In New Mexico there is a town called Truth or Consequences and it is weird. The Tor.com crew came across a mention of this small town last week and when it came up in casual conversation it seemed that everyone had a tiny tidbit of oddness to share about the area. The more we looked at it, the more random, seemingly unconnected bits of strangeness we uncovered; as if weirdness bubbles up from the town’s natural hot springs.
The name of the town itself (population 6500-ish) is just the beginning.
1.) Truth or Consequences changed its name on a dare… on April Fool’s Day.
The town was originally dubbed Hot Springs on account of the, well, hot springs that it sits on top of. The springs themselves churn through nearly 100 liters of water a second at around 110 degrees and make Truth or Consequences a popular place for retirees who benefit from healing spa treatments.
This changed when, in 1950 Ralph Edwards, the host of radio quiz show Truth or Consequences, announced that the show would air an installment from the first town that changed its name to match that of the show’s. Hot Springs was picked out of all the applicants because, according to host Ralph Edwards, it demonstrated “a real friendliness for people and a desire to help mankind.”
The town held a vote and the name change was made official on April Fool’s Day, 1950.
To this day, the town holds a yearly festival during the first weekend of May celebrating Ralph Edwards and the name change. Edwards himself officiated at the festival every year until he was physically incapable, and has a park, auditorium, and even his own day named after him in town.
2.) Stephen King holds the keys to the city.
Completely unrelatedly, horror master Stephen King was invited to the town on November 19, 1983 by his college roommate and early collaborator Chris Chesley. King gave a speech, was given the keys to the city, and finished up with a book signing for a massive crowd. November 19 is now Stephen King Day in town. And every year on that day the moon turns red.*
*Not really, but god, can you imagine?
Thanks to author Justin Taylor for the tip!
3.) It’s literally in the middle of nowhere.
The town’s tourist videos tout that it’s only 120 miles north of El Paso and only 150 miles south of Albuquerque. i.e. in the middle of nowhere. (It’s also about 150 miles west of Roswell, but they don’t mention that…)
4.) The gravestones face the wrong way.
This observation comes courtesy of Tor.com guest blogger Allegra Frazier, who visited the town a few years back and found it to be like most other small towns… aside from its weird graveyards.
Cemetary tombstones usually face outwards, with the writing on them facing an access road or path. This placing is so ubiquitous, so common, that you don’t notice this until you drive through a cemetery where all the tombstones have their back to you.
The dead deny you in Truth or Consequences, but even that shivery detail pales against the final thing we found….
5.) This is where you can find America’s first and only spaceport.
Virgin Galactic began constructing Spaceport America 30 miles outside of town back in 2006 and recently completed all major construction. There have been 9 sub-orbital test launches done at the site so far and Virgin president Richard Branson is hopeful that 2012 will see the launch of the first civilian space flight from the facility.
The site was chosen due to the relatively stable and dry weather and lack of air traffic over the area. (And not because Truth or Consequences is seemingly a magnet for weird things.) We suppose that the long drive there is no barrier to space travelers. If you can afford to go into space, you can afford to go anywhere….
But that’s not even everything. We didn’t even get into how the town has been used to test geothermal energy models. Or how two separate professional wrestling personas embodied by one man call this town home! So… weird name, spaceport, healing spas, dead that don’t behave, a thumbs up from Stephen King… all in a place where no one can reach you for hours if anything should go wrong? We are so going there.
Stubby the Rocket is the mascot of Tor.com and is now offering sub-orbital flights starting at a flat $1 million a seat. Please send all your money directly to Stubby and don’t mention this to anyone else.
Regarding the Stephen King section above, Dark Tower afficionados will not fail to recognize the significance of the date of Sai Stephen King Day in ToC!
See, weirdness continues, the comments start at 2.
The “middle of nowhere” comment is almost spot-on. I lived for a little while in Hatch, New Mexico – about 40 miles south of Truth or Consequences. Things may have changed in the last 13 years or so, but at the time the nearest stoplight was in T or C – 40 miles away. The nearest McDonalds was also in T or C – 41 miles away. Of course, I have no idea where the next nearest one was after that. I guess when you live in that part of New Mexico and T or C is the closest civilization then you are way off the beaten path.
