Return to Alto Homepage • Pioneer Story of Eugene Manlove Rhodes

Gene Rhodes, western writer extraordinaire, once taught in Alto, New Mexico...a claim to fame for Alto!!!

Frank Dobie's biographical essay in The Best Novels and Stories of Eugene Manlove Rhodes : "The riders that ride so free through Rhodes' fiction are usually separated from their cows, but they are infused by the fact – including the code – of their occupation. Their eyes are used to looking through heat devils shimmering over drouth browned mesas and at mountains a look and a half away. Without their knowing it, something of the tonic of sagebrush aroma has passed into the very corpuscles of their blood and something of the assurance belonging to the quietness of the sky has entered into their mental attitudes. They cannot be called earthy characters; the created components of their nature are sometimes too apparent; but they always belong to the Land of Little Rain. Aside from their inherent decency, their most distinguishing characteristic is the vivacity of their talk. It is never glib; it is often witty; it is uniformly natural. The culmination of the art of writing as Eugene Manlove Rhodes practiced it, so it seems to me, is in this talk."

Mickey's Take:
I have a copy of "Gene Rhodes: Cowboy" published in 1955 of which I read about 20 years ago...his stories and his perspectives on New Mexico have stayed with me throughout the years...and enhanced my vision of this beautiful state and its immense history.

There's a small reference in this book to his applying to the Eagle Creek teaching position, in the 1880s before Eagle Creek was christened as "Alto":
"During the spring and summer he would struggle to get the rude outlines of a functioning ranch set up and buy a few cattle on credit. Then, in the fall, when ranch work was at a minimum, he would get a job teaching school and do his chores on week ends. His college work enabled him to get a teaching job, and he applied for the post at Eagle Creek."

One of my favorite excerpts from this book includes his return trip to New Mexico after living in New York for 25 years:
"After twenty five years in New York Gene finally went back to the land he loved. May's parents were gone now, the children were grown, and May and Gene had no ties in New York. They packed up their little car and headed west for New Mexico. By now Gene was a well-known writer. New Mexico was waiting for him. There were celebrations, speeches, honorary degrees, banquets and cocktail parties. But Gene was saddened by what he saw. New Mexico had changed. The row of cottonwoods that shaded Tularosa had been chopped down; automobile roads had been built where once there were trails; tourists filed through the narrow streets of Santa Fe; Taos was an art colony; Engle Ferry was gone--and in its place the tremendous Elephant Butte Dam held in check the surging waters of the Rio Grande. The old Bar Cross headquarters was empty--a hulking white shell on the edge of town that was now no more than a crossroads. The Bar Cross ranch had been cut up and sold off in sections. Fences crisscrossed the once open range."

Gene Rhodes passed away on June 27, 1934...he had instructed his wife that he did not want a funeral..."just take me back up there to the San Andrés Mountains, forty miles from nowhere--"

"May Rhodes performed her sad duty. She took Gene's body back to the site he himself had chosen. Neighbors dug the grave out of white gypsum. Hiram Yoast, Bob Martin and forty others who had known and loved this gallant cowboy followed the wagon that carried his body up the rocky road from Tularosa into the San Andrés through the pass that bore Gene's name. There they left him, with the yuccas blooming around him and an old boulder from his horse corral, carved with this simple inscription: