Dawson NM
The Dawson Elk Valley Ranch has a new owner – officially. Five years after the Colfax County ranch was placed on the market, and one year after an agreement was announced, The Nature Conservancy has acquired the 50,000-acre property, once the site of the coal town of Dawson and two of the nation’s worst mine…
I am honored to announce that Crosses of Iron: The Tragic Story of Dawson, New Mexico, and Its Twin Mining Disasters was recognized with a book award last month by the Mining History Association at its 35th annual conference in Gunnison, Colorado. Crosses of Iron was one of two books selected this year for the…
Looks like the next chapter in the extraordinary history of Dawson will have to wait. The purchase of the Dawson Elk Valley Ranch by The Nature Conservancy and several partners, announced with much fanfare back in December, is off – at least for now. The reason? Some uncertainty with the status of the $50 million…
Seems like just yesterday. In reality, it has been nearly five years since I wrote a story that the Dawson Elk Valley Ranch had been put on the market for the tidy asking price of $96 million. To put that into some context, I wrote that while I was in the early stages of researching…
I’ll go pretty much anywhere to speak about Dawson. So I didn’t give distance a second thought when I was invited to present this month at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M., roughly a 130-mile, one-way trip from my Albuquerque home. Gary Torres did me one better. The 72-year-old son of a coal…
Where to begin? That’s the challenge in trying to describe what it was like to attend this year’s biennial Dawson reunion over Labor Day weekend on the old townsite. Two years ago, when I came to my first reunion, I was about a month away from submitting the final version of my manuscript to the…
A funny thing happened moments into my Dawson book presentation Saturday afternoon at the Tucumcari Railroad Museum. A roaring freight train rushed by the depot, interrupting my talk and prompting laughter among the roughly 50 folks in attendance. “That seems appropriate,” I said, before playfully pointing to a gentleman in the audience. “Frank, that was…
As a first-time book author, I will forever be grateful to the writers and publications that have published positive reviews of Crosses of Iron since its release by the University of New Mexico Press this past October. That includes David Steinberg at the Albuquerque Journal, Jim Frost at the New Mexico Genealogist and David Caffey…
This list will be updated as new events are confirmed. No presentations or book signings are scheduled at this time.
Two years ago, while making revisions to my manuscript, I remember receiving a marketing questionnaire from a University of New Mexico Press publicist, seeking my input on marketing my upcoming book, Crosses of Iron. Among the questions: “Do you know of any awards for which your book qualifies that should be considered for submission? Please…