D151. What are the names of Albuquerque’s pro baseball teams over the years?
The Dons, the Cardinals, the Dukes, the Dodgers and the Isotopes. 

D152. When did Albuquerque lose its professional baseball team the first time?
During World War II Tingley Field closed from 1942 until 1946. Baseball fans were entertained by semi-pro clubs and Kirtland’s Flying Kellys, which included major and minor league players. 

D153. When did the first public school open?
The Sisters of Charity opened a public school in September 1881. The nuns also opened Our Lady of the Angels Private School. Both were located in the convent. The nuns taught the private school, and Jesuit priests taught the public school.  

D154. When did Albuquerque get its first reputable mortuary?
In 1881 Henry and Oren Strong were driving an ox team to El Paso and lost one ox. They stayed in Albuquerque and started a furniture business. They added an undertaking department when they bought out an undertaker operating in the back of a saloon. This became Strong's Mortuary.  

D155. What mortician advanced city beautification?
In the early 1900s Chester French raised beautiful dahlias and morning glories at his operation at Broadway and Central – the first flower garden in town. He gave away bulbs and seeds to anyone who would plant them and taught children how to grow flowers. His bouquets graced civic banquet tables for years. 

D156. What single decision had the biggest impact on early Albuquerque?
In the late 1870s railroad representatives asked Bernalillo landowner Francisco Perea and his nephew José Leandro Perea if they would sell land for shops and repair facilities. They quoted a price the railroad people considered unreasonable and refused to budge. The railroad found affordable land in Albuquerque. That’s why Albuquerque and not Bernalillo became a railroad boom town. 

D157. Who were among Albuquerque’s first land speculators?
In 1879 the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe quietly cut a deal with merchant Franz Huning, grocer Elias Stover and attorney William Hazeldine. They bought all the land in or near the right of way and deeded it to a railroad subsidiary for $1 and a share of profits from sale of lots. After the railroad arrived land that was virtually worthless previously was selling for $2,000 per lot. Huning in 1881 developed the first suburb, the Highland Addition. 

D158. What were Albuquerque’s first organizations?
Albuquerque's first Masonic Temple was built in 1881. The Ballut Abyad Shrine was chartered in 1887. In 1899 the Albuquerque Elk's Lodge began. By 1912 Albuquerque had almost 50 fraternal, secret, benevolent, or social clubs. The Masons completed a larger temple in 1911 at Seventh and Central. It burned in 1971. 

D159. When did Albuquerque’s first opera house open?
The Grant Opera House opened in 1883; on November 11 the first play performed was “HMS Pinafore.” 

D160. When did Albuquerque get its first utilities?
On December 31, 1880 Albuquerque Gas Company was incorporated. The city got its first telephone system in 1882 and the first electric light works a year later. The first franchised water works opened in1885. An illuminating gas plant was franchised in 1886.  

D161. Where were Albuquerque’s first electric lights?
On October 31, 1883, the Montezuma Saloon had the city’s first electric lights. 

D162. When was the first fire station built?
In 1882 citizens raised money for a fire cart, and several businessmen donated the building materials for a small wooden building. On March 6 of that year a major fire destroyed a livery stable and two stores; only a shift in wind direction prevented greater loss. The City Commission in 1885 passed a law requiring only masonry construction.  

D163. What were the biggest employers in the late 1800s?
The biggest employers were the Santa Fe Railway’s shops, the Albuquerque Wool Scouring Mills, the Albuquerque Foundry and Machine Works and the Southwestern Brewery and Ice Co. After 1900, the American Lumber Co. was a major employer. 

D164. When was lumber a major industry in Albuquerque?
In the early 1900s American Lumber Co. was second only to the railroad as Albuquerque’s largest employer.  Its 110-acre complex was built between 1903 and 1905 near Twelfth Street. That’s how the Sawmill Neighborhood got its name. At its peak it employed 850 men and produced milled lumber, doors and shingles.  

D165. How many people worked for the railroad?
In 1940 the Santa Fe Railway’s roundhouse and shops had more than 1,700 workers. A steam whistle on the 240-foot smokestack blew at 7:30 a.m. to start the work day and again at noon for lunch. At 4 p.m. it signaled quitting time. The 75-stall roundhouse was the railroad’s largest. 

