Plaques to be guide to city's past

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — "Bob Dylan lived here."

By summer's end, residents and tourists alike could be reading those words on one of a dozen plaques the city plans to place throughout downtown Gallup commemorating various moments in the neighborhood's history. Once they're in place, the city hopes to tie the plaques together into a brochure-guided walking tour for visitors.

The city hasn't decided exactly which events to immortalize in downtown Gallup's pavement just yet it's still open to suggestions but it has a few ideas; the Dylan plaque is one.

Before it sets anything in stone, of course, the city wants to make sure it has the details rights. It's enlisted Tim Hagaman, the local representative of the state's Tourism Department, to do most of the research. In addition to perusing public records and scouring the local libraries, he's working with local historians Sally Noe and Martin Link.

"We're going to have to make sure that our facts are straight before we put a plaque in the ground," said City Planner Lisa Baca Diaz, who is heading the project.

While there's no doubt that most of the events on the city's mind at least happened, the line on Dylan is a little more tenuous. Is it true that Gallup was once his home?

Dylan himself has said so. During a 1961 interview on WNYC, he said he'd picked up cowboy, Indian and carnival music during his years here. The liner notes to his 1962 album Freewheelin' repeated the claim.

But the Greenwich Village bard was also known to spin a tall tale or two in the company of reporters, a bunch he didn't much care fore, and by many accounts, the Gallup story was one; however, Hagaman said the reports are well documented. Dylan's father, he said, worked in the local coal mines before moving the family to Minnesota, where Dylan attended high school. That, he said, would place the Zimmerman family no relation to the local traders in Gallup some time in the late 1950s.

Hagaman hasn't yet figured out where the city might put the plaque. He spent two hours combing through county records for an address, but came up with nothing.

Then there's the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. It's been an article of faith and a point of pride among locals that the City Council refused to round up its Japanese American residents when other cities around the country were shipping them off to internment camps. The story was put to use just recently by locals asking the council to show its support for Gallup's Muslims this time as an example of the city's proud legacy.

The trouble is, it may never have happened. Noe and Link, the ones helping Hagaman get his facts right, disagree on whether the council ever passed an anti-internment resolution, and city records of the event have yet to be found.

If neither story pans out, there are still plenty of undisputed cases of the famous and infamous for the city to chose from. There's the coal strike and deadly riot of 1934, the visit Mother Theresa once paid the city, and the armed abduction of former Mayor Emmit Garcia to name just a few. Baca Diaz said she wanted to come up with approximately 20 options and let the council narrow them down to a dozen.

"We're probably looking at 12 for the first go-around," she said. "But, of course, history is always in the making."

Whether moved by new events or old memories, the city can add to the project at any time.

Baca Diaz would like to have a final list of recommended plaques ready for the council's consideration by mid-May and hopes to see the first one embedded by July.

City officials hope they'll make a good addition to a pair of other recent downtown investments : the nearly $200,000 worth of new murals painted across the neighborhood by local artists recently and the $2.17 million courthouse plaza that's nearing completion.

For now, Hagaman still has the history books open. Anyone with suggestions for a plaque or a little insight should call Baca Diaz at 863-1240.

And Bob, if you still have that old Gallup address handy, they'd appreciate it.