The Battle of Ambos Nogales

Two cities, both named Nogales, were established, one on each side of the U.S.-Mexico border, after the Gadsden Purchase but before Arizona’s statehood. In the summer of 1918, ongoing tension led to a battle at the border between the two.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. At this point,
I think most of our listeners have probably heard that
we launched a new podcast in July I called This

(00:22):
Day in History Class. One of the side effects of
starting a show that is daily and talks about something
that happened on that day in history is that as
you're figuring out what to talk about, you find episodes
that are also going to be good on stuff you
missed in history class. And that's how today's episode came
to be. August is the anniversary of the Battle of

(00:45):
Ambos no Galis, and that was an international incident at
the US Mexico border in Arizona on the United States
side and in Sonora on the Mexican side. So now
you know what I'm going to talk about on the
August seven episode of This Day in History Class, but
we are going to cover it in way more detail
here because that show is only five minutes long. Also,
I know we have lots of teachers listening with their

(01:06):
students and parents listening with maybe younger kids. There is
one bit of strong language that comes up in this
episode and some quoted material. I don't really consider it
to be a swear, but I know other people would
have the opposite opinion, like maybe my mom so yeah,
like we spelled out the word but beaut t when

(01:28):
we were children, because yeah, so, uh, if you think
that might apply to you, maybe give this one an
advanced listen to just make sure that that one particular
thing is not going to be an issue. But it
is not the word, but to be clear, it is not.
But so we walked through some very basic history of

(01:49):
the American Southwest recently when we talked about the zoot
suit riots. But we know not everyone listens to every episode,
so we're going to give you a quick recap. After
Europeans arrived in North America, what is now the southwestern
United States was claimed by Spain. New Spain declared its
independence in eighteen ten, which kicked off a war that

(02:10):
lasted until eighteen twenty one. The war ended when Spain
finally recognized Mexico as an independent nation. The Mexican State
of Sonora was formally established in eighteen twenty four. Then
the Mexican American War began in eighteen forty six, and
it ended in eighteen forty eight. After that, Mexico seated

(02:30):
a large stretch of land to the United States. This
included a lot of what would become the Southwestern States,
but it did not include the southernmost parts of Arizona
or New Mexico. The United States bought that territory in
the Glaston Purchase, which was finalized in eighteen fifty four,
and Arizona became a state in nineteen twelve. Obviously a

(02:51):
super quick recap that is, hundreds of years of history
in two paragraphs and not even including anything about the
indigenous people who were already living there. So two cities,
both named No Galis, were established, one on each side
of the border after the Glaston Purchase, but before Arizona's statehood.
The name no Galis is derived from the Spanish word

(03:12):
for walnut, and collectively the two cities are called Ambos
no Galas or both no Galis. These cities were established
after a railroad was planned that would connect Mexico and
the United States, running from Tucson almost due south to
Guaymas on the Gulf of California. On the US side,
Jacob and Isaac Isaacson established a trading post at the

(03:34):
border along the proposed train route in eighteen eighty. At
first they called it Isaacson, but they changed the name
to No Galis on June four, eighteen eighty three. On
the Mexican side, the Mexican government authorized the establishment of
a customs office at the border along the same train
route on August two of eighteen eighty That train line
was finished in eighteen eighty two. Soon Ambos No Galis

(03:57):
was the most important border crossing between Arizona and Sonora.
Its population grew quickly, and by the late nineteen teens
there were nearly four thousand people living on the Sonora
sign and a little more than five thousand people living
in Arizona. These two cities were divided only by a
broad boulevard that was called International Street. There were only

(04:18):
two visible signs that International Street was really an international border.
One was boundary monument one. This was an obelisk. It
still stands today. It marks the exact position of the border,
and that replaced an earlier marker that had fallen apart
in eightee. The other clue was this wide expanse of
empty territory on either side of the line. Mexico had

(04:41):
built No Galis, Sonora with buildings that were at least
fifty feet or fifteen meters away from the border. Buildings
in No Galis, Arizona were initially built a lot closer,
but in the eighteen nineties, by presidential proclamation, everything that
was within sixty ft or eighteen meters of the line
was torn down. This was an attempt to herbs smuggling, basically,

