THE PAST 100 YEARS

From The Santa Fe New Mexican:

Nov. 23, 1923: Burro alley, once the home of sun, silence and adobe, is not what it used to be.

The big paver has converted this famous thoroughfare into a Michigan avenue boulevard; the sun still shines on it, but the silence and adobe dust are gone.

The alley, no doubt, will lost its name ere long as motors dash thru it, as the clattering hoofs of horses are heard in it, as the wood carrying the burro brays is protest as his skidding feet slip over it.

Burro alley, like the city of Santa Fe, is “different” today from what it was yesterday. It is a 20th century street now, and as soon as the concrete hardens and dries, the alley will be opened to traffic.

Nov. 23, 1948: The city council last night moved to increase the city’s revenue from two sources: It abolished the present $300 ceiling on the city occupation tax and raised the minimum payment from $5 to $10. The tax is $1 on $1.000 of annual gross receipts. And the utilities committee was instructed to reopen negotiations with the Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. to secure a raise in the tax rate from 1 to 2 per cent on the company’s gross receipts.

Nov. 23, 1973: ESPANOLA — An intensive man-hunt is under way for two men, described as “young” and having “long black hair,” who last night killed Mrs. Elizabeth Sanderson, 50, and seriously wounded her security guard husband, Wesley, 58.

The woman was shot three times in the right side apparently as she opened the passenger side of their patrol car to go to the assistance of her husband.

Nov. 23, 1998: On Feb. 21, for the second time in five years, raw sewage flooded the northside Santa Fe home of Helen Johnston.

Though she had been through the experience before, Johnston panicked.