D166. Where was early Albuquerque’s financial district?
The appropriately named Gold Street was home to most of the city’s banks, real estate firms and insurance agencies. 

D167. What was the first insurance company headquartered between Kansas City and Los Angeles?
Occidental Life Insurance Co. started in Albuquerque in 1906. Its handsome building at Third and Gold, built in 1917, was modeled on the Doge’s Palace in Venice by architects Trost and Trost. 

D168. When was Albuquerque incorporated?
On July 2, 1885 the city of Albuquerque was incorporated as a town. In 1891 it was incorporated as a city. It then had 5 miles of graded streets and 9 miles of sidewalks. 

D169. When did Menaul School begin?
In 1896 Rev. James Menaul got Presbyterian Mission funding for a boarding school to serve Spanish-speaking boys in New Mexico. The school became co-ed in 1934 and became independent of the church in 1972. It ceased being a boarding school in 2000. 

D170. When did Harwood School begin?
In 1887 the Methodist Church founded the Harwood Industrial School, at 1114 Seventh St. NW as a boarding school for Spanish-speaking girls. The school closed in 1976. Since 1992 it has been the Harwood Art Center.  

D171. What was the first real estate company in Albuquerque?
In 1888 J. M. Moore Real Estate became the city’s first private real estate company. 

D172. What famous war correspondent settled in Albuquerque?
In 1940 Ernie Pyle made Albuquerque his home – in between his assignments as a foreign correspondent. He died on a Pacific island in 1945 from a sniper’s bullet. He’s remembered with the Ernie Pyle Memorial Library, Albuquerque’s first branch library, created at his home on Girard in 1948. 

D173. When did the Albuquerque Public Library begin?
In 1891 a group of women started the first public library at Gold and Fourth. 

D174. When did Albuquerque get a sewer system?
Construction began in 1891 on a sewer system, although it had no treatment plant. Raw waste was dumped in the river. 

D175. When did the first automobile arrive in Albuquerque?
In December 1900 Robert L. Dodson bought a “Locomobile” in Denver and drove it to Albuquerque. It was the first car in the city. 

D176. What was a test drive for cars in early Albuquerque?
In the years just prior to statehood, prospective car owners would take a car out to the sandy bluff east of town, halfway to UNM. If a car could make it up the hill, it was considered a good car. 

D177. How did the Big I get its name?
In 1965 a copy editor at the Albuquerque Tribune was looking for a short, snappy way to refer to the interchange of I-25 and I-40 then under construction. He called it the Big I, and the name stuck. 

D178. What was the first movie in Albuquerque?
In 1897 the first motion picture was a film of a fight between boxers Bob Fitzsimmons and James Corbett for the world championship. 

D179. How did tuberculosis help Albuquerque grow?
In the early 1900s an epidemic of tuberculosis afflicted the nation, and some doctors believed that a dry, sunny climate would help. The “lungers,” as they were called, flocked to Albuquerque to “chase the cure,” encouraged by city boosters. By 1912, lungers and their families were more than a quarter of the city’s population. One brochure proclaimed: “Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the sick get well and the well get prosperous!” 

D180. What was Albuquerque’s first hospital?
To serve tuberculosis patients arriving here to recover, the Sisters of Charity opened St. Joseph Sanatorium on May 30, 1902. It became Albuquerque’s first hospital; the organization is now part of Lovelace Sandia Health System. In 1908 Southwestern Presbyterian Sanitorium opened in a small house. It would become Presbyterian Hospital and then Presbyterian Healthcare System. 

D181. What early hospital provided holistic healthcare?
Southwestern Presbyterian Sanitorium, which opened in 1908, provided a holistic approach for the body, mind and spirit in curing tuberculosis.   

D182. What prominent city leaders came here as TB patients?
Recovered patients who stayed included Carrie Wooster, whose then suitor Clyde Tingley, would become the city’s flamboyant mayor and New Mexico governor; John Milne, who was APS school superintendent for 45 years; Clinton Anderson, who was a notable U.S. Senator and member of Truman’s cabinet; France Scholes, vice president of UNM; Grace Thompson Edmister, who founded and conducted the Albuquerque Civic Symphony; and William R. Lovelace, who founded Lovelace Clinic. 

