Marking NM’s Historic Women: Marjorie Bell Chambers & Peggy Pond Church

Photo Credit: Palace of the Governors Photo Archives
Residence of Peggy Pond Church and husband Fermor at Los Alamos Ranch School, Los Alamos, New Mexico
Photographer: T. Harmon Parkhurst
Date: 1925 – 1942?
Negative Number 001288

(SIDE 1) Marjorie Bell Chambers advised Governors and Presidents, participated in the formation of The United Nations, and headed two women’s colleges. She was president of the Los Alamos Girl Scouts, a founding member of the Historical Society and a project historian of the US Atomic Energy Commission for Los Alamos. She served on the County Council, campaigned for Congress, and traveled worldwide advocating for women’s rights. (SIDE 2) Peggy Pond Church, author of the Southwest classic The House at Otowi Bridge and daughter of Los Alamos Ranch School founder Ashley Pond, will forever be “The First Lady of New Mexican Poetry.” As she rode the Pajarito Plateau and camped beneath tall pines, she came to understand that “it is the land that wants to be said.” She captured it in her sensitive poems.

Photo Credit: Palace of the Governors Photo Archives
“Requiem for Edith” by Peggy Pond Church
Library Archival Collection 235-p

Roadside Marker Location: Los Alamos County, US Hwy 502, Mile Marker 0.954

You can view a county by county list of the Historic Women Mile Markers in this pdf.

You can view a map of the Historic Women Mile Markers at www.nmhistoricwomen.org

March is Women’s History Month. During this month we’ll be highlighting some of the women featured on New Mexico’s Historic Women Roadside Markers. Text provided by our colleagues at New Mexico Historic Preservation Division

From the Collection

NMHM/DCA 2014.030.001 a-b. Gift of Francis H. Harlow

1940 Harley-Davidson owned by Francis H. Harlow (22 January 1928 – 1 July 2016)( The Library of Congress’s listing on Francis H Harlow.) , an American theoretical physicist and researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico. Harlow was also a noted expert on Pueblo pottery of the Southwest, publishing in this field as well as in physics. In fact, Harlow traded one of his favorite Pueblo pottery jars for this 1940 Harley Davidson and was known to ride it to nearby Pueblos in search of pottery. He donated his extensive collection of Pueblo pottery to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture several years before his death. In 2016, Harlow’s autobiography was published in the collection Adventures in Physics and Pueblo Pottery: Memoirs of a Los Alamos Scientist.

The photo below was featured in an 2016 Pasatiempo article about Harlow’s final book, Adventures in Physics and Pueblo Pottery: Memoirs of a Los Alamos Scientist

“Frank Harlow on his first motorcycle, a 1952 Harley-Davidson 45 side-valve flathead, photo by Patricia Harlow; courtesy of Museum of New Mexico Press”
photo of bookcover: Adventures in Physics and Pueblo Pottery: Memoirs of a Los Alamos Scientist