Month: May 2024

As I’m seeing a good number of advertisements and flyers for summer programs here in Los Alamos, I’m reminded of the importance of summer camps to businesses in Los Alamos. Summer camps benefit the public who enjoys them. But summer camps are also how a good number of businesses stay afloat! In fact, that was how the Los Alamos Ranch School stayed afloat starting in 1917. The last summer camp season was in 1941 although AJ Connell ran a skeleton operation in 1942. The last official full camp season was the summer of 1941.

In the minds of AJ Connell and Ashley Pond, boys became good men through contact with nature. In Connell’s mind, a boy shouldn’t come to the Los Alamos Ranch School as a student if he didn’t attend summer camp. Initially this caused some problems. When Pond first started the school, his vision allowed boys to spend weeks, months, or years at the ranch school depending upon health needs and family willingness. But this method of open door attendance created both financial and administrative issues.

For those of us who operate a business in Los Alamos, the financial challenges have NEVER been other than they are. The area is remote. It’s not easy to get supplies or customers up here and never has been. At that time the access to the Los Alamos Ranch was barely passable by car. During the summer of the first camp in 1917, they were still using horse or oxen drawn wagons to get supplies up the mountain. So having a steady income from camp and school tuition became critical to ranch operations.

With that in mind, Connell and Pond made their first change within a few years of the school starting up. Students were supposed to be at school year round. Of course, families weren’t too excited about this notion of only seeing their sons during holidays or short breaks from school. If you think about it from a slightly different angle, if your goal is to have your son take over the family business you don’t want him disappearing for 4-6 years before that happens.

Eventually, the summer camp became popular all on its own and the summer boys were generally an entirely new group from the regular school year boys. Summers were about long pack trips. In the early years, Connell used to take the boys out on at least three different pack trips for nearly three weeks apiece. The most important thing the boys would learn is the diamond hitch. The knot is popular with outfitters everywhere, but the Los Alamos Ranch boys learned the Los Alamos Diamond Hitch. It kept the cinches tight, the pack loads steady, and prevented the mules and horses from getting rid of their packs via scraping them off on a tree, rolling them off in the mud, or bucking them off just for kicks.

It’s unlikely that many of us in the modern era have learned the lessons those boys were taught. It isn’t algebra or essay composition, but the skills you pick up from backpacking or outfitting with horses and mules are character development at its core.

The wrangler would lead, the director would bring up the rear. There were generally more than thirty riders, fifteen packhorses, a mule or two, and a few camp dogs. That’s nearly fifty head of stock. The outfit had to stay on schedule with the boys learning to get their horses to walk at the fast pace instead of trot in order to prevent saddle sores on both boys and horses. Days in the saddle ended by caring for your horse, “pitching and ditching” your tent, and then crashing in your bedroll after a meal and songs around the campfires.

Can you imagine what it would’ve been like to be a staff member? How exhausted would you be? Modern summer camp situations usually allow for camp counselors and directors to go home, put their feet up, and maybe enjoy a glass of wine. Out on the trail you were glad to get in a few rounds of poker and a slug of whiskey before dropping from pure exhaustion only to wake up and do it again.

The routes were generally fairly set for each pack trip. This map shows some of the trails used with camp spots designated by small triangles. “Baca Location No 1” is in the region of the Valles Caldera. I think that’s what intrigues me the most. AJ Connell’s brother and his business partner eventually purchased the Baca Land Grant, the Valles Caldera, and the school had permission to ride that country on their pack excursions. The views would’ve been spectacular. The experience unmatched. And I cannot begin to imagine just how amazing a summer here at the Los Alamos Ranch School would’ve been!

So find a summer program for yourself and the family! Find a camp, a tour, a hike, a trail run or something fun to do outdoors. Make this summer the best one yet! And when you’re ready to buy or sell your home in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’m a hometown girl and I love to chat about real estate in Los Alamos!

I think there are two things that almost all Los Alamos Public Schools alumni can agree upon. One: the education a student receives from the schools in Los Alamos is excellent! Two: the education a student receives from the schools in Los Alamos tends to be unconventional.

Why unconventional? If you spend any time at all on Central Avenue you’ll probably notice a LOT of tour busses, out of district yellow school buses and a significant number of vehicles with out of state plates. They’re coming to Los Alamos to learn about science. To study history. To follow the US Parks Service Tour of the Manhattan Project Historical Sites. But they’re all here to learn. The actual source of what they want to learn is part of the daily lives of average citizens here in Los Alamos. So I suppose living here in town means you’ve got access to a lot of knowledge!

I’ve heard stories of fellow LAHS alumni bemoaning that their Physics teacher actually wrote the textbook. We have outdoor classrooms and guest speakers from LANL in all of our schools from elementary to high school. When Jean Nereson was still teaching in the elementary schools, she utilized teaching aids she had literally brought back from her travels to every continent on the planet. She wasn’t the only one. Our teachers have traditionally been some of the most intelligent and capable scientists, doctors, historians, writers, and musicians in their own right. And that’s before we take into account the incredible cooperation between UNM-LA and our public schools or the possibility of a high school internship at a National Laboratory.

But that unconventional and sometimes eclectic education began much earlier than the scientific laboratory. In fact, it started at the beginning. When AJ Connell approached Yale graduates and asked if they’d like to sign on for an adventure!

