When a town is there, a town is there for a reason: a reason that may grow and flower as the town grows, and spring forth seeds that in turn spring forth new reasons for a town: and these then can outgrow and overwhelm and smother the original reason, which lives on only in the dried twinings of a name in an ancient language. And no one now will think there could have been another reason for this town than the one there is today, or another name, or another language, a people, a simpler need. Especially this is so in the Southwest of this, America, where there have been so many changes of regime: from the unknown painters of rocks near Carrizozo, to the Anasazi farther north, so lost in time their name means simply, "Old Ones," in a later language that is now itself dying out; to the Indian tribes whose daughters kneel in Spanish churches now, quiet dawns of desert Sundays; to the Spanish who gave this country the names our tongues still pronounce; to miners and cattlemen, farmers and railroadmen, artists and tourists and soldiers and wielders of fire.... And each remembers only that the town was here for him alone, for the convenience of the task at hand. As the traveler stops to buy, so the storekeeper stays to offer, and then each with his curious accent continues on into time, according to his habitudes.
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