Month: December 2023

There is no doubt that Pajarito Acres and La Senda are two of the most sought after neighborhoods here in Los Alamos County. The idea of owning enough acreage to increase privacy, have enough room to spread out, park your RV, and enjoy rural, agricultural living complete with livestock in your backyard appeals to a lot of folks.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, this rural life appealed so strongly to a number of local residents that they formed the Pajarito Acres Development Association, gathered their wits and their pennies, and rolled up their sleeves to apply an enormous amount of elbow grease to their dream of rural living in Los Alamos.

What was it like “back in the day”? The following is a quote taken from John Ramsay’s book, “Pajarito Acres: A Bootstrap Volunteer Land Development”:

We moved in before the water or sewers were connected. Someone had to go out every morning with a container and get water from the nearby fire hydrant. We were given a pony, but we didn’t have a corral. The pony got loose one day and fell in the open pit we were using for sewage. After several hours of hand digging a walkway into the pit, we got him out and gave him a bath. ~ Roger Taylor

The more I learn about the grit and determination of the “Bootstrap Volunteers” who began calling Pajarito Acres home, the more in awe I am of their sheer determination.

In his book about the development of Pajarito Acres, John Ramsay offers a photograph of a rather spectacular find made in the early days of the development.

Two teens, both living in the Acres with their parents and exploring like so many teens often do, discovered this horse skeleton on their land in Pajarito Acres. This horse skull was turned over to the American Museum of Natural History for dating. The boys were hoping the skull was a few thousand years old. Turns out the skull was dated from the Pliocene Period nearly 2 to 5 million years ago! The residents declared this a symbol that their desire for space to spread out and enjoy their livestock in their “backyards” was pretty much what the land had been intended for.

It’s difficult for our modern brains to make comparisons between building a home now and building it back in the sixties. On March 1, 1963, the Pajarito Acres Development Association (PADA) created a trust at the Los Alamos Building and Loan. The cost to “buy into” Pajarito Acres was $300.00. On the first day, 77 families committed their down payment. By October 25, 1963 the trust was comprised of 117 members.

These days if someone asked me to put a down payment of $300 on even an empty lot in Pajarito Acres I would be whipping out my checkbook. But to give you an idea of just how much money that was in 1963, consider these salary figures from three years later.

In 1966, the median Laboratory salary was $13,000 per year for an employee with a Bachelors or Masters degree with 10 years of experience. Adding a PhD to your resume only increased your salary to $16,000 per year. So asking them to put down $300 was a lot of cash for an average family to come up with!

Another aspect of this housing development that became a hardship for families was the necessity of making the commitment to purchase a lot and build a home without having any firm idea of how much you might be expected to pay for the cost of utilities.

Going back to those median salaries from 1966, let’s think about the idea of agreeing to build a home with what amounts to a blank check. These days we want estimates. We expect contractors to bid an accurate amount for a job and if it changes, sometimes we decrease the scope of the job.

But back when Pajarito Acres was being built, there was no way to create an accurate estimate. Building private homes in Los Alamos County was so new that only Barranca Mesa could be used for cost comparison purposes. And yet, lots on Barranca Mesa came with streets, utility infrastructure, and other sewer, septic, and water issues resolved by the AEC before you purchased your lot!

During the building of Pajarito Acres, members of PADA expected to have septic systems for each home. Studies were done, residents got out there and took random soil samples of their lots, worked with the AEC, and were certain they knew what to expect going forward. Then a single representative of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) came in, did a spot check, and declared FHA would NEVER insure mortgages in Pajarito Acres.

That decision caused a cascade of changes for septic planning, ending in the necessity of patching PADA homes into the existing White Rock utility services. It also cost each homeowner an additional $2600 before they’d started the actual building of their homes. As you can imagine, this was an immense financial strain on the folks wanting to make their rural home life dreams come true.

The fact that Pajarito Acres exists is a testament to the can do attitude of the original homeowners. In 2013, more than 40 of the original 117 homes in Pajarito Acres were still in the hands of the original members of PADA. Either the original homeowners remained or their children continued to live in their homes. A good number of the children who grew up in “the Acres” purchased homes near their parents’ place in order to provide a similar childhood experience to their own kids.

While we tend to think of La Senda and Pajarito Acres as the same “neighborhood”, that’s not entirely true. The spirit of the Acres is unique even here in Los Alamos. A place where residents remember what it was like to have no paved roads and school buses would get stuck or refuse to come past the first turnoff. Where mothers picked up their children and the mail on horseback and families enjoyed gardening, animal husbandry, and the outdoors while living in homes under construction by the own hands. When you’re ready to be part of this community, give me a call! I’d love to chat real estate in Los Alamos with you!