Book Signing for Twelve Hundred Miles at the Silver City Museum on Saturday, January 28 at 2 pm
The Silver City Museum invites the community to a presentation and book signing for Twelve Hundred Miles by Horse and Burro with authors Harley Shaw and Mara Weisenberger. The presentation will take place on Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 2 pm at the Museum, located at 312 West Broadway in downtown Silver City. The book will be available for sale at the presentation.
Birding enthusiasts, historians, naturalists, and even armchair adventurers will all find something to love in Twelve Hundred Miles by Horse and Burro, a chronicle of a young man from a West Texas ranching family with a driving ambition to be a professional naturalist and writer. J. Stokley Ligon's work in bird conservation, habitat protection, and wildlife legislation during the mid-twentieth century is well-documented in his own writing and the writing of others. But hovering in the background of Ligon's life story has always been the rumor of a trip he made alone as a young man in 1913 in which he covered much of New Mexico alone on horseback. Details of the trip had faded into history, and Ligon a self-effacing man had never published the story. As it turns out, the trek was Ligon's first job with the US Biological Survey, and it did not go entirely undocumented. The breeding-bird population report that eventually resulted from the journey, photographs from glass plate negatives, and perhaps most enticingly Ligon's own personal diary from these travels are presented in Twelve Hundred Miles by Horse and Burro. Not just a compelling account of the expedition itself, the materials and insights found in this volume also reveal aspects of Ligon's family history, his early interest in wildlife, and the development of the wilderness skills needed to undertake such a survey.
Using his original itinerary and handwritten report, the authors of Twelve Hundred Miles by Horse and Burro revisited many of the places that Ligon surveyed and in a few cases were even able to locate and repeat Ligon's early photographs. Combined with a discussion of the conditions of birds and other wildlife then and now, this volume serves as a useful tool for understanding how wildlife numbers, distribution, and habitats changed in New Mexico over the course of the twentieth century.
Harley Shaw is a wildlife consultant and retired research biologist. He has authored or coauthored four popular books: Soul Among Lions:The Cougar as Peaceful Adversary, Stalking the Big Bird: A Tale of Turkeys, Biologists and Bureaucrats, Around Hillsboro, and Twelve Hundred Miles by Horse and Burro. Harley now lives in Hillsboro New Mexico, where he is currently secretary of the Hillsboro Historical Society.
Mara Weisenberger is currently a Wildlife Biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, San Andres National Wildlife Refuge. Mara has been the senior wildlife biologist at San Andres National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico for the past eighteen years.. She previously worked at Kofa National Wildlife Refuge near Yuma, Arizona. A published author in scientific literature, she holds a B.A. degree in Psychology with a concentration in animal behavior and a M.S. degree in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Arizona. Her graduate work evaluated the behavioral and physiological effects of low-flying military aircraft on desert mule deer and desert bighorn sheep. She has a Master Bander's permit and has been banding resident and Neotropical migrant birds since 1995, capturing several new species not previously documented on the San Andres National Wildlife Refuge or in south-central New Mexico. Mara resides in Las Cruces, New Mexico with her husband and two children, who share her passion for wildlife and the outdoors.
The Silver City Museum creates opportunities for residents and visitors to explore, understand and celebrate the rich and diverse cultural heritage of southwestern New Mexico by collecting, preserving, researching and interpreting the region's unique history. For more information about the Museum and its programs, please contact Museum staff at (575) 538-5921 or
