14 Jul Beginning at the park and creating stewardship of the collection of our natural and cultural resources here at the Chamizal National Memorial Park!

So this past week we were able to get on site and meet some of the staff at CHAM. I continued the inventory of non-accessioned item of the collection and began reading the last SOCS as a means to move forward with its update. I finished the transcriptions of the oral histories of former smelter workers, and the Smeltertown residents which taught me so much of the industrial history of El Paso from the end of the nineteenth century to the twentieth. It blew my mind seeing the documents, memorandums and personal documents at CHAM from its inception in 1966 as we continued the inventory of non-accessioned items. There were a few correspondences from the white house which revealed quite a bit of the development and founding of the Chamizal National Memorial Park and its first superintendent, Franklin G. Smith.

Like always, ¡¡¡Pa’lante mi gente!!!