Parks and as John Muir suggested, I will undergo a transformation in such landscapes within the NPS:

“… your baptisms will make you a new creature indeed…. Here will your soul breathe deep and free in God’s shoreless atmosphere of beauty and love.” Thanks to Nancy and Peter (who like Darwin are intrepid explorers of our world and our peoples) for helping make part of the western road trip possible with this wonderful loan of the Beagle.

I am glad to have wheels like the Beagle because I am driven by the past. The past surrounds us, guides us in life choices, entertains us, helps prepare us for the future, and cements our legacy with our descendants. Our pasts create us and drive us. Everyday, people get high on the past —with family and friends, on visits to historic places, in classrooms, and through a variety of means. It is part of the human condition.

To understand any people and any country, go to the source. Go to the places where events happened that formed and transformed a people and a nation. In the United States, the NPS preserves many of those significant places. I will visit these places where such events actually happened and use those specific places as a spring board to write a history of the U.S. To understand the U.S., I also look forward to meeting a wide variety of people in the Parks and along the way.

So here’s the deal. As soon as I finish up my teaching this spring at New Mexico State University, I will head out. As you can see with the Westward Trip itinerary below, I will drive through a lot of western history along historic trails from Kansas to the Pacific Coast and then back to New Mexico.

Here is the itinerary of the west coast trip with the reasons that these parks are chosen:
5/11                Leave Las Cruces, New Mexico on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro and Santa Fe
                      Trail NHT.  
                      Trails of commerce and conquest during Spanish colonial and U.S. territorial times.
5/12                Bent's Old Fort NHS and Sand Creek Massacre NHS, Colorado. A Santa Fe Trail  
                      trading post and the site of a massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho by U.S. soldiers.
5/13                Ft. Larned NHS, Kansas. Another U.S. Army post along the Santa Fe Trail.
5/14                Driving to history along the Cimarron Cut-off of the Santa Fe Trail
5/15                Return to Las Cruces

5/26                Leave Las Cruces

5/27                Moab, Utah and Arches NP

5/28                Golden Spike NHS, Utah. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads united the

                        nation here in 1869.

5/29                Gray's Lake National Wildlife Reserve, Idaho. The summer nesting place for the    
                        sandhill cranes who winter near Las Cruces at the Bosque de Apache NWR.

5/30                 Minidoka NHS, Idaho. A World War II Japanese American internment camp.

5/31                 Driving to history   

6/1                   Nez Perce NHP, Idaho. The Nez Perce tried to escape a forced relocation to a
                        reservation on a heroic 1,200 mile march.
6/2                   Hanford (of the Manhattan Project NHP), Washington. Plutonium for the atomic
                        bomb was made here.
6/3                   Driving to history

6/4-7               Klondike Gold Rush NHP, and Mt. Rainier NP, Washington.

6/8                  Lewis and Clark State Park, Washington and Ft. Clatsop NM, Oregon. Lewis and

                        Clark’s Corps of Discovery wintered here in 1805-06.

6/9                   Driving to history
6/10                 Redwoods NP, California. Stands of majestic trees are preserved along the Pacific
                        coast.
6/11                 Driving to history.

6/12-16           Golden Gate National Recreation Area (NRA), Rosie the Riveter/World

                        War II Home Front NHP, Muir Woods, California. The Golden Gate NRA combines

the natural beauty of the Bay Area with the strategic port defended by forts and

armaments. Rosie the Riveter celebrates the women on the Home Front that helped win World War II. Muir Woods is named after the Sage of wilderness.

6/17                Sutter’s Mill, California. Gold, I tell ya, Gold!

6/18-20          Yosemite NP, California. Hello—It’s Yosemite!

6/21-22          Sequoia NP, California. Some of the tallest trees in the country.

6/23                Manzanar NHS, California. Another Japanese American internment camp during

                       World War II

6/24               Driving to History

6/25-26         Grand Canyon NP, Arizona. It’s deep.

6/27               Driving to History

6/28               Casa Grande NM, Arizona. One of the first NM units to protect a pre-contact

                      Native American ruin. Return to Las Cruces, New Mexico.

The motto for the NPS this centenary year is “Find Your Park.” My motto is “Show Me your Historic Park.” Yes, I know, not quite as snappy, but check out the itinerary and let me know where your favorite Park is.

You might ask what qualifications I have to undertake this National Park road trip. I claim three essential skills. First, I do the past. Second, I used to be a truck driver. And third, I am a fool.

I do the past. I research it, preserve it, interpret it, and present it.  I have taught history for over two decades at New Mexico State University. I teach 20th century U.S. history and Public History-- where I train graduate students who want to work as historians in museum, archives, and National Parks. I have several books to my name, including Inventing Los Alamos and J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Cold War, and the Atomic West. 

Since January, my graduate student assistant Brianna Barcena and I have compiled notebooks of information on the Parks that I will visit. Thanks Brianna for your diligent research. Using these detailed notebooks when I hit the road, I also will explore the parks by visiting their exhibits and libraries and by encountering their landscapes on foot, on a bike, and by vehicles.  I will then write histories like those already posted on Driven by History. When my journey ends at the New Years, I will return to my engaged students at NMSU. Back in Las Cruces, I will rework my blogs and revisit my Park and road trip experiences to continue to write a history of the United States using the places and people that made our country.

My second qualification-- I like to drive. I ran an art transport business in the 1980s when some years, I drove 60,000 miles. I still like rolling up the miles charging down a highway through a changing landscape. I like experiencing both our magnificent land as well as our many peoples. I anticipate meeting places and people who will show me the many and varied truths of our country. I like driving into the past, exploring who we are and who we want to be. 

Lastly, let me take a sober moment for full disclosure. I am now a professor, but I have a checkered past. I clown around. To do a road trip like this through our Parks, I have to be a fool. I have done so my whole life. I unfortunately mimed at a football game in Chama, New Mexico where I also almost lost my life as a clueless rodeo clown, I did street theater on the Santa Fe plaza as the Juggling Fool, I performed with a comedy group called Rimshot (whose claim to fame was the punk rock song “My Life is an Open Wound, Come on Baby, Infect It”), and I ran for vice president in 1980 as Stupid Ludd. Foolishness feeds me, and humor nurtures me.

Me and Rachel Trueblood at the NM State Fair
in 1973

Perhaps my height of foolishness occurred in 1976, when to celebrate our nation’s 200^th birthday, I walked and juggled from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, about a seventy mile trek. I was an ok juggler with some good patter, but in truth, crazy projects like the Juggling Walk fulfill me. So Driven by History animates the fool in me. It sustains my belief in our world, and for me, laughter is the best medicine for our times. I know this road trip is foolish, just so you know I know.

N.M. Gov. Jerry Apodaca with Arthritis sufferer Kenneth Smith Jr.
and the Juggling Fool publicizing the Juggling Walk against
Arthritis in 1976. (Photo from Santa Fe New Mexican) 

As a historian, a road tripper, and a fool, I offer you a drive into our pasts and a window into our nation’s present through places that I love, our National Parks.

I just thought you might like to know where we are going, who is piloting this journey, and invite you to join me on the road trip. 

Next week, we merge from our rest stop back onto the main highway of history, back to our National Parks and in particular, to the "Shot Heard ‘Round the World."

Walking and juggling 70 miles to support the Arthritis Foundation and celebrate the U.S. bi-centennial in 1976.
(Photo from the Santa Fe Reporter, May 1976)