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A Second Independence Day

7/13/2017

This year I celebrated Independence Day twice. Like most Americans, I ate hamburgers, watched fireworks, and enjoyed the company of family on the 4th of July. I was visiting my middle son and his family in Pittsburgh, where I got to spend hours playing with my two year old granddaughter and my husband and son ran a 5K.

But two days later, I got to enjoy a second Independence Day, when I visited the town of Independence, Missouri.

My first stop was the National Frontier Trails Museum, which teaches about the trails that opened the American West. Beginning with Lewis and Clark, visitors learn about the Mormon Trail, Oregon and California Trails, Old Spanish Trail, and the one I was interested in, the Santa Fe Trail. Quotes from diaries and first hand accounts of the trails give the museum a very personal appeal.

The museum has a partnership with Pioneer Trails Adventures, an independent contractor that offers narrated covered wagon tours of historical sites in Independence as well as sleigh rides during the Christmas season, chuck wagon dinners, and rides in a white bridal surrey for special events.

I took a short tour and learned a lot from Ralph, the personable and knowledgeable owner. He taught me not only about Bess Truman's birthplace, early Independence history, and that wagon ruts are called "swales," but I learned a lot about Ed and Harry, the mules that pulled the wagon.

I highly recommend these rides!

Artifacts, included wagons, carts, supplies, weapons, clothing, original journals, foodstuffs and furniture enriched the experience.

Maps and murals, such as this one, depicting the Santa Fe plaza, covered the walls.

Next, I toured the house where Harry and Bess Truman lived. Although well appointed, this charming old Victorian house was surprisingly modest, especially the quaint kitchen, where the linoleum floor had been nailed down where a seam had separated, and the wallpaper near light switched looked worn.

I would have liked to stay longer in Independence. If I had, I would have taken a second, longer tour with Pioneer Trails, visited the Truman Presidential Museum and Library, and gone into more of the historic houses, the 1859 jail, and the 1827 log courthouse. But the open road was calling and it was time to move on.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction and teaches New Mexico history to 7th graders in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Her latest book, Valverde, about a Civil War Battle in New Mexico, came out this spring and is available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and large print edition.

She is always thrilled to meet someone more stubborn than she is, even if that someone has four legs.

For more information about her books, go to her website by clicking here.

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Investigating a New Mexican Mystery - or Hoax

7/13/2017

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It's called Inscription Rock, the Phoenician Rock, the Decalogue Stone, or the Commandment Stone. Whatever you call it, this rock inscribed with strange markings, west of Los Lunas, New Mexico, is a curiosity, and probably a hoax.

The Phoenician Rock lies at the base of Mystery Mesa, sometimes called Hidden Mesa, in a remote area controlled by the BLM. It is west of Los Lunas and about 35 miles southwest of Albuquerque. A BLM permit is required to enter the area.

The stone is covered with what experts have called Paleo-Hebrew script, which is practically identical to the Phoenician script. Also included, according to some experts, are Samaritan and Greek letters. Some have argued that the stone uses modern Hebrew punctuation, indicating that it is a modern creation. Other researchers point out stylistic and grammatical errors to question its authenticity.

What it says depends on who translates it. Some ethnographers have suggested that the text is an early version of the Ten Commandments. Others say that it tells the story of a Phoenician sailor, lost at sea, who yearns to return home.

The writing is set at an angle, suggesting that it shifted or fell from its original position.

The first time the stone is mentioned in historical records is in 1933, when University of New Mexico archaeology professor Frank Hibben clains to have been led to it by an unnamed and uncredited Indian guide. Hibben writes that his guide claimed to have found it as a boy in the 1880s. After Hibben announced his discovery, a Los Lunas man named Florencio Chavez announced that his grandfather claimed to have seen the rock in 1800.