(05:01):
with the idea that without a bunch of buildings to
hide in between, it would be harder to smuggle. Did
not actually do much to deter smuggling. For the first
decades of the city's histories, it was really easy to
cross from one No Galas to another. You just walked
across the street. That wide expanse of empty land was
also a popular place for both Mexican and American children

(05:23):
to play. Even though these were two cities, one in
the US and the other in Mexico, they functioned more
like one binational community that happened to straddle in international border.
Citizens of one country often had families, jobs, or property
on the other. This pretty much open border in Ambosno
Galis became increasingly guarded starting around nineteen ten at the

(05:45):
beginning of the Mexican Revolution. The Mexican Revolution was a
long and extremely complicated conflict that involved numerous revolutionary factions.
It led to millions of deaths. Violence associated with the
revolution also threat the American cities all along the border
with Mexico, including No Galas Arizona. Mexican border cities like

(06:06):
No Galas Sonora also became particularly important during the revolution
because controlling them made it easier for revolutionaries to cross
into the United States to purchase weapons and supplies. In
nineteen thirteen, constitutionalist forces lay siege to No Galas Sonora,
which meant that the Mexican Revolution was being fought literally

(06:27):
across the street from an American city. After several days
of fighting, in which several American soldiers and civilians were
wounded by stray gunfire, the federal forces in No Galas
Sonora crossed the border and surrendered to the Americans. The
violence continued in the area into nineteen fifteen during Pancho
Villa's campaign in northern Mexico, and this led to troops

(06:48):
from the United States Army being deployed all over the
border to try to protect Americans against the possible spillover
of violence from Mexico. During VIA's campaign, the governor of
Sonora also put up a barbed wire fence through No
Gallets to act as a deterrent, but that was taken
down after just a few months. Although Poncho Villa's men
didn't ultimately invade No Galles Arizona, there was a lot

(07:11):
of tension between Mexicans and Americans as his campaign was
going on. There were understandable fears and frustrations stemming from
being right across the border from an ongoing revolution for
five solid years, but these tensions were also fueled by racism.
Dis erupted into a riot in August of nineteen fifteen

(07:32):
when a white mob in Arizona tried to force Mexicans
across the border into Sonora, and then on March nine,
nine sixteen, Ponchovia attacked Columbus New Mexico. Although Ambos No
Galis wasn't directly involved in this, the attack nearly took
the United States and Mexico to war, and it made
things even more tense and numerous American cities near the border.

(07:54):
This was one of the factors and the Bisbee deportation,
which we talked about earlier this year. After the attack
on Columbus, the United States mounted what was known as
the Punitive Expedition to try to hunt down Poncho Villa.
The National Guard units were sent to cities all over
the border, including no Gallas, to guard them from potential attack. Meanwhile,

(08:15):
World War One started in nineteen fourteen, and in early
nineteen seventeen, a telegram from German Foreign Secretary Arthur's Zimmerman
was intercepted and decoded. In this telegram, Germany pledged to
return Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to Mexico. Mexico joined
the war and fought against the United States. So after

(08:36):
nearly a decade of ongoing threats stemming from the Mexican Revolution,
Americans were now also afraid that Mexico was going to
go from being neutral in the war to actively fighting
against the United States, even though the fact that there
was still a revolution going on and it had been
going on for years made that pretty unlikely. The Zimmerman
Telegram was a major factor in the United States decision

(09:00):
to finally enter World War One in April of nineteen seventeen,
and when that happened, the National Guard troops that had
been stationed along the US Mexico border were called up
to federal service, replacing them in No Galis, where the U. S.
Army's thirty fifth Infantry and tenth Cavalry regiments. The tenth
Cavalry was an all black unit under the command of

(09:20):
white officers and was better known as part of the
Buffalo Soldiers. As in other cities on the border. A
rifle club was also established in No Galis, which was
meant to act as a civilian fighting force if one
was needed. On January eighteenth, nineteen eighteen, a German agent
named Lothar Vitzka was apprehended and No Galis, Sonora. He

(09:42):
had an encrypted letter on his person that was addressed
the German ambassador in Mexico City. It read, in part quote,
strictly secret. The bearer of this is a subject of
the German Empire who travels as a Russian under the
name of Pablo Vabersky. He is a German great agent.
Please furnish him on request protection and assistance. Also advanced

