“Doorways to the Past: More Tales of the Rio Abajo”

For two men who work primarily with words, local historians Richard Melzer and John Taylor have racked up an impressive array of numbers.

In the last 12 years, the two have published seven books chock full of the history of Valencia County and the Rio Abajo. Those 215 stories recount the lives and loves, triumphs and tragedies of the people, and document the significant events and key places of our community.

What was initially planned as a trilogy of books has now grown to a heptalogy, which sounds like something you need to treat with an ointment, but is actually the term for a series of seven books.

The seventh volume, “Doorways to the Past,” contains 25 tales of people, places and events throughout Valencia County.

“When we started originally we figured there might be three books,” said John Taylor, a Peralta resident and nuclear engineer. “We also have about 18 stories for (book) No. 8.”

Of course they do.

When it’s pointed out that Taylor and his partner in history, Richard Melzer, just keep writing things, Taylor is quick to point out with a laugh, “You just keep publishing them."

In the fall of 1998, La Historia del Rio Abajo made it’s debut in the Valencia County News-Bulletin. The idea of running a monthly history article in the newspaper came from Melzer, a long-time member of the Valencia County Historic Society and now retired local history professor.

The articles are hugely popular with readers and many of them have found their way into the Rio Abajo anthologies written, in part, by and edited by Taylor and Melzer. Proceeds from the book sales support the historical society.

“As John contends, and I agree. I don’t think there’s another county in New Mexico where this has been done,” Melzer said of the in-depth, detailed treatment Valencia County’s history has received from the books.

“I mean, there are county histories, but they tend to be political or focus on the high-profile stories, like murders. This covers all of it.”

As the two have worked together in the last decade-plus assembling the books, the idea that history is actually changing is always present.

“In one of the early books, we wrote about the Los Lunas Mystery Stone,” Taylor said. “Since then, we’ve done a lot more research and studying, and there’s a lot more.”

The new book includes that “lot more” about the Mystery Stone — also known as the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone — an 80-ton boulder with an inscription purported to be the 10 Commandments written in Hebrew.

Melzer said in the years of recounting the history and stories, they’ve not had to retract any of the information they’ve published.

“There is always more to the story, but we’ve been accurate,” he said. “We also haven’t duplicated much; I think all our stories have been original.”

Those stories by no means come solely from Melzer and Taylor, the two point out.

“We have a lot of different authors. If we have somebody who has told a story and it seems like it would be of more general interest, we put it in one of the books,” Melzer said.

They worked with Joan Artiaga to tell the story of the often-wondered-about abandoned bunker on Belen’s west mesa and local attorney Anthony Williams tackled the history of the practice of law in the county in the most recent book.

“There are those things, they just come up. People say, ‘Well, what about that?’ So we go find out about it,” Taylor said.

Whether it’s goat heads or grease wood bushes, churches, floods, the Days of 49, doctors, veterinarians, disease, hanging trees or merchants, chances are if you pull on a thread, history will pop out.

“To do this, you have to have historians with eclectic minds,” Taylor said.

“And it’s an eclectic county,” Melzer follows. “So, let’s put those two together and you get this.” A heptalogy.

Eclectic minds and communities aside, the key to being able to tell the history of Valencia County comes down to the people and their willingness to share their memories, stories and artifacts with Melzer and Taylor.

“It’s incredible. We have all these ideas and the people of Valencia County are so interested in their history, whether they’ve been here for generations or have moved here recently. They can’t wait to help us out with the information and memories,” Melzer said.

With that willingness to share, it’s no wonder the trilogy has grown to its seventh edition. Since 2013, the books have been published about every two years.

“The stories just build up. There’s no shortage of them,” Melzer said. “This is such a rich county and I expect there are other counties that are the same but no one’s doing this.

“Every town has a historian, but we’re fortunate in Valencia County we have many towns and several historians.”

Taylor said the county has people who have gravitated to keeping track of the history, who are very invested in that history.

“They want to share it, want to preserve and want to make sure it’s right, because there are these stories and they want to dispel the myths. They want to make sure we get it properly done,” he said. “The history of Valencia County is important and people should have the opportunity to know about it.”

Most of the Rio Abajo history books are available at the Los Lunas Museum of Heritage and Arts, Teofilo’s Restaurante in Los Lunas, the Belen Harvey House Museum when it reopens later this summer and on Amazon.com.

PHOTOS: “Doorways to the Past: More Tales of the Rio Abajo”