They hadn’t built the space port when I was there. That’s cool. And not at all surprising.
Two of my friends worked on the archaeological survey carried out prior to the expansion of the runway at the space port (my friend Jim was actually the lead archaeologist on that work).
I like to mention this as often as possible, just because it’s fun to use the phrases “archaeological survey” and “space port” in the same sentence without talking about science fiction. It’s very New Mexico-y to do so.
Shalter @3: (cue theremin music)
Ian Tregillis @5: That is indeed a New Mexico thing. So is scenery that could be used unmodified for a TV episode where they land on an alien planet.
If you ever drive across Staten Island on the freeway, you may spot small blue-and-white signs directing you to the Teleport. Don’t get your hopes up. It’s just a corporate communications facility. Those signs have been an occasion of disappointment for every SF reader who’s seen them.
the two pro-wrestlers. Are they both called La Parka?
See, weirdness continues, the comments start at 2.
There is a comment 1, my friend, but the human mind is incapable of correlating its contents.
I’m curious as to whether you happened upon the name of the town whilst addressing the packages you sent to me containing my Memory of Light backpack and books, which I received yesterday.
Also, super excited that you wrote an article (albeit a ‘weird’ one) about my town!
Don’t forget the “Toybox” killer is from Truth or Consequences.
“The investigation began … when one of Ray’s neighbors saw a woman naked and bloody on a road…”
How about the resavoir that is near the town called elephant butte is welled up ontop of an old town and when the water is receeding you can see the top of the old hospital . It was also home to David Parker Ray or the Toy Box Killer. and the belife is that he killed more than 60 people and the bodies were dumped in the lake. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
don’t forget it was the home of David Parker Ray, the Toy-Box killer
Oooh, also…. at the end of your post you say, “We are so going there.”
When you do, you MUST LET ME KNOW! I would love to give you the dime tour and buy you lunch and/or dinner!
~Paige from (Truth or Consequences) New Mexico
don’t forget the packs of wild dogs that roam the hot water district — or the woman who was mauled to death on a Sunday Afternoon by a pit bull and NO ONE bothered to help her despite her cries for help
We just stopped at ToC on our way from El Paso to Albuquerque. With the exception of maybe the McDonalds and the Walmart, It seems a bit like a place that time forgot. I half expected to see tumbleweed roll through. We wanted to see and test out the hot springs but we’re told by a gentleman that all the property around it was privately owned so we would have to pay to access it at this resort or some other place. A bit disappointing. It has a cool name but not really worth the trek imho.
It’s not too far from Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, which offers fabulous birding. especially in winter when it’s home to zillions of snow geese and sandhill cranes.
I went to TorC this past weekend for a little get-away with my girlfriend for some hot springs soaking and relaxation. Although my girlfriend and I had a nice little get-away, we experienced some weird things while there. First, the grocery store, we felt outta place, the stares and greets were odd, and the shopping carts that we had not seen since we were kids. Second, we only saw one kid there and not cats nor dogs. Third, more oddly stares and greets when we went out the evening we arrived. Fourth, the eerie dead silence when I walked a block away from where we stayed, to smoke a cigarette around 9pm the night we arrived. Not a cricket, car sound, kids playing outside, or any sounds, but the foot steps of a drifter walking very fast carrying a backpack with his sleeping bag across the street from where I stood. Like he was hurrying to get outta Dodge. Fifth, how relaxed we got after our first soaks. Sixth, how long the night hours were, I kept waking up thinking it was time to get up and it was 1am, 1:13am, 2:30am, 3:50am, and on. My girlfriend woke up at midnight and was up for acouple hours and she’s the kind of person that knocks out quick and is a deep sleeper. Seventh, how bright the light was coming into our room from the sides of the blinds at 6:01am, when the shape of the building and where our room was located made it impossible for sunlight to sneak in. Eighth, my watch, though it was ticking, it was at 1:38 with the previous date, at 9am when I picked it up to strap it on my wrist.. Ninth, More odd stares when we stopped in at McDonald’s for breakfast. Tenth, when we returned home, we went out to dinner and had a few drinks, I got pretty drunk and blacked out, and the next morning my girlfriend told me how I was crying and kept ranting that something wasn’t right and that the drifter I saw in TorC looked scared and seemed like he was trying to get away from something. And how I kept saying that something happened to us while we there and that we were probably abducted by ET’s. It was very Twilight Zone-ish. The soaking and relaxation was worth going, but the eerie stuff was just plain eerie.
