Okay, so it isn’t Thursday. I thought it could still be fun to take a look at Ashley Pond back through the years. Especially now that we’re able to get out for our Los Alamos Concert Series, people are really enjoying gathering at Ashley Pond to catch up with family and friends and listen to the music. But then, Ashley Pond has been a gathering place for one population or another since the beginning.
If you didn’t grow up here in Los Alamos and you’re not necessarily into history, you might not know that Ashley Pond was a person. I don’t mean that the pond was named Ashley because of a guy. I mean his first name was Ashley and his last name was really Pond.
Ashley Pond Jr. – The Person
Ashley Pond Jr. grew up in Detroit, Michigan. During the Spanish-American War he had issues with Typhoid. As was the usual suggestion of doctors in that era, it was suggested a change of climate might do his health a favor. He was sent to New Mexico to recuperate and grew to love the wildness of the place. He decided this was the perfect environment to grow boys into real men. Men who had skills that would serve them in whatever endeavors arose in their futures. With that in mind, he founded his first Ranch School in Watrous, NM. Unfortunately, it was washed away by flood. He farmed in Roswell next, and then ran a dude ranch in Pajarito Canyon before coming up to the Pajarito Plateau and founding our Ranch School here in Los Alamos. The first students entered in 1918 and within a few years Ashley Pond turned the running of the school over to AJ Connell and went to Europe to serve with the Red Cross in WWI. Eventually he returned to Santa Fe to his family’s home on East Palace Avenue where he would live out the rest of his life.
Ye Old Watering Hole
In the beginning, our Ashley Pond wasn’t really a pond. It was a depression in the ground, a low spot where water gathered in wet weather. And where water gathered on the Pajarito Plateau, people took their stock to drink it. In the 1880’s it was known by the local homesteaders as the “Stock Watering Tank”. Not such an inspiring name, but practical.
With the coming of the ranch school and Ashley Pond Jr, the muddy puddle in the meadow just wasn’t cutting it for the school’s water source. The students built a small dam in Los Alamos Canyon and ran a 6 ft watering pipe to a holding tank near the Big House.
From Watering Hole to Duck Pond
The next pond expansion happened in the way that many of these things do. The Ranch School had a reputation for outdoor pursuits. With a more reliable source of water coming from the dam in Los Alamos Canyon, then director A.J. Connell decided it was time to add canoeing, fishing, and swimming to the activities available for students. There was the added incentive of pond ice skating in the winter as well.
With that in mind, the pond was dredged in order to make it deeper. Using the excess water from the school’s supply pipe, the pond was made deep enough for not only outdoor water sports, but also as an irrigation source for the fields below the pond. In the winter, blocks of ice were cut from the pond and stored in the school’s Ice House not far away to provide ice year round for residents of the Ranch School. The pond expansion is often considered a turning point in the school’s success!
Of course, in the early years of the pond it was common to take a dive off the platform and come up covered in mud and grass. But that’s pond swimming at its finest. Not that the name “Duck Pond” was really very fitting. That issue was remedied soon enough by one of the masters at the school. William Mills is reported to have had a flair for puns. Hence his choice for “Ashley Pond”. Can you imagine if they hadn’t ditched the second Pond? Welcome to Ashley Pond Pond? Seems more than a little redundant doesn’t it?
The War Years
During the years of the Secret City, Ashley Pond was surrounded by buildings. The hope was that the small body of water could act as a firebreak between the goings on in the Technical Areas and the wooden buildings housing the personnel. In the photo from the Los Alamos Historical Archives, Central Avenue is the dirt road on the left. Our Community Center was built where the former Big House used to stand. It’s a bit disconcerting at best to see this photo and compare it to the Ashley Pond we know in the modern era. But oh, how time changes things!
Ashley Pond has gone through many incarnations, expansions, improvements, and uses. If nothing else, perhaps we should just be glad we don’t need to check our iced beverages for possible pond “floaties” these days. Ice comes from the modern freezer, and the pond is for community events, pleasant evening walks, and as a gathering place for family and friends.
When you’re ready to be a part of our community here in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’d love to share my love of Los Alamos, our unique history, and our fast paced residential market with you!
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