(10:05):
him on demand up to one thousand paceos of Mexican
gold and send his code telegrams to this embassy as
official consular dispatches. It was signed von Eckhart. That was
Einrig von Eckhart, German foreign minister who was also the
recipient of the Zimmerman Telegram. Vitzka has tried in August

(10:25):
of nineteen eighteen and sentenced to death. His sentence was
commuted to life in prison after the end of the war,
and he was later pardoned. All of this led to
increasingly higher border security in No Galles, which we will
talk about after a quick sponsor break. Starting in the

(10:48):
summer of nineteen eighteen, authorities, especially American authorities, started putting
a lot heavier restrictions on what could happen at the
Ambost No Galles border. For example, suddenly there were a
lot of new rules about how much and what kind
of food people could take from the United States into Mexico.
In the summer of nineteen eighteen, authorities in the US
threatens to close the border entirely if authorities in Mexico

(11:12):
didn't put an end to what was described as food running,
and the border itself became more controlled. No longer was
it a situation where you could simply cross the street
or where children could play across the borderline. Two official
crossing points were established. When residents on both sides balked
at suddenly having only two places to cross when they

(11:34):
had previously been completely free to come and go now
Gallus Sonora mayor Felix beat Paniloza ordered a barbed wire
fence to be placed along the Mexican side. This was
a gesture of goodwill on the mayor's part. He framed
it as a way to make it easier for American
border agents to do their jobs. He suggested to his
counterparts in Arizona that they do the same on their

(11:56):
side of the border to contribute to the overall security.
In August of nineteen eighteen, the U. S. State Department
started restricting how Mexicans could enter the United States through
no galles. Mexican laborers with a passport were allowed two
entries per day. That was it. Non workers were allowed
only one entry per week. People really bristled at this idea,

(12:19):
especially Mexican workers who had jobs in Arizona and people
who had families on the other side of the line.
There was also an immediate economic impact on businessmen in
Arizona who relied on customers from Sonora and vice versa.
I mean when your town had been pretty much an
entire international community where you came and went freely, people

(12:39):
were economically really connected to each other. Duties collected at
the customs houses were also a major source of revenue,
particularly in Sonora, and that was greatly affected by the
reduction in traffic across the border as well. And as
tensions continued to escalate, Mexicans reported increasing incidents of mistreatment

(12:59):
at the hands of US border officials. It was everything
from just general rudeness to physically being shoved out of
border agents offices. It was enough for Mexican console Jose
Garza Zertucci to write up a report to the Mexican
Secretariat of Foreign Affairs detailing a range of insults and injustices.

(13:20):
But in August eighteen, a Mexican carpenter named ze Farino
gil La Madrid was returning home after doing a job
in Arizona. He was a well known person in Ambo
SnO Galis, and he was carrying a bulky package. He
had already stepped onto the Mexican side of the border
when a US customs agent named Arthur Barber told him

(13:41):
to turn around and come back and have that package inspected.
Guards on the Mexican side of the crossing told gil
La Madrid to ignore Barber. He was already in Mexico
and he did not need to turn around. Gil La
Madrid was not sure what to do, and he froze,
and then Private William Clint from the US thirty five
Infantry pointed his rifle at gil Le Madrid to encourage

(14:04):
him to come back to the U S side and
have the package inspected. Somebody, it is not clear if
it was Glint or someone else, fired a shot. Gil
Le Madrid dropped to the ground. Apart from it being
totally reasonable to hit the deck when you hear a
gunshot in your vicinity while somebody had been pointing a
weapon at you, at least two Mexicans had also been

(14:26):
shot and killed at the border in No Galus while
trying to cross over the prior twelve months. The guards
on the Mexican side of the border believed that gil
Le Madrid had been killed. In response, one guard named
Francisco Gallegos shot at the Americans, hitting Clint in the
face and wounding him. Agent Barber returned fire, killing both

(14:46):
Gallegos and another Mexican guard. At that point, Gila Madrid
got up and ran. There was a Mexican Federal Army
garrison nearby, but most of the men stationed there were
away from the area fighting rebels when this happened, So
make sean civilians went home and grabbed their personal rifles
and began trying to defend No Galis Sonora from the U. S. Army.