Come on! What could be more adventurous than signing on to teach between 6 and 9 boys of varying ages at a high mountain ranch school far from “modern” civilization in an area so remote that you had to grow your own food? In 1918 that was the status of Ashley Pond’s and AJ Connell’s Los Alamos Ranch School.

In September of 1918, AJ Connell was joined at the Los Alamos Ranch School by Fayette Samuel Curtis, Jr. “Fay” Curtis, as he became known, had only just graduated from Yale in June. He’d been struggling to overcome tuberculosis, and he would be responsible for teaching all subjects because that’s all the school could afford one master.

The only goal at the Los Alamos Ranch School was that the students would show success and development. They were to learn. How the masters managed this was left entirely up to them. Which is probably why the boys learned so much, so well, and went on to become amazing members of society.

One LARS graduate later recalled shooting craps with the masters using algebra problems and latin lines as currency and allowing luck to determine whether the students had more or less homework. Fermor Church, the school master who later married Ashley Pond’s daughter Peggy, utilized environmental attributes such as the slope of ski hills to illustrate gradients, help students understand geometry, and also as a way to demonstrate principles of physics and geology. He was also known for demonstrating gravity by having boys plunge their hands into boiling water at ten thousand feet altitude!

It seems to me that the largest benefit of the way LARS was run was that school masters and staff were encouraged to continue their own learning. Oddly enough I often think that the fireplace in Fuller Lodge hosted many of the same kind of discussions the beer garden at Bathtub Row Brewery does now. The common denominator is young, highly educated, intelligence professionals. They love to gather and chat about the latest advancements in their fields, possible ways to get more information about new ideas. How to test hypothesis and develop new and better ways to do things. This is how great learning happens. And here in Los Alamos we’ve got this down to an art. Or perhaps a science…

Regardless of your educational background, I hope that as we come to the close of this school year, you consider all the ways in which you and your family can keep the positive learning happening this summer. Attend Science Fest! Hit the PEEC for their summer programs. Attend a talk, a concert, or see a play. The best ways to learn in Los Alamos don’t always happen in the classroom! And when you’re ready to join our unique community on the hill, give me a call! I’m a hometown girl who would love to chat about real estate in Los Alamos with you!

There’s no doubt that Los Alamos residents have a long love affair with Camp May. I’ve heard some fairly interesting theories from friends and acquaintances over the years about why it’s called Camp May. One hypothesis was that it’s unusable until at least May. But while that might be true for some, Camp May’s proximity to the Pajarito Ski Area doesn’t suggest that’s the story behind the name.

Camp May is considered a Los Alamos Campground and is now managed by the county. Back when George and Edith May gifted a fine log cabin to the Los Alamos Ranch School, (which is how Camp MAY got its name!), the land where the cabin was placed belonged to the Forest Service. The Ranch School leased several parcels of Forest Service land for recreation areas. These recreation areas allowed the school to have and utilize base camps for outdoor activities like hunting, trapping, fishing, hiking, and weekend outfitting trips that would have otherwise been difficult to stage from the Big House at the main ranch.

Camp May was most popular with boys from the Spruce Patrol who were older and more experienced. Camp May’s location was higher in elevation than other ranch recreation areas. It saw more snow and more wildlife. You might say it was considered “rougher”. Which is why I find it so very interesting that Camp May was the location of Peggy Pond Church’s week long honeymoon with Los Alamos Ranch School Master, Fermor Church!

The sweet bride received a Colt six shooter and a holster as a betrothal gift and Fermor taught her to shoot on their honeymoon. Peggy’s writings include some thoughts about that experience. Not that she’d been angry or disappointed, but that she might’ve wanted something a bit “sweeter”. Evidently the loud hailstorm on the metal roof and the wood stove belching smoke into the cabin made for an unusual honeymoon. Imagine that! You can read more about Peggy and Fermor on the Los Alamos Historical Society’s blog HERE.

These days Camp May boasts 9 overnight camping sites, fairly modern restrooms, several large group gathering areas, and quick access to some of the best hiking and mountain biking in our area. The other thing Camp May is known for is fall leaves. It’s possible to get some gorgeous photos of colorful Aspen trees in the fall. And overnight camping is available April thru October. (See? You can visit Camp May before May!) If you’re looking for a fun family activity, try tent camping up at Camp May during the height of the changing leaves and get a beautiful holiday family photo to go with your fall break vacation! Camp May is a popular photo location for senior pictures and other major events too.

Something else you might not realize is that the location of Camp May played a big part in the placement of our local ski hills. In the late 1930s, Fermor Church’s nephew Herbert “Hup” Wallis used Camp May as a base to clear some land on Sawyer’s Hill and also on Pajarito Mountain for the boys to ski and sled. Eventually these clear cut areas were used by scientists on the Manhattan Project for winter sports. Of course, there’s no way Hup Wallis strapped explosives to the trees to blow up an area for a ski run. But I’m pretty sure Hup and his crew worked hard with their hands to clear those runs as the boys of the Los Alamos Ranch School did with everything else.

If you’d like more information about the history of skiing in Los Alamos, check out a previous post here. And when you’re ready to join our unique little community on the Pajarito Plateau, give me a call! I’m a hometown Los Alamos girl and I love to talk real estate in Los Alamos!