Southwest united by differences

Glenda Price

During our nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976, a group I belonged to at the time decided to build a series of dioramas explaining the previous 200 years in the American Southwest. It was part of an ambitious project presented in the local library.

It turned out to be more difficult than we’d thought. We didn’t have internet then, and plowing through memoirs required a great deal of determination and fortitude. We did it, though.

Since the American Southwest had been populated for thousands of years by Indians, we began with that. Our hands-on display included skins, a beaver dam and a small teepee. It was a hit with children.

The Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century, led by Francisco Coronado, searching for gold.

Don Juan de O