Untold ABQ

In 1952, Albuquerque City Manager Edmund Engel was poking around a city-owned scrapyard looking for saleable pieces of metal when he made an interesting discovery—an old prefabricated iron jail, apparently dating from the late 1800s. It was 20 feet long and weighed several tons, but no one was really sure where it came from or when it was last used. 1 It didn't take long for local historians to solve the mystery—only three former jails were known to have existed, and only one of those matched the manufacturer of the one in the scrapyard. But the story of this Wild West relic was far from over. In fact, it has continued on its long, strange journey right up to the present. Like Engel, I also stumbled across the story by accident, while researching something unrelated in an old newspaper. I was intrigued by the mystery of a historic jail I had never heard about before and naturally had to get to the bottom of it. So after many hours of research, I am now able to share a story I...

A while back, I came across an old photo on Reddit showing an aerial view looking west along Central Avenue. Something that immediately caught my attention was the large building in the lower right labeled "BUICK"—this building is still there, but I certainly didn't know anything about it ever being used as a car dealership. Many years ago it used to have a bowling sign on the roof, so I'd always assumed it was an old bowling alley. This turned out not to be true; the bowling alley was actually next door. What I found is that the building was used as a Buick dealership at one time, but that was only a short chapter in what has to be one of the strangest histories of any building in the city. This is the story of the Albuquerque Ice Arena. The mystery begins: notice the large building at the extreme lower right labeled "BUICK". This view is looking west along Central from about San Mateo, c. 1960. Via Reddit. Bowling? Author's photo, 2003. ...