Thoreau, New Mexico: Origin of a Name

[Side note: this is the same highway Hunter Thompson was travelling in the magnificent opening line of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”  Don’t Drop Acid and Drive, either.]

Google was of zero help in answering the question. The most direct answer to the question was “This town was named after poet and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. However, the name is pronounced thuh-Roo, with local history claiming the town was named after a town administrator.” Great. Dueling origin stories. I could not resolve the matter in the car.

So, being an academic, once I returned to my office in Massachusetts (where a town named after Thoreau would not seem odd), I commenced on a quest to find the answer to my question so I could put it on this here blog so that future travelers of that road oft taken could satisfy their curiosity. (One of the real perks of being a professor—figuring out strange things like this is what I am paid to do!)

The short answer: There is no short answer.

First the (seemingly) undisputed background: In 1890, the Mitchell brothers bought a large tract of land from the Atlantic and Pacific railroad in order to start a lumber business. A town started up, originally named “Mitchell.” The business failed and the land reverted to the railroad in 1893. At some uncertain point, the town was renamed Thoreau.

The obvious place to start is a book mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for Thoreau, New Mexico. Roxanne Trout Heath’s Thoreau: Where the Trails Cross! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the title) published in 1982. Oddly, Mount Holyoke’s library did not have a copy of this volume. Even odder, Amazon has a page for the book, but zero copies for sale. Even odder still, I couldn’t find a used copy of the book for sale anywhere.

Interlibrary loan to the rescue. I got a copy from…are you ready for this?…The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Now why would a library in Arkansas have a rather rare book about Thoreau, New Mexico? The author bio has the answer: Roxanne Trout Heath attended that fine institution. Big Red (the mascot of that institution, modeled after a razorback pig) is surely proud of its graduates.

Heath was a resident of Thoreau and decided the world needed a book to preserve the history of her town. It was self-published (in 1982, recall, when self-publishing was not as easy as it is today). The bulk of the book is interviews with assorted residents of the town. One of the questions she asks in five of the interviews is about the name of the town.

Here is the complete set of answers to that question in Heath’s book:

1. Volten “Fats” Tietjen, an “old-timer”

Q: Do you think Thoreau was named for the Massachusetts philosopher, Henry David Thoreau? If not, why not?
A: No, it wasn’t named for the author. Thoreau was named after a bookkeeper for the Mitchell brothers. The Mitchell brothers, Austin and William, were cutting ties to finish the Santa Fe railroad. They had a small contract and a small railroad. Their sawmill was where the El Paso Natural Gas Company is now. I believe the bookkeeper’s name was Thoreau.

Now that sounds authoritative. Alas, the “I believe” adds note of hesitancy. Tietjen was born in 1905, so he wasn’t alive when the renaming happened, but the Tietjen clan had been in the area before his birth. Suggestive, but not conclusive.

2. Billy Navarre

Q: How do you think Thoreau was named?
A: The railroad was done by contractors and Thoreau was the end of the contract. Another contract took up and went up to what is Coolidge and a fellow by the name of Coolidge had that contract. As post offices were established, people started to settle up and around. The places Coolidge and Thoreau were named for the contractors that built the railroad. This is what many of the old timers believe.

Again, the note of hesitancy at the end. Also: a contractor to build the railroad is not the same thing as the bookkeeper for the Mitchells. Furthermore, Billy didn’t actually live in Thoreau when he was young, but he did go to high school there in the mid-1930s.

3. Anna Radosevich, “a long time resident”

Q: Do you know how Thoreau was named?
A: No

Not exactly helpful. But, it does emphasize the uncertainty in Billy Navarre’s “This is what many of the old timers believe.”

4. Carolyn Carter

Q: Do you remember how the town got its name?
A: For Henry David Thoreau, but I don’t know why, since he died in 1862

Carter first came to Thoreau is 1920 to join her father and moved there in 1933, so she is there at the same time as Billy Navarre, but has a completely different idea about how the town got its name.

5. Laverne Barnes

Q: What information do you have about how the town was named?
A: The town was named after Henry David Thoreau. A lot of people don’t know it but it really was. I’ve got an excerpt here taken out of a book written by Gary L. Tietgen and what he knew of Thoreau in the early years. The town was changed from Mitchell to Thoreau when the railroad came in. From Tietjen’s book, “The Hyde Exploration Expedition was the National Geographic expedition which in 1896 started exploring Pueblo Bonito in Chaca Canyon. They set up headquarters here in Thoreau and then they renamed the place after the Massachusetts philosopher.” There is something that many people do not understand and that is that the pronunciation has not changed. Through the years that I’ve been postmaster here, I have been in touch with the head of the Henry David Thoreau Society and he has corresponded with me at different times. He has sent me information and pictures and things. He came out here to look into the background of why Thoreau was named Thoreau. Most people think Thoreau is pronounced (Thr-ow) which is the French pronunciation but at the time Henry David Thoreau was alive his name was pronounced Thoreau (Thr-ew) not Thoreau as in plateau.

Now a completely different picture has emerged. That sounds rather authoritative. The curious thing, which surprisingly Roxanne Trout Heath did not explore: the most authoritative sounding explanations are from Volten Tietjen, the “old timer” who was seemingly certain about the bookkeeper story and Gary Tietjen who authoritatively says it was Henry David Thoreau. How are Volten Tietjen and Gary Tietjen related? Sadly, Heath does not say.

Heath’s conclusion about the name: “It appears most likely that Thoreau was named for a personage within its boundaries or an old Army paymaster.” It is not at all clear based on what is in this book how Heath reached that conclusion.

So, I went to get a copy of this book by Gary L Tietjen, to see if there were more details. Found it: Encounter with the Frontier, an obviously self-published book from 1969. Once again, Mount Holyoke’s library did not have a copy. There was a copy for sale at Amazon. For a mere $99. It is signed, so that surely pushes up the price. I did find another copy elsewhere…for half that price. But interlibrary loan found me a copy to borrow for free. This copy came from the University of Arizona.

Sure enough there is a page describing the origin of Thoreau. However, it turns out that the quotation from the book that Laverne Burns read in his interview with Heath isn’t actually in Tietjen’s book. Burns was paraphrasing. I have no idea why Heath thought he was reading from the book. Here is what Tietjen actually wrote:

In 1896 the Hyde exploring expedition was organized to excavate the Pueblo Bonito ruins at Chaco Canyon. In time, the expedition developed into an extensive Indian trading business. Hyde’s had created a market for Navajo rugs and jewelry and did a prosperous business in several stores. They put up three warehouses and a store at Mitchell and renamed the place Thoreau after the Massachusetts philosopher.

There you have it. The authoritative answer. Right? Gary L. Tietjen did his homework and figured this all out. Right?

Sigh. The preface to Tietjen’s book has the following note:

I wanted more to recapture the spirit of the times than to recite cold facts, and the reader will notice that I have sometimes sacrificed the latter for the former. A historian is always confronted with contradictions, and the reader may be interested in knowing what I did with these. If I could not determine which story was most likely, I tried to decide which source was the most reliable in other areas. Failing this, I took the most interesting account.

Rarely does an author tell you up front that you can’t trust the book he just wrote. Sadly, Tietjen gives no indications when his stories are unreliable. And sadly, the story that Thoreau is named after Henry David Thoreau is the most interesting story. But, is it the true story?

That is as far I got. I can’t find anything else about the naming of this town that does not rely on Heath’s or Tietjen’s self-published books. So, if you are travelling down Highway 40 and start wondering about the origin of the name Thoreau, you will have to continue to wonder.

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