Rodeo New Mexico, Independence Day Celebrations

The 4th of July is here again, signaling the traditional start of the Monsoon season in the San Simon valley, the emergence of the Tarantulas to mate, and time to celebrate Independence day.  The Town of Rodeo traditionally has lots of festivities on the 4th starting with softball in the morning, the parade at 6:00 PM followed by a community dinner, cake auction, fireworks, and a dance.  Arriving about 5:30 PM I found a spot to park and walked into town.  Folks were parked along highway 80, some cooking out and many enjoying refreshments while awaiting the start of the parade.

There was a slight intermittent drizzle signaling the arrival of the monsoon season, but it did not dampen the spectators enthusiasm and the parade came off without a hitch.  Afterwards Highway 80 was reopened to traffic and everyone headed over to the community center for dinner, float prizes, the cake auction, and dance.  Another wonderful event in Rodeo, New Mexico's most western town.

The start of the parade in Rodeo

Mounted riders

Welcome to Rodeo New Mexico

Chiricahua Desert Museum's giant rattlesnake

Local bagpipe player

the local 4H club

Welcome to the land of OZ

Celebrating the designation of Jaguar habitat in the Peloncillo mountains

A WWII themed float

4th of July Celebrations in Rodeo, New Mexico's Most Western Town

Another 4th of July in Rodeo and as usual, an event to remember.  With only 3 paved roads in the several hundred square miles of the valley, Highway 80 being the only north/south paved road through the valley, it is only logical that the highway is closed every year in the town of Rodeo for the 4th of July celebrations.  The day started early pulling meat that had been slow cooking the previous night preparing for the community dinner, followed by a morning softball game in the park.  The afternoon brought parade preparations and arriving shortly after 5:00 PM the town was already filling.  Cars were rapidly filling up the open areas along both sides of Highway 80 in town.  At 6:00 PM the parade started with horses carrying the flags followed by the parade's grand marshal.  This was followed by floats of every description created by local inhabitants.  Rodeo Radio AM1590 (on the air once a year on the 4th) carried the parade description while floats made their way slowly along the highway.  The theme for this years parade was “anything goes” and was reflected in the variety of floats from a veterans float to unicorns, see images below.  Following the parade everyone gathered inside the Rodeo community center for dinner.  Slow cooked pulled beef with a savory barbeque sauce with beans and coleslaw was the fare, with additional meat being sold to raise funds for the community.  The traditional cake auction followed and then the evenings dance.  Local residents also took advantage of the break in the dry conditions for a fireworks display in the park.  Being the 4th, the traditional start of the monsoon season, I headed back to the Painted Pony Resort early in anticipation of rain.  The drive home was accompanied by a spectacular lightening displays from storms drifting down from the north and upon arrival it started to rain.   PPR picked up 0.96” throughout the night and the desert was alive with activity the next morning.  All the frogs were out calling for mates to take advantage of the ephemeral pools that form during the monsoon creating the next generation of frogs.  Overall it another great event created by the hardworking residents of the bootheel and southeastern Arizona.

The parade begins

Rodeo's flag bearer

Antelope in the parade

Butterfield stage line

Princess on a unicorn in Rodeo

Community center dinner

New Mexico Magazine and Rodeo

New Mexico Magazine's beginnings back in 1923 as a publication for the Department of Transportation employees belies it's current standing as New Mexico's flagship publication.  "With a subscription and newsstand circulation of about 117,000, it is estimated almost half a million readers pick up New Mexico Magazine each month" (1).  As the oldest state magazine (celebrating it's 90th anniversary) and a publication aimed at potential visitors, New Mexico Magazine covers people, places, and events that make New Mexico special and one of those special places is Rodeo.  Last featured in the October 1965 issue Rodeo and the San Simon Valley has continued, a place of wide open spaces surrounded by mountains straddling 2 states.  Equally isolated from Arizona by the Chiricahua Mountains and New Mexico, by the Peloncillo Mountains, life is lived at a different pace.  A place where a trip to the grocery store is still a half day affair even with paved highways.  A place of ranching, farming, and retirement where people move because of the space. 

The original article about Rodeo was written by John L. Sinclair 45 years ago and little has changed in the area.  As New Mexico's most south western town people still arrive with ideas and set about creating and giving life to those ideas.  This latest article on Rodeo in the 90th anniversary issue of New Mexico Magazine is just one expression of those ideas.

The newest article on Rodeo may be found on the authors website, or in the January issue of New Mexico Magazine. 

Rodeo, New Mexico

Merry Christmas from Rodeo, New Mexico's most Western Town

Snow on the Chiricahua Mountains for Christmas

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Painted Pony Resort.