D183. What was Albuquerque’s first brewery?
The first brewery started in 1883 at Fruit and Railroad avenues and burned down in 1887. After that Don and Harry Rankin gathered investors and formed Southwestern Brewery in 1888. Producing Glorieta Beer, it became one of the largest industries in Albuquerque. In 1899 the brewery built a brick building that remains at 601 Commercial, at the edge of downtown.  

D184. When did Albuquerque get dial phones?
In 1901 the Mutual Automatic Telephone Company introduced dial telephones to the city. 

D185. When did Albuquerque promote smoking?
The first Territorial Fair in 1881 included exhibits of New Mexico’s tobacco products. In 1897 the Rio Grande Tobacco Co. was formed in Albuquerque to promote the state's tobacco crop. 

D186. When was gambling popular in Albuquerque?
In 1907 gambling was a $15 million a year industry in Albuquerque. 

D187. When did the first car dealership open in Albuquerque?
Nick and Louis Galles came to New Mexico in the 1880s as soldiers in the Indian wars. In 1900 Louis bought one of the first automobiles in the state and in 1908 started Galles Motor Co. His son H.L. was a mechanic.  

D188. What was Albuquerque’s first speed limit?
In 1908 the Albuquerque municipal council set a speed limit for automobiles of 8 miles an hour. 

D189. What was the first police car in Albuquerque?
In 1910 U. S. Marshall Creighton Foraker received a Studebaker, the first car used for law enforcement in Albuquerque. 

D190. When was the first airplane flight in New Mexico?
On October 11, 1911, pilot Charles F. Walsh flew his Curtiss biplane at the Territorial Fair. Two years later Roy Stamm took the first aerial photograph of Albuquerque from a plane piloted by Roy N. Francis. 

D191. When did Albuquerque get an airport?
In 1939 the municipal airport opened, one of many projects in the city funded by the Works Progress Administration. Dubbed the Eagle’s Nest, it was built of adobe. 

D192. How did Albuquerque’s airport get its name?
When the new terminal was built in 1965, the city held a naming contest. The winning entry among 2,000 was that of pilot Harlee Townsend: Albuquerque Sunport. Two other finalists were Albuquerque Airport and Albuquerque Enchantoport. It later became Albuquerque International Airport and then Albuquerque International Sunport. 

D193. When did commercial aviation begin in Albuquerque?
In 1929 Western Air Express set up ticket offices at the Franciscan Hotel. Its first flight, on May 15, 1929, included Mayor Clyde Tingley and contractor Charles Lembke. Trans-Continental Air Transport, which became TWA, followed in July 18. 

D194. Who was John Braden and why was he a hero in 1896?
Braden, 74, was driving a wagonload of fireworks to be ignited after a Fourth of July parade in 1896 when a spark (or thrown firecracker) set fire to his cargo. He guided the terrified horses and the exploding wagon safely away from crowds but not before his clothes caught fire. He died from his burns. A statue in Robinson Park commemorates his bravery. 

D195. What’s the city’s oldest park?
Robinson Park, near downtown, is Albuquerque’s oldest.  

D196. What is the State Cookie?
The State Cookie is the biscochito. 

D197. What famous movie star was discovered at a State Fair rodeo?
 The young New Mexico contestant spotted at the fair by a movie producer was Tom Mix, who became a cowboy star. 

D198. Why is the State Fair in Albuquerque?
Albuquerque has the State Fair because prominent citizens took it upon themselves to organize the first Territorial Fair. They were Ambrosio Armijo, Franz Huning, William Hazeldine, M.S. Otero, José L. Perea, and Elias Stover. The New Mexico Agricultural, Mineral and Industrial Exposition opened in the rain on October 3, 1881. 

D199. Where were the State Fairgrounds initially?
Organizers acquired 20 acres near Old Town and built a racetrack and five buildings.  

D200. What were the activities and exhibits of the first fair?
Exhibits in 1881 included fruit, grain, vegetables, saddles, furniture, flowers, textiles, Indian crafts, tobacco products, minerals, general merchandise and taxidermy. The Speed Ring was graded for horse, burro, mule and foot races.