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| NM 502 | Los Alamos County | Visited: January 19, 2020 | Plaque? YES! 🙂 |
| What is it? | A sign at Ashley Pond in Los Alamos! |
| What makes it historical? | THE SIGN SAYS: Peggy Pond Church, author of the Southwest classic The House at Otowi Bridge and daughter of Los Alamos Ranch School founder Ashley Pond, will forever be “The First Lady of New Mexican Poetry.” As she rode the Pajarito Plateau and camped beneath tall pines, she came to understand that “it is the land that wants to be said.” She captured it in her sensitive poems.
OTHER TIDBITS: Throughout her childhood, Ms. Church was angry at her dad for making his wilderness a boys-only institution, and she expressed many of these thoughts through poetry! By the time she graduated Smith College, she was already an award-winning poet! Between 1924 and 1942, while married and raising three kids, she published two volumes of poetry, an award-winning children’s book called The Burro of Angelitos, and two adult reader books called Foretaste and Familiar Journey! After the US Government took over the Los Alamos Ranch School as part of the Manhattan Project, Peggy and her husband, Fermor, moved away to Taos, where she completed Ultimatum of Man. They spent the 1950s in Berkeley, California, where Ms. Church published her most famous work, The House at Otowi Bridge, a memoir about her life at and displacement from Los Alamos! In 1960, the Churches returned to Peggy’s beloved New Mexico, and she spent the rest of her days publishing poetry in Santa Fe! |
| How can I Help the Helpers? | HERE’S HOW:
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| How do I find it? | Listed Directions: MM 0.954 Los Alamos at Ashley Pond Annotations: From Albuquerque: ~97mi (157km) — 1.7hrs |
| When should I go? | Whenever the mood strikes you! |