On my current reading list is Timelines of the East Mountains published by the East Mountain Historical Society. It can be ordered from them or purchased through several local businesses. The book chronicles the histories of many small communities which no longer exist in a legal sense, but whose residents laid the foundations for the East Mountain communities of today. Wind, weather and the departures of former residents have erased most of them, but faint impressions remain.
When my family first moved to the area, there were still many residents willing to share their memories. Small towns such as Frost, Venus, and Hyer are mostly forgotten, but the names survive in street names or the occasional sign post. For many long-time residents of rural Santa Fe County who have been swallowed up by the legal entity d.b.a. Town of Edgewood, those memories persist.
To my amusement, I discovered last week that there are still Edgewood residents other than my family who continue to speak of “going into” or “going down to” Edgewood. Prior to the formation of the town government, most residents of what is now Commission District-1 did not consider themselves to be part of Edgewood. Edgewood was the location of the Post Office, the elementary school, and a few small businesses clustered around the I-40 and NMSR 333 intersections. Smith’s, Walgreens, and the John Brooks supermarket had not yet appeared. It was a place we got our mail and drove through on our way to Moriarty, Cedar Crest, or Albuquerque. We lived in rural Santa Fe County. The aptly named Mike’s Friendly Store in Moriarty was a frequent destination.
In the first few years after the town government’s incorporation, there were a few people who tried to make much of the old community of Venus. Some even enlisted volunteers to promote swapping the name Venus for Edgewood. However, it was a hard sell. When the people suggesting it were greeted with a local version of “Yankee go Home” they finally stood down.* After all, unlike the vanished towns in the region, Edgewood still had a post office and a small but recognizable cluster of businesses.
Then, as now, the majority of Edgewood residents lived in the actual, historical Edgewood; they were not impressed by the suggestion. When the proponents finally realized that they needed votes from what has now become “lower Edgewood” in order to get elected, the attempts at re-branding Edgewood to Venus finally ceased. The physical remnants of Venus had been destroyed in a storm years before 1999 rendering the proposal incomprehensible to newer residents. Wally Gordon memorialized the name, if not its actual history, in his serial novel Venus Vector published in The Independent newspaper.
Is any of this relevant to town government today? In one sense it is not. Edgewood is now defined by legal boundaries which are unlikely to change. However, for purposes of governance the historical fault lines still exist, and woe to government officials who fail to account for them. I have made several attempts to describe the situation by looking at the context of the 1999 Incorporation. The higher than expected turnover rates in Edgewood’s town government persist, and are largely due to the local government’s failures to understand the ramifications of annexing so far beyond Edgewood’s informal, traditional boundaries.
* After having attended some of the early “branding” meetings, I now avoid them. Most are the product of Edgewood’s recurring manic bouts of promotional activities coupled to a long series of groups all of which (for a fee) have promised a sure-fire method for giving Edgewood a cohesive brand or image. Because Edgewood has multiple narratives whose strands cannot easily be co-mingled, the projects seldom produce anything of lasting value. The meetings often feature hotly debated proposals many of which are not founded on anything resembling the truth. Unless you enjoy watching an unintentional community playhouse adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, there are probably better ways to spend an evening.