(15:07):
Most of them took up sniper positions in homes and
on roofs. In the words of Captain Roy V. Morlage
of the tenth Cavalry quote, I told the men to
follow me, not far along before we got a lot
of fire. There was so much it was hard to
tell where it was coming from. Also, it seemed as
though everybody in No Galis was shooting from the windows

(15:28):
towards the border. It became a massive gun battle. It
was mainly between the U. S. Army troops and Mexican
civilian snipers, although that civilian rifle club that had been
established in No Galas, Arizona was also involved. Eventually, the
thirty five Infantry also set up and employed a machine
gun from a hill on the Arizona side. Mayor Penieloza

(15:50):
was in a meeting and No Galis Sonora City Hall.
When all of this started, he tied a handkerchief to
his cane as an improvised white flag, and he went
out into the street to try to stop the gunfire.
He waved his flag and he begged the civilians on
the Mexican side to stop shooting. He was shot from
the Arizona side, although it is not clear by whom,

(16:11):
and he died within the hour. The mayor's death made
the residence of Nogalis, Sonora even angrier. They already felt
like they'd been facing months of mistreatment and abuse from
overbearing American border agents, and now they were being shot
at and their mayor was dead. More civilians became involved
in the fighting, and women on the Sonora side painted

(16:32):
red crosses on sheets and tried to establish a field
hospital Jose Garza's Artucci got in touch with the Lieutenant
Colonel Frederick J. Herman of the tenth Cavalry, who was
the acting subdistrict commander. Zertucci proposed that both sides raise
a white flag and mutually agree to stop shooting. Herman
told Zertucci to go to hell, saying later quote, American

(16:55):
troops don't carry white flags and don't use them. Later,
Herman would confirmed to a Senate committee that he had
told the Mexican consul to go to Hell. It's not
a very diplomatic response to that request. And Hermann told
their two too that if no galis Soonora didn't raise
their white flag in the next ten minutes, that the U.
S Army was going to go across the border and

(17:16):
burn the whole city down. Acting Mayor Hays's Palma, who
had assumed that role after the death of Mayor Paniloza,
ordered a white flag to be raised over the No
Galison or a customs house at about seven forty five pm,
although some scattered gunfire continued after it was raised. The
official report on this from the Mexican Army listed the
Mexican death toll at fifteen, twelve of them civilians. The

(17:40):
civilians included at least two children and a woman who
was hanging up her wash when she was shot. Also
killed on the Mexican side were one soldier and two guards.
Reports on the American side listed seven dead, two officers,
three enlisted men, and two civilians, but the US authorities
estimated that the death toll and Sonora was actually much

(18:02):
higher than the initial report, with more than one people
killed and there were many injuries on both sides. When
the U. S. War Department heard what happened, they contacted
Brigadier General de Rosie Cable at nearby Fort Fuachuca to investigate.
Mexican President Venustanio Coranza ordered the Sonoraan governor, Plutarco Ellis

(18:24):
Caius to investigate as well. The border was closed for
almost twenty four hours, and civilians in No Galis, Sonora
were ordered to turn in their weapons, although not all
of them did. Kaba and Kaya's met along with interpreters
on August. Unlike the phone call between Zertucci and Herman,
this seems to have been an overall positive and productive meeting.

(18:46):
Both sides expressed regret for what had happened the day
before and genuinely wanted to prevent any further violence. But
that night, Private Edward Stiller was on guard near the
infantries machine gun. He and everybody else that was stationed
there had been ordered not to respond to any shots
from the Mexican side, but when somebody fired a shot

(19:08):
from Nogilas, Sonora, the soldiers manning the machine gun returned fire.
More shots were fired and Stiller was hit in the
leg and wounded. After he learned about this incident, Cobbal
warned Kaias that if shots continued to be fired from
the Mexican side, the army would have to cross the
border to pursue the culprits. But the next day, August
twenty nine, Private Stiller left the hospital, walked back to

(19:31):
the hill where the machine gun was stationed, and started
firing his gun across the line into Mexico. He hit
and wounded a Mexican soldier who was standing guard, and
Cobble had him arrested. During the earlier meeting between Cobble
and Caius, couple had asked Caius to stop this gunfire
that kept sporadically happening from the Mexican side. Kaius had

(19:52):
said that these shots were being fired by irresponsible civilians
and it was pretty much out of his control. But
after Cabal had Stiller arrested, he went back to Chaius
and said that he was willing to discipline his soldiers
when they broke the orders not to fire, but that
he also needed assurances from Kaius that he was taking
steps on the Sonora side Caius agreed to try to

(20:14):
apprehend the shooters on the Mexican side, and although there
were a few more stray gunshots after this, that was
the end of most of the fighting. We're going to
talk about the investigations in the aftermath of all of this,
but first we're going to pause for a little sponsor break.