I've been to the rock several times, and while I am no expert on ancient texts, I find the rock interesting. Of more interest to me, though, are the Indian pictographs and ruins on the top of the mesa. This site was an outlier community that linked Acoma Pueblo to the west with the Rio Grande and the trading communities that strung along that ribbon of water, tying the arid southwest to the Mayan Civilizations to the south and the nomadic plains tribes to the northeast.

What those Indians thought of the strangely marked rock - if it was indeed there when they were - if a real mystery.

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Bridges, Part 2

7/6/2017

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Roebling Bridge, Cincinnati. Photo by Nathan Holth. http://ow.ly/f1UY30djvIB

Recently my husband and I drove through Cincinnati. We walked across this bridge to get from our hotel in Covington, Kentucky, to The Great American Ballpark, where the Cincinnati Reds were playing the Chicago Cubs.

I was struck by the beauty of this bridge as I walked across it.

It wasn't until I saw the plaque on the north side of the bridge, on the return journey, that I realized the significance of the bridge, which helps to explain its beauty.

This bridge is named the Roebling Bridge after its designer, John Roebling. When it was opened in December 1867, its 1,057 foot span was the longest in the world. Roebling, an engineer who had emigrated from Prussian Germany, developed the iron-wire cables that made suspension bridges of this type possible. This bridge was the first that used the new technology. Roebling and his son would go on to design and build the much larger and more famous Brooklyn Bridge.

The platform the cars drive on is not a solid roadbed, but a grid of metal mesh that makes the car tires "sing" as they cross. The sound is both eerie and harmonious. I found it disconcerting to look down through the mesh and see the ripples on the water below. Strange, that something so ethereal can hold the weight of so many racing cars.

By happy coincidence, when I opened the Wall Street Journal later that evening, I found a review for Chief Engineer, a new biography of the Roeblings by Erica Wagner. That review provided a lot of background information on the bridge and its designers. It is a book I will certainly have to pick up soon.

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Bridges, part 1

7/5/2017

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The Roebling Bridge, Cincinnati. Nathan Holth, photographer. http://historicbridges.org/bridges/browser/?bridgebrowser=ohio/roebling/

Coincidences can be the bridges between unrelated experiences, enriching understanding in surprising ways. I'm always thrilled and surprised when coincidences align without my planning them to.

Last week my husband and I drove from our home in Albuquerque to Pittsburgh to visit one of our sons and his family.

I stopped by my local library before the trip so I could pick up some books on CD to listen to while on the road. I ended up getting Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, mostly because it was long, of historical interest, and I had never read it before.

Written in 1852, this novel depicted the many horrors of slavery, and his long been regarded the spark that began the Civil War. It is not an easy book to read: Stowe's characters spend a lot of time pontificating, and there is a racist tone to the book that modern readers will find offensive. However, the plot is filled with exciting twists and turns, and the characters feel very read. Readers who enjoy Dickens will enjoy this book.

One of the most dramatic scenes in the book is of Eliza escaping over an ice-clogged river, her young son cradled in her arms.

Her master, Mr. Shelby, has sold her son to slave traders to settle his debts, and Eliza chooses to escape to Canada rather than allow him to be sent to the slave market in New Orleans.

It is winter, and the ferry is not running because the river is clogged with ice. Rather than be caught by the pursing slavers and their dogs, Eliza jumps from ice floe to ice flow, escaping Kentucky for the free state of Ohio.

It wasn't until my husband and I reached Covington, Kentucky, that I really realized what a daring feat Eliza had achieved. Covington is just over the river - the Ohio River - from Cincinnati, Ohio. I stood on the banks and realized that this was the river that Eliza crossed.

The Ohio is a mighty river. It is broad and it is deep. Looking at it, I realized that Eliza must have been far more desperate and far braver than I had imagined.

I hadn't picked Uncle Tom's Cabin for any specific reason when I went on this trip, but this view of the river ended up being the bridge between the real world and the novel that really brought the story to life for me.

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A Second Independence Day

Investigating a New Mexican Mystery - or Hoax

Bridges, Part 2

Bridges, part 1

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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