Towns of the Sandia Mountains

Part of Arcadia Publishing's beloved Images of America series, Mike Smith's Towns of the Sandia Mountains gathers more than 200 archival photographs to tell the story of the small communities tucked into the eastern flank of New Mexico's Sandias. Carnuel, Tijeras, San Antonio, Cedar Crest, Sandia Park, San Antonito, and Placitas all surface here, their histories drawn from public archives, historical societies, and private family collections. As the back cover notes, this was the very first book to share the mountain towns' past with a general audience.

Smith, a local historian, traces a remarkable layering of cultures: ancient peoples drawn to the creeks and game, Spanish protective outposts, Civil War soldiers bound for Glorieta Pass, Navajos passing the mountains' southern end after the Long Walk, Anglo homesteaders, and tuberculosis patients seeking the dry mountain air. A clean, sound copy of this regional photographic retrospective is a genuinely useful record of a landscape whose ox-cart trails are now highways.