In the neighborhood of Arroyo Hondo - SantaFeNewMexican.com
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In the neighborhood of Arroyo Hondo By Paul Weideman | The New Mexican 2/1/2009 Lew Thompson moved to Santa Fe from Oklahoma a little over 50 years ago. "I wrote westerns and I wanted to get out of Oklahoma City and find a place where I could be a cowboy because it would help with the research," he said. "When I got here, this was absolute paradise." The "here" he's talking about was Arroyo Hondo. Actually, Thompson first landed in a Stamm house in town, but after a few months he Photo by: Paul Weideman moved to a rented place in Seton Village. Later he bought his own parcel of paradise from Julia Seton. "You could ride on 1,500 acres here," Thompson said in an interview outside his self-made house in Arroyo Hondo. "This was still dedicated to open range. Back then, whenever people would learn I had grass, they'd bring their horses and give them to me. At one time I had nine horses and I rode all of them." He also rode for a cowboy named Chuck Spradley, rounding up calves for branding and pink-eye treatments. And danged if that Oklahoma City gentleman didn't learn some things about horses. "You know what do to for a horse with a stomach problem?" Thompson asked. "Well, horses are capable of farting, but they can't belch or throw up. That's a characteristic that the horse has to live with. I had a horse that was down and couldn't get up, had some sort of intestinal problem. I talked to an old cowboy, a guy named Bully Wafer - isn't that a great name for a cowboy? - and he said, 'Oh, Lew, if you've got a garden hose, just run it as far up the horse's rectum as you can and turn the faucet on.' That horse was on its feet and cured right then and there."
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When Thompson moved to this part of the world, he was employed at The Santa Fe New Mexican, working both as a writer and in the advertising department. After doing that for eight years, he had his own advertising agency, the city of Santa Fe his chief client. He found creative ways to market the town as a destination, once winning a first place in the ADDY Awards, although he ever afterward lamented his role in the commodification of Santa Fe. Meanwhile, he kept up writing westerns. One had a head ranch man named Clint Guthrie as its hero-protagonist. After he sold it to Ranch Romances magazine, he had a call from Hollywood. The agent said "Top Hand" would make a good television series. Thompson was getting excited about it all until the man told him that if it became popular, Thompson would have to move to Los Angeles. No way he was going to do that. Seton Village took its name from Ernest Thompson Seton, a famous wildlife artist and a founder of the Boy Scouts of America. He had died in 1946. Lew Thompson became good friends with Ernest's widow, Julia Seton. He recalled the time she wanted to have Ernest's ashes scattered over Burial Mountain for his 100th birthday. Burial Mountain, a hill in the area, was called that because prominent Santa Feans were always wanting their ashes strewn there, said Thompson. On this occasion, Julia Seton called him to go with her to the mortuary to get her husband's ashes. "She asked for the mortician, and this was a man that Hollywood would've cast as a mortician, and he came back with a box of ashes, which is, you know, just like a cake box," Thompson said. "And she looked down at it but then she said, 'No, no. This is my first husband.'" The features of Arroyo Hondo, besides Burial Mountain and Seton Castle (which burned down a few years ago) include an old red barn and the remains of a dam across the Arroyo Hondo. The barn is on land that once held a dairy and now belongs to U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman. The dam apparently is the one referred to in a July 29, 1908, story in The New Mexican: "A contract has been let for the erection of a $60,000 dam and reservoir on the Arroyo Hondo... More than 6,000 acres of the richest soil in Santa Fe will be placed under irrigation from this reservoir." Thompson said he believes that dam was built by a man from Indiana who had bought a farm in the area and was going to grow alfalfa, so he needed a source of irrigation. Evalyn Bemis, who has lived in Arroyo Hondo since 1981, said she has heard the dam guy had a scheme for a big, country club-type land development.
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Whatever his purpose, the man didn't build the dam to last. Both Thompson and Bemis said it burst when the arroyo swelled with the first good rainfall. Life has changed in Arroyo Hondo, like anywhere else, as more people moved into the area. "I knew the open range no longer stood when a little old lady kept calling me and saying that my horse was eating out of her bird feeder," Thompson recalled. There have been a few celebrities about. "Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard had a nice house over there and she'd visit," Thompson said. "And we had some Kennedys here. That was in the Sixties, I think. They'd visit and there would be lot of security people around. And we'd help them protect their privacy, too." Bemis said Esther Mulford and her partner, Claude James, who owned the old Three Cities of Spain on Canyon Road, used to live next door to the red barn. "Down below, where the arroyo opens out, there's a fairly broad plain and my understanding is that's where the Indians had corn and bean fields," she said. Anthropology being as important as it is in this part of the world, it is no surprise that many people first think of Arroyo Hondo Pueblo when they hear "Arroyo Hondo." With perhaps more than a thousand people at one point in the 14th century, the archaeological site known as Arroyo Hondo Pueblo was much larger than previous Native American settlements in the area. The 1970-74 excavations conducted by the School of American Research demonstrated that the pueblo was founded about A.D. 1300 by a few families. The area boasted a spring, arable land, and "easy access to a number of ecological zones containing a wide range of plant and animal life," according to The Architecture of Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, New Mexico (School of American Research Press, 1993) by Winifred Creamer. "Taking advantage of these special qualities, the founding settlers of Arroyo Hondo Pueblo built an alignment of masonry rooms along the edge of the 125-foot gorge." By 1330, the settlement had grown to 24 roomblocks around 10 plazas. A few of the structures were built using stone masonry, but the vast majority employed adobe from the site. They were built on footings of cobbles or volcanic andesite slabs. The roomblocks were between 400 and 2,000 feet long and one to six rooms wide. The residential area occupied about six acres. Cultivated land was only a short
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distance away in the bottomlands of the arroyo adjacent to the site and on the open grassland nearby. The reasons why the pueblo was abandoned in about 1425 are only a matter of best guesses. Today's residents have worked with Santa Fe County to acquire an 86-acre parcel near the eastern entrance to Arroyo Hondo. Initiatives to protect wetlands and restore woodlands are ongoing. "One thing that is very special about Arroyo Hondo is that the Arroyo Hondo Land Trust created a trail agreement - it's not an easement - that allows access by people with permission, and about half the neighborhood has signed on," Bemis said. The Land Trust, she added, "was started by Leslie Barclay some time in the 1990s with a mission having to do with trails and open space. Since the 1980s, I had a neighborhood association that was more than anything a kind of communications for the neighborhood, and we've blended those two things." Santa Fe County, which is in the process of updating its 1999 General Plan, will focus on four Growth Management Areas: El Norte, El Centro (which includes Arroyo Hondo), Galisteo, and Estancia. "We will probably look at things like water issues and future road-connection possibilities," said Jack Kolkmeyer, Santa Fe County land use administrator, "and even the role of the Santa Fe Southern rail line. We wanted to do that commuter service into Eldorado years ago and now that the Rail Runner's up and going, we may reopen discussions about that." Initial meetings for the El Centro Growth Management Area include a kickoff from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 9; an open house 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 2-5 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 10; and a workshop 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 11. All will be held in the Jemez Room at Santa Fe Community College, 6401 Richards Avenue. For more information, call 986-6215 or 986-6221.
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