There are a lot of things Edward Abbey didn’t like: dams, fences, billboards—and cars in national parks. Writing of his time working at Arches National Park, in Desert Solitaire, he railed against visitors who never stepped from their vehicles: “Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs—anything—but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out.”

This fall, a series of community meetings revealed what many Railyard residents considered a serious problem: the rising homeless population in Santa Fe, and a perceived parallel uptick in crime. With the departure of the Occupy Santa Fe encampment and the opening of Santa Fe’s new Interfaith Community Shelter on Cerrillos Road, the complaints have abated—but the problem hasn’t.

On a sunny Saturday in March 2010, Republican candidates and supporters thronged the halls of the Albuquerque Hilton. That morning, New Mexico’s Republican gubernatorial field seemed every bit as wide-open as the GOP’s current presidential field.

 Every year, thousands of tourists with open pocketbooks flock to Santa Fe for its multiple culture festivals, opera shows and art galleries.

The City Different consistently tops lists as one of the country’s best destinations for food, wine and culture. In 2011, Condé Nast named Santa Fe the third best place to visit in the United States. This year, the city was chosen over Lake Tahoe and others to host the International Mountain Biking World Summit, a highlight Mayor David Coss emphasized in his annual State of the City address this past fall.

“This is a great place for active, outdoor vacations,” Coss said in the October speech, “for nature and environmentally friendly travel; for food, wine, spas, wellness, art, culture and history.”

On a late June afternoon, 18 mile-per-hour winds whistle across an open meadow on a small piece of private land in the Jemez Mountains. In the saddle between two pine-covered ridges at the edge of the property, an aspen tree teeters over onto the bare wire of an electrical pole, causing a spark. Over the next 14 hours, the resulting fire burns 43,000 acres, or one acre every 1.17 seconds. It devours areas the size of a football field in (literally) two seconds. In a little over a month, it has spread through 156,000 acres and incinerated 63 homes.

It’s not easy to summarize an entire year in 10 abbreviated news stories.


Or is it?

If a tree falls in the woods, is it a catastrophe? On June 26, it was.

As the possible groundbreaking for construction on Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium pit manufacturing facility draws nearer, the past year has seen countless threats to the controversial project.

It’s been a turbulent 2011 for Santa Fe Public Schools, between the controversial extension of the superintendent’s contract and poor student achievement results. Here’s a look at the numbers that point to the need for reform and an update on related issues.

Jerome Block Jr. packed the headlines all summer and fall before his work as a Public Regulation commissioner came to a highly scrutinized end.