The Great Taos Bank Robbery by Tony Hillerman

Author:Tony Hillerman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: State & Local, OK, NM, TX), Mountain (AZ, Science, Travel, UT, General, United States, MT, New Mexico, Southwest (AZ, West, CO, History, ID, WY), Social Science
ISBN: 9780061011733
Publisher: Harper Collins 1997
Published: 1980-06-15T07:00:00+00:00

How Quemado Got Quemado

Ambrosio, which was the name of the settler whose body was found floating in its waters, thereby causing it to be identified as "la laguna del Ambrosio Difunto."

The dictionary does odd things to a bilingual landscape. Because the Anglo-American postmaster could not pronounce the Spanish i the settlement of Anil became Anal in the U.S. Postal Guide, on postmarks, and finally on the map of Guadalupe County. The post office is closed now (to the relief, one suspects, of those charged with preventing the movement of obscene words by the U.S. mails), but the misspelling lives on, an adjective become a name which only towns in Texas deserve.

"This was just a little dinky place then," says the man waiting at the service station in Quemado, "and it didn't even have a name. Then one morning Geronimo and his Apaches came riding through and after that they took to calling it Quemado."

"There's another more official version that says the creek where this Catron County village is located was named Rito Quemado because a brush fire had blackened both its banks. But the cowboy's explanation of why a village comes to be named "Burned" has more laconic poetry.

And then, north over the Zuni Mountains and beyond Grants, there is Ambrosia Lake, which has given its name to the surrounding uranium mining district—America's largest. Irony here, one thinks. The source of fuel for nuclear desolation named Ambrosia, the perfume and nectar of the gods. But Matt Pearce tells us in New Mexico Place Names that the word should be

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