In the modern parlance, I was “today years old” when I learned of thwarted plans throughout 1969 to build a paper mill in Cochiti, San Felipe, Algodones, Isleta, pretty much anywhere along the Rio Grande Parsons & Whittemore could get away with building one.

And man, did P & W try and try and try in what became a months-long public relations, newspaper, community forum, junkets to other towns with paper mills hullabaloo between the company and its shills backers and many more than one single interest group dedicated to killing the project.

It was a veritable jamboree of American Democracy in action.

In looking through newspaper stories, columns, letters to the editor, etc. earlier today about it, the ad below stuck out as not only my favorite single page of the literally hundreds of newsprint pages devoted to the jamboree, I also really like how it quaintly captures a time and that time’s methods in swaying and/or galvanizing public opinion.

Enjoy, from the August 10th, 1969 Albuquerque Journal (page 59)…

Also, belated 2025 thanks to the “New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air and Water,” multiple tribes, other citizen groups and pissed off individuals who prevented a paper mill being constructed in Cochiti, San Felipe, Algodones, Isleta or anywhere else on the Middle Rio Grande. Good work, folks. It’s appreciated.