(20:36):
After the Battle of Ambo Snogallis, authorities on both sides
of the border tried to pinpoint and address the issues
that had contributed to the incident in the first place.
Caval conducted an investigation of the customs procedures on the
Arizona side of the border, and his ultimate conclusion was
at the root cause of this incident was resentment from
the ongoing mistreatment of Mexicans who were trying to cross

(20:59):
the border. As a result, one US border officer was
fired for improper conduct because of his ongoing mistreatment of
Mexicans when they were trying to cross. The investigation cited
quote frequent cases of insolence and overbearing conduct. Then Lieutenant
Colonel Herman was also demoted and transferred out of No Galis.

(21:21):
Authorities in both Sonora and Arizona also changed how the
border agents the guards. Other servicemen at the border were armed.
They started carrying side arms and sometimes clubs instead of
rifles to try to diffuse some of the tension. The
barbed wire fence that had been placed along the border
leading up to this was intended to be temporary, and

(21:42):
at this point there were some other temporary fences along
the border as well. Most of them were put up
because of security fears due to the Mexican Revolution in
World War One, but in a couple of cases it
was to try to keep livestock from crossing the border.
But after the events of August nineteen seventeen, Kaba recommended
that the fence in No Galas be lengthened and made permanent,

(22:05):
and this became the first permanent barrier at the US
Mexico border. After the end of the war, Senator Albert
Fall of New Mexico called for Congressional hearings in two
various issues at the US Mexico border. A number of
businesses and political leaders really wanted the United States to
intervene in Mexico, mostly to try to protect business and
financial interests that were being affected by the Mexican Revolution.

(22:29):
In Fall's case, this was interested in an oil company.
The hearings were meant to try to convince President Woodrow
Wilson to invade Mexico. The Battle of Ambos No Galas
was a big part of these hearings, and while they
didn't entice President Woodrow Wilson to invade Mexico, they did
influence how Americans understood what had happened at No Galles
for decades. Fred Herman, now a captain, gave testimony at

(22:53):
these hearings that was at various points dishonest and disingenuous,
but which continued to be repeated as fact for decades.
He claimed that in the days leading up to the
Battle of Ambos No Galas, he had received intelligence reports
of strange, well supplied Mexicans and unfamiliar white men in
No Galas Sonora. He said that he believed, based on

(23:15):
these reports, that No Galis Sonora had been infiltrated by
German agents and was preparing an attack. Herman also claimed
that he had received an anonymous letter from someone claiming
he was a former major in Poncho Villa's army who
had grown disillusioned and disgusted with Villa and the brutalities
of his fighting force. The letter claimed that there would

(23:35):
be an attack on No Galus, Arizona by a Mexican
force with German support around August, but it doesn't appear
that there's a copy of that intelligence report or the
letter anywhere. There was no mention of either of them
in Cobble's investigation into the incident. And on top of that,
Herman also described what happened on August in a way

(23:57):
that was variously just not right. He said that most
of the people who were fighting in Sonora were soldiers
when most of them were really civilians. He also said
that the mayor who had been shot literally while waiving
a white flag, had had a rifle in his hands
at the time. When I say that, these things are
still repeated as fact, Like when I was doing research

(24:19):
for this podcast, I had a lot of them written
down as fact in my notes as I was reading
articles about them, And then I was like, but whatever
happened with that, the whole German thing like that? Why
didn't that ever come up in any of this resolution part?
And it's because it doesn't appear that anybody said anything
about that until these congressional hearings that were way after

(24:41):
the fact. So there's suspicion that like none of that
ever even really happened in terms of getting a letter
and these intelligence reports. The fence that was erected in
nineteen eighteen was made of barbed wire. It was later
replaced with chain link and then with large pieces of
corrugated steel. The current barrier was placed in twenty eleven

(25:01):
and it costs nearly twelve million dollars. It's between eighteen
and thirty feet tall, that's between five point five and
nine ms, and it's made of steel tubes reinforced with
concrete with four inch or ten centimeter gaps in between.
This design was meant to allow law enforcement and border
patrol to see what was happening on the other side
of the wall, but it also had the side effect