The New Logo for Rodeo, New Mexico's most Western Town

Rodeo has a new logo. Created by a longtime resident of southwestern New Mexico, Pat Bennett, the new logo incorporates an image found in the Rodeo Tavern with a new tagline. Rodeo, New Mexico's most western town. The tagline arises from the location of Rodeo in the San Simon Valley. Lying less than a mile from the state line it is the closest New Mexico town to Arizona. Other communities further north are listed as census districts and not towns making the community of Rodeo, New Mexico's most western town. Being so close to the Arizona border Rodeo leads a dual life. When daylight saving time comes around one must always ask whether the scheduled event is New Mexico or Arizona time. An important distinction when trying to attend events in Arizona or New Mexico.  The new logo may be found on the Rodeo New Mexico website.

New Logo for Rodeo New Mexico

Winter in Rodeo, New Mexico's Most Western Town

The big storm that has affected most of the US also reached into the bootheel and brought with it some cold temperatures.  The temperature dipped to 0 degrees last night at the Rodeo airport and many in the valley awoke to frozen water lines.  The consolation is that there are clear skies and the Chiricahua mountains, with a light dusting of snow, are beautiful.  Below is a photograph taken early this morning.  So while it may be cold for all the desert dwellers this morning the views are still spectacular.

A February morning view of the Chiricahua Mountains

A New Historical Marker in the Bootheel

A new historical marker was approved by the New Mexico Scenic Historic Marker by the Cultural Properties Review Committee at its December 10 meeting in recognition of Rodeo's first airfield.  The Rodeo Intermediate Field was built in the late 1920's as part of the national intermediate field system, a system of emergency landing fields built along early commercial aviation routes in support of the growing aviation industry.  The route through the San Simon Valley and Rodeo was flown by Standard Airlines (later to become part of TWA) and included flights from Los Angeles and San Diego to El Paso.  During WWII the field became part of the Army Axillary field system and additional buildings were added.  The radio building from the airfield now sits in Rodeo and is part of Rodeo Cottages.  The history of this project may be found at The Sky Gypsies.

Big Red Arrow pointing to El Paso

Former Radio building in Rodeo, New Mexico

 

Geocaching, Found it South of Rodeo New Mexico

Geocaching is described as "a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online."  DiAnn from Mountain Valley Lodge has had visitors stay who were searching for geocaches in the Chiricahua Mountains. With over 1.2 million active geocaches around the world, we decided to follow up on this phenomena and see what caches were in the area.  There is a geocache site just south of Rodeo at the state line entitled One Toke Over the Line.  So I drove over and we headed down to the Arizona New Mexico state line with a GPS in hand and we began our search.  Not wanting to come up dry and miss the site I had peeked at the hint, but trying to apply the hint to the location was unsuccessful and only resulted in crossing the fence line on both sides of the road several times.  So I carefully followed the GPS instead and we eventually located the cache.  We signed the register and looked at all the items previous visitors had left and then replaced the cache in its location.  DiAnn has already started collecting benchmarks (a variant of geocaching) and has located and photographed benchmark number one from the Chiricahua Mountains.  Marker number 1 can be seen at Chiricahua Sky Island, Rodeo.  Note the unique spelling of Chiricahua on the marker.

Below are several photographs of the adventure taken by DiAnn and a list of geocaches in the 88056 zip code may be found here and here you will find the  New Mexico geocaching website.

 The geocache "One Toke Over the Line", south of Rodeo New Mexico.

 The contents of the geocache.

BAlvarius finds the geocache south of Rodeo.

Rodeo, New Mexico's most western town in Wikipedia

The new articles about Rodeo are now live at Wikipedia and Wikitravel

Rodeo in Wikipedia

Rodeo in Wikitravel

Tagline, What's in a Name

The most descriptive and informative yet appealing and interesting phase would best describe a useful tagline. Wikipedia describes it as "memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of a brand or product". Well, Rodeo New Mexico is a small town, a former stop on the El Paso and Southewestern rail line and a ranching center in the San Simon Valley. But like all things it has evolved and changed with time. New businesses start up, new people move to the valley and in keeping with these changes it seems appropriate to create a new phrase that helps focus attention on these changes. "Rodeo, New Mexico's most western town" is just such a phrase. Rodeo is indeed the most western town in New Mexico and lies less than 1 mile from the border with Arizona on the east side of the Chiricahua Mountains in the center of the San Simon Valley and as a center for ranching in the valley is undoubtedly a very western town in much of it's population, values, and lifestyle.


An aerial view of Rodeo, New Mexico's most western town, looking north west.