C-SPAN turns focus to Las Cruces
Episodes featuring City of the Crosses will air in August
LAS CRUCES — The Rio Grande. New Mexico State University. The Chile Pepper Institute. New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum. White Sands Missile Range. Fort Selden. Las Cruces City Hall.
These places and more will take center stage on C-SPAN this August, when the cable network’s book and history channels air a documentary series about Las Cruces.
The series is part of this year’s C-SPAN’s Cities Tour, which made it’s way into the City of the Crosses last week for a three-day shoot that included interviews with about a dozen local historians, non-fiction writers, professors and others, as well as visits to some of the most historic sites throughout Las Cruces and surrounding areas.
The series aims to shine a national spotlight on cities across the country in the hopes of exposing what makes each featured city “special,” while emphasizing local history and local authors. Las Cruces joins a list of dozens of small and large cities that have been profiled by C-SPAN’s Book TV and American History TV channels. Albuquerque was featured on the Cities Tour series in 2013.
The crew behind the series revealed Monday at City Hall that Las Cruces had been selected to be profiled by C-SPAN.
“Just as C-SPAN strives to make Washington, D.C., accessible to the rest of the country, the C-SPAN Cities Tour looks to turn a spotlight on unique cities around the country,” C-SPAN producer Ashley Hill said during the news conference.
Hill was joined by Mayor Ken Miyagishima and Chris Dunkeson, an area vice president for Comcast, which serves as a partner in the production of the Las Cruces series, which will air on Comcast Channels 18 and 105 on Aug. 18-19.
“Now, how do we do that? We’re three producers who embed ourselves in a community for a week at a time,” Hill added, “We interview authors and historians, lawmakers, visit interesting sites around the city. And we hope to introduce America to what makes a city like Las Cruces so special.”
For Hill, and many others, the oft-lauded, worldfamous green chile grown throughout southern New Mexico is at the top of that list. And that is why the C-SPAN crew taped a segment this week at the Chile Pepper Institute, an international, nonprofit organization devoted to education and research of chile peppers.
“Everything you have to offer with green chile, I’ve been trying to eat,” she said.
Hill said the Las Cruces series will include at least 10 different segments.
Each segments will focus on different areas and topics that will include a look at Sen. Pete Domenici’s papers, which are housed at the NMSU Library; Las Cruces’ agriculture industry, with interviews conducted at the Farm and Ranch museum; as well as White Sands Missile Range and Fort Selden.
“We’ve been really embedding ourselves into your city and enjoying it to its fullest,” Hill said. On Sunday, she added, “We went on the Rio Grande river, floating down it on rafts, shooting video of the beautiful landscapes.”
Producers also interviewed NMSU history professor Jon Hunner to discuss his book, “J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Cold War, and The Atomic West.”