November 5 arrives in Red River cold and clear, with a dawn in the twenties, sun over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the ski area counting down to its planned opening on Wednesday, November 25. It is a quiet hinge day between fall color and ski season, but on November 5, 1921, a letter reached a writer in Sicily that would change Taos, and the Circle, forever.
Click to see more photos of the D. H. Lawrence Ranch and Memorial
Red River Town & Main Street
Two days before today's date, on November 3, 2004, fire destroyed the original building of Texas Reds Steakhouse on Main Street. Texas Reds had served Red River since Thanksgiving in 1967, in a building raised by the man whose nickname it carried, and its Old West dining room was already a Main Street institution. The loss could have ended the story. Instead, the name was sold to new operators, and the tradition continued at its present home at 400 East Main Street, where steaks are still served a short walk from the lifts.
Mining & the Gold Rush
November brought no single dated anniversary to the mines this week, so this section offers seasonal context instead. Early November was when the high camps braced for winter. Around Elizabethtown, mining shut down in the harsh winter months and the population rose and fell with the weather, while in Red River's gulches prospectors raced to finish work before snow closed the high country. East of Questa, the soft black mineral along Sulphur Gulch was long mistaken for graphite, and in 1916 it was recognized as molybdenite. The Questa molybdenum mine that followed employed generations of local families.
Founding Families, Characters & Legends
Our lead story is an exact-date anniversary. On November 5, 1921, the English writer D. H. Lawrence, then living in Taormina, Sicily, received a letter from Mabel Dodge Sterne, later Mabel Dodge Luhan, inviting him and his wife, Frieda, to stay with her in Taos. Mabel believed Lawrence was the one writer who could truly see the Taos country and describe it so that it lived on the page. Lawrence accepted. The couple arrived in Taos in September 1922, and Lawrence later wrote that New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that he had ever had, one that changed him forever.
Skiing & Winter
Early November is also, every year, the start of the ski countdown around the Circle, and this section is seasonal context rather than a dated anniversary. Red River Ski Area was born in December 1959, when Stokes and Billie Bolton opened slopes served by lift towers built from surplus oil derrick steel. The area has made a tradition of opening the day before Thanksgiving, and this year the planned opening is Wednesday, November 25. At Taos Ski Valley and Angel Fire, the same November ritual holds: crews watch the forecasts and wait for winter to settle in.
Enchanted Circle Towns & Places
The letter of November 5, 1921, also gave the Circle one of its most storied places. North of Taos, off Highway 522 near San Cristobal, the 160-acre ranch on Lobo Mountain at about 8,600 feet had been homesteaded in October 1883 by John and Louise Craig. Mabel purchased it in May 1920 and later gave it to Frieda Lawrence. The Lawrences occupied its small Homesteader's Cabin on May 5, 1924, and Lawrence called it first the Lobo Ranch and then the Kiowa Ranch, for the old Kiowa trail that crosses the property toward the red clay pits near Questa. It was the only property the Lawrences ever owned.
The Land, Weather & Wildlife
This week offers no verified record storm or flood on November 5 itself, so consider the land itself. The Circle turns around Wheeler Peak, at 13,161 feet the highest point in New Mexico, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The high country around the peak was set aside as a wild area in 1960 and became the Wheeler Peak Wilderness in 1964 with the passage of the Wilderness Act, protecting 19,661 acres of alpine lakes and bighorn sheep country. In early November that high country is already in winter's grip, with snow on the summit trails while the valleys below still hold the last of the fall color.
Roads, Stage Lines & Travel
Travel gives November 5 a second exact-date anniversary. On November 5, 1904, the Cimarron River and Taos Valley Railway Company filed its certificate at Raton, with capital stock of one million dollars, as recorded in the territorial history of New Mexico published in 1907. The company's name tells the ambition of the age: to bind the Cimarron country and the Taos Valley together by rail, when railroads decided which mountain towns would grow. Not every chartered line was built, but each filing shows how badly the Circle's mines and resorts wanted a faster road out.
Living History & Heritage
Living heritage closes the day with a same-week anniversary, stated with its real date. On Veterans Day, November 11, 2005, six days from today, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire was taken over by New Mexico State Parks and renamed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The memorial began with Dr. Victor and Jeanne Westphall, whose son, Marine First Lieutenant David Westphall, was killed in Vietnam on May 22, 1968. Their Peace and Brotherhood Chapel, dedicated in 1971, was the first major memorial in the United States honoring Vietnam veterans. On the Enchanted Circle, remembrance is living history, in a place families still visit above the Moreno Valley.
So November 5 in the Enchanted Circle holds a letter that brought a great writer to Taos, a railroad charter filed at Raton, a Main Street steakhouse that rose again after fire, and a memorial that still gathers families above Angel Fire. As Red River counts down to opening day on November 25, the hopeful lesson of this date is that this country has always been renewed by people who stayed, rebuilt, and remembered.