Robert Julyan’s ‘Hiking to History’
Author and hiker Robert Julyan leads readers to 22 lesser-known but fascinating and important NM sites
Two of Robert Julyan’s great loves — history and the outdoors — converge in his new book, “Hiking to History.”
It’s a collection of unrelated but informative historical moments, events and discoveries in New Mexico.
Using a conversational tone, Julyan profiles 22 diverse, offroad sites of regional interest.
The reader can find three uses for the book. The first would be to learn the history of the sites. The second is to be an armchair hiker to learn the landscape through Julyan’s experience. The third would be, if you are motivated, to follow, literally, in Julyan’s footsteps, hiking to any or all of these remote sites.
In the introduction, Julyan explains how he chose the sites. “I wanted each site to have a story behind it, and preferably one not generally known. I wanted to tell these stories,” he wrote.
Here’s a sampling of the stories Julyan chose:
One chapter relates to the circumstances leading to the founding of the Taos Society of Artists. A dirt path called Old Lama Road in the Carson National Forest is the location of the so-called Sacred Site that formed the trigger for this informal band of artists.
The site, never marked except for a white boulder, is where in 1898 a wheel of a twohorse wagon broke. Riding the wagon were New York artists Bert Phillips and Ernest L. Blumenschein, headed from Denver to Mexico seeking a dream locale to paint.
Phillips stayed with the disabled wagon while Blumenschein took a horse into Taos to have the wheel repaired. With the wheel fixed, the two young men decided Taos was the place to paint, their Eden. They were the magnet for a famous arts colony.
Another chapter concerns the life and legend of Smokey Bear.
As a cub, Smokey survived a forest fire in the Capitan Mountains in 1950. He was found clinging to an aspen branch. He lived out most of his life at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., but Julyan isn’t proposing a cross-country hike to see where the celebrity bear lived.
Julyan tells of trying to locate the very tree where the bear cub was discovered and rescued. He doesn’t find it. As Julyan puts it, “Interesting, even beautiful country-–– if you have the luxury of sitting and observing rather than trying to hike through it.”
Again, no monument or memorial.
Some other sites include Mount Chalchihuitl near Cerrillos Hills State Park, where ancient Indians once mined turquoise; Jaramillo Creek in the Valles Caldera where plate tectonics converged; the site of the murder of wealthy Englishman John Tunstall, an act that energized Billy the Kid and spurred the Lincoln County War; El Cerro de Tomé, an Easter pilgrimage destination; a 19th century Italian-born wanderer who lived in caves at Hermit’s Peak near Las Vegas, N.M., and in Hermit Cave in the Organ Mountains’ foothills.