Just one note about the gravestones – traditionally they face east as that is the direction from which Jesus is said to arrive during the end times in the Bible. It is odd that there isn’t a road along that side of the tombstones though. Great article btw.
i was enjoying a beer in a tavern in t or c, and i found myself in a conversation with a very rough talking young woman in her early 20’s. she began the conversation by telling me she could beat me up, badly, if she wanted to.
i agreed with her, a conversation about her life took place, and somehow i could sense her high degree of unhappiness, her high degree of mental illness, and her high degree of dysfunction. i seemed to successfully guess her criminal background, past negative experiences with three types of abuse at the hands of men from childhood to the present, and her having had her children taken from her custody.
at that point she accused me of being from a county or state agency and had access to her private files. i assured her that i had never been in t or c in my life until that day, and, being on my way to tucson, probably would never again be in t or c again. she was quite rattled that she could be read so easily by some one educated in human behavior, and experienced in working with troubled young people. as us easterners like to say, t or c is a “quaint little town”.
I think I remember Phil Scheider saying that the whole UFO thing got its start here back in 1903 when the US Cavalry stumbled onto a group of aliens in a cave. I don’t know much else about it but there you go.
Great place to live if you want to get away from the big city rat race. Only one stop light in the county, two if you count Walmart’s stop light. Cost of living is low. Ten minute drive to lakes and the outdoors. No one to bother you if you like to explore the mountains.Lots of wildlife, fishing.
The Twelfth Doctor had an adventure that featured Truth or Consequences, by the way.
Quaint little town that is in the middle of no where. No city around it for like 200 miles.
Nights are eerily quiet. A top the hill is a group of people who are mysterious. They never leave their compound. Drums beat at night and smoke goes up to the skies. No one and I mean no one, including authorities DARE go there. Strange stories about what is going on there. A powerful sorcerer lives up there and the group is quiet and dreaded. Mainly made up of black people. Legend has it that the sorcerer hexed several people in town.
The hot springs were amazing. Only a mcdonaMcDo and a Walmart. One bar. Standing by the road you may see one car every three hours. Silence and a very very wierd feeling when here.
T or C gives me the creeps. It looks like it’s an empty, fake town. I love exploring, and am used to seeing odd things, but this town is high on my list of creepiness. I drove up and down the side streets, alleys…everything is perfectly clean. The windows facing the alleys were all intact, curtains inside clean and intact. No trash anywhere, no huge weeds and most of the buildings and businesses in the old ‘downtown’ area are empty of people. Me and a buddy went during the week and all those businesses in that area were closed. But when you look inside everything appears normal. I couldn’t get over how clean everything was, inside and out. We couldn’t understand why nothing was open ~ 3 p.m. and thought that they must just be open on weekends since this area was more touristy. We went back on a weekend and the same thing. Nothing open.
Also, it’s bizarre how the entire town is on one side of the Rio Grande river (and up against it). The other side of the river is completely barren. No streets, maybe 2 or 3 structures in the distance, and absolutely no way of getting there. It makes the town feel like a prison.
The people walking around are scary looking but harmless. They look like druggies, lost, etc and just wandering around. I believe they were brought there to give the illusion that the town is alive. I’ve seen this in many other small, touristy towns as well. The few I talked to were from other parts of the country.