One of the things Mrsfabp and I really enjoy is driving through the neighborhoods in Las Cruces to see the different areas, home styles and get a feel for the place. We did it when we visited twice before and have continued to do so since we moved.
As I will talk about in a new post soon, we went to a history of the area series of lectures and became fascinated with the process of change that New Mexico has gone through, especially Las Cruces. Well, while returning from breakfast at Nellie’s one Saturday (our first NM tradition), we took a detour through the neighborhood often called “The Alameda”, and while driving around came to the realization that you can actually see the history of the area through the home styles and set up of the neighborhood.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. While driving, we see a large original adobe home, just beautiful looking, but it is surrounded by several homes of different styles, especially craftsman homes. You can just imagine that adobe having been surrounded by a large tract of land that was sold off to a developer who put up the craftsman homes in a tract, probably sometime in the 20’s or 30’s. Another thing we saw was a pair of craftsman homes separated by a rather nondescript brick home. It is not too hard to see that the craftsman’s homes were there on a larger chunk of land and part of it was sold off and developed, possibly in the 50’s, after the war.
But my absolute favorite was a very large adobe on a corner with the traditional adobe wall surrounding it. There was an irrigation gate in its back yard, But there is no farm there, no land at all around it. What surrounds it is a series of smaller, newer adobe homes on one side and several craftsman homes on the other. You can just picture a large, beautiful farm, overlooking the mountains, with fields of vegetables and fruits. Then some land was sold off and developed with the other nearby adobes and then later on, more land was sold and developed and a bunch of craftsman style homes was built.
It is this patchwork of homes and neighborhoods that makes Las Cruces so interesting and a great place to live.
3 comments:
When we briefly owned a little adobe house in the Alameda, it came with little ditches along the side and across the back of the yard. At some time, water rights must have been included with that home, built in the 1930s. The ditches were no longer part of the area's irrigation system and were filled in with dirt--a perfect place for growing our two chile plants.
The Penguin is observant, hmm?
- Yoda
Observant I am...
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