Under the Piñon Tree: Historian Chronicles Pie Town’s Past

Sitting on the porch of his summer home in the Mangas Mountains, watching elk nibble in a meadow and praying for rain, Dr. Jerry Thompson reflects on a lifetime of research, storytelling, and the characters that loom large in history’s untold tales.

A Regents and Piper Professor at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, TX, during the school year, Dr. Thompson is a nationally respected historian who has spent decades preserving the stories of the American Southwest—including 1950s Catron County where he grew up.

“I rode the bus from Mangas to Pie Town for eight years on that dirty, dusty road,” Thompson said, laughing. “People don’t believe some of the stories from those days, so I figured I better write them down before they were lost.”

Those recollections became the foundation of his book “Under the Piñon Tree: Finding a Place in Pie Town”, a blend of personal memory and deeply researched regional history. In it, Thompson recounts life in a community built largely by Dust Bowl refugees during the Great Depression. One of those founders was his grandfather who arrived in Pie Town after heading west from Odessa Texas during the Depression.

“What made the community unique is that they were about 90% Dust Bowl refugees. But the amazing thing is that they were able to hold together and really establish a sense of communalism where they really assisted one another,” he said. “My father and grandfather were both veterans of World War One and World War Two. A lot of what is in the book are them and their stories, and then my experiences at the elementary school, which I thought was really quite unique.”

The book digs back even deeper in history, though, exploring the Indigenous cultures, Spanish sheep barons, and Texas cattle ranchers that also inhabited the area throughout history.

But “Under the Piñon Tree”, published in 2023 by University of New Mexico Press, is just one of 33 publications Thompson can list on his curriculum vitae.

After graduating from Quemado High School, Dr. Thompson earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. in history—starting at New Mexico Tech and eventually studying under renowned historian Donald Cutter at the University of New Mexico.

Much of his work focuses on the Civil War in New Mexico Territory and the Texas-Mexico borderlands. His publications range from original scholarship to edited collections of soldiers’ letters and journals.

One of his most recent works, “Murder on the Largo: Henry Coleman and New Mexico’s Last Frontier”, published in 2024 by Texas A&M University Press, tells the story of outlaw Henry Coleman, whose cattle rustling days ended in an ambush near Salt Lake, NM.

Dr. Thompson learned of the outlaw, whom Elfego Baca reportedly called ‘the most dangerous man in New Mexico’, from a collection of 1950s articles written by Eleanor Williams for the “New Mexico Electric News”, a monthly electrical co-op magazine.

Another forthcoming project, set to be published by UNM Press, includes a collection of Civil War-era letters written by a California soldier stationed in Mesilla.

“He wrote 54 letters to his wife,” Dr. Thompson said. “He was kind of a historian himself.”

Currently, Dr. Thompson is working on a comprehensive history of Fort McIntosh in Laredo, Texas, where he’s taught for over five decades. The project is the result of years of compiled research—“six banker boxes full,” he said.

Despite his academic accolades, Dr. Thompson maintains a deep respect for rural wisdom. He recalled an old debate with a friend who pointed out his Harvard degree.

“I said, ‘well, I went to elementary school in Pie Town, New Mexico’, and I figured eight years there was just as valuable as five years in Cambridge,” he said.

Many of his titles can be found on Amazon, unmpress.com, and tamupress.com.