In the 1920s and ‘30s, the little town of Madrid, New Mexico, put on a show of Christmas lights that was famous throughout the state.
Founded in the late nineteenth century to supply coal for the steam locomotives that were beginning to crisscross the Southwest, Madrid was kept under tight control by the mining companies that owned it. Corporate chiefs provided everything the community’s residents, in their opinion, needed, from schools, stores, and sports facilities (including the first lighted baseball stadium west of the Mississippi), to unlimited free electricity. By supplying power to employees’ homes, however, the mine owners were showing off a different kind of power—power over the people who lived inside.
Each December, Madrid’s residents were required to buy a Christmas tree bought from the company store, part of a larger scheme to funnel workers' wages back to the mine operators. They also had to decorate their houses and yards with electric lights. As many as 150,000 incandescent bulbs, in a variety of colors, lit up the desert night to such an extent that people from Santa Fe and Albuquerque would drive for several hours down dirt roads to admire the display, and at least one airline changed its regular routes during the holiday season so passengers could marvel at Madrid’s lights from above. Most onlookers probably didn’t realize that the spectacle was partly an attempt by the directors of the Albuquerque and Cerrillos Coal Company to control idleness and boost morale in one of the country’s most dangerous mining communities (hundreds of men died in explosions and cave-ins during Madrid’s mining heyday).
During World War II, the show of lights took a hiatus because of blackout regulations. The plug was finally pulled for good in the 1950s when the coal mines were closed and Madrid became a ghost town, a result of railroads switching over to diesel fuel and homes being heated with oil and natural gas. Although the town has never regained the 3,000 residents it had in the early twentieth century—a population, believe it or not, that was nearly the same as Albuquerque’s at that time—the annual Christmas light display has returned in full force thanks to Madrid’s four-hundred quirky, art-loving residents who, since the 1970s, have been bringing the community back to life and making it the main stop for tourists on the Turquoise Trail.
Shown here are several photographs of Madrid’s Christmas lights and nativity scenes in the 1930s, when, during the dark days of winter and the Great Depression, miners’ families enjoyed a few weeks of light and cheer. The images are from the Albuquerque & Cerrillos Coal Company Pictorial Collection, which we have selected for our first "Photographic Collection of the Month." For additional resources related to the history of Christmas festivities in Madrid, see the Albuquerque & Cerrillos Coal Company Records, 1880-1976, in UNM’s Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections.
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