(25:23):
of allowing family members and friends who lived on opposite
sides of the wall to see and talk to one another.
In addition to places for people to cross the border,
the wall also has a port for livestock, especially on
the Sonora side. There's a lot of artwork along the wall,
some of its formerly sanctioned art installations and some of
its graffiti. A lot of it is expressing objection to

(25:46):
the wall. Into the policies that led it to still
be there. There is still a lot of traffic between
Sonora and Arizona, although that has waned as the border
has become increasingly militarized, a process that started in the
nineteen eighties and nineties, but the two cities still have
a lot of overlap, with many residents having friends and
family on the other side of the border. No Gallas,

(26:07):
Arizona is much smaller. It's about twenty people compared to
No Galas Sonora's two hundred and fifty thousand. Interestingly, both
cities have the same surface and groundwater sources, and the
wastewater for both is treated at the No Galas International
Wastewater Treatment Plant in Rio Rico, Arizona. The Battle of
Ambos No Galas is commemorated more on the Sonora side

(26:30):
than on the Arizona side, including a ballad that was
written at the time and is still sung today. There's
also a memorial to the defenders of No Galas, Sonora
in the Mexican customs house there, which lists the names
of the confirmed dead. So the permanent wall through Ambos
No Galas was erected after a violent cross border conflict

(26:50):
with the intent that it would prevent something similar in
the future, and officials have increasingly relied on it as
a physical barrier to stop illegal border crossings by everyone
from immigrants to drug and weapons smugglers, but it hasn't
really stopped any of that. In spite of having been
designed to deter climbing, people still climb over it daily,

(27:11):
sometimes carrying all kinds of contraband. Every article that you
read about this wall today, it's like and there are
still people climbing over it all the time. Also on October,
unarmed sixteen year old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was shot
ten times in the back four blocks from his home
in No Galas, Sonora by US Border Patrol agent Lonnie Schwartz.

(27:35):
Sports fired sixteen times from the United States into Mexico,
and he said that he was acting in self defense.
Agents were in the middle of pursuing two people who
were climbing over the fence with bundles of marijuana, and
agents reported that Rodriguez and other people on the Mexican
side were throwing rocks at them to try to distract
them in their pursuit. There is some security footage, though

(27:57):
that raises doubts about that accusation, and Rodriguez's family has
maintained that he was not the type of kid to
throw rocks at a border patrol officer. Schwartz was indicted
years later, and he was found not guilty of second
degree murder in April. The jury was not able to
reach a verdict into lesser manslaughter charges in the case.
As a final note, ambo SnO Gallas is not the

(28:20):
only binational community in the immediate vicinity. About sixty miles
that's about ninety seven kilometers to the west is to
hono Otam Nation. The tribal headquarters is in Cells, Arizona,
but about two thousand tribal members live in Sonora. This
has its own complexities, but the border through the Tonodem
Nation has at least for the past century, been much

(28:43):
more open than the border through Ambosno Galles. Obviously, the
nation is working to change that, the nation being the
United States, not the tohnodem Nation. Before we get to
listener mail, yeah, we have something on a much much
lighter note to talk about, which is that we have
a new store, yeah, where listeners can come and check

(29:04):
out T shirts and uh what else other goodies there
are notebooks and things like phone cases and all kinds
of fun stuff that you can get our tea Public store.
It is at t public dot com slash stuffy missed
in history class, uh, and I don't we we have

(29:25):
some particular favorite shirt designs and there we have a
shirt that says look at the babies from our Virginia
app Guard episode, which is the thing that people still
tweeted us whenever Virginia acar comes up in the news
for some reason. And if you are like me a
little bit more of a ten year old, there is
a really fun shirt design based on our long ago

(29:47):
Automata episode that features Wilkinson's famous pooping duck, which was
a robot. Yes, uh so yeah, you can check those out.
And as well as like there is a fun design
that's just our our standard show logo uh, and lots
of other fun stuff and adding more all the time,

(30:08):
so you can check that out. Get fun stuff. I
really really can say without hesitation, I have probably in
the three digits of te Public shirts that I have
acquired over the years. I love them, they last beautifully
and I wear them all the time, so hopefully you
guys will enjoy them. As well. I also have some

(30:29):
list for mail. Hooray list listener. Mail is from Aliah.
Lee