The past 100 years

From The Santa Fe New Mexican: Dec. 29, 1917: The state corporation commission has prepared for distribution a new railroad map of New Mexico. The mileage between stations is shown. An important feature is that all post offices are shown, and, in the case of rural villages and settlements, the distance to the nearest railway is designated.

Dec. 29, 1967: Ninety-nine per cent of New Mexico’s Spanish-Americans regret that Reies Lopez Tijerina ever came into the state, Sen. Joseph Montoya said here yesterday.

“I would stake my reputation,” he said, adding that 99 percent of the Spanish people in New Mexico “hate” Tijerina and what he stands for — violence, self interest, words without action — and deplore what he has done to their name.

Dec. 29, 1992: A nuclear weapons lab for 50 years, Los Alamos National Laboratory is now placing greater emphasis on joint commercial ventures with private industry.

But with the election of Bill Clinton, who campaigned on the need to improve U.S. economic competitiveness, it’s become clear to laboratory officials that more such emphasis is needed — and fast.

LANL Director Sig Hecker expressed the new sense of urgency in a recent article in the Los Alamos News Bulletin, a laboratory publication:

“The Clinton-Gore emphasis on civilian and commercial (research and development) to strengthen the U.S. economy will require a more rapid transition to a greater civilian and commercial portfolio than we had anticipated,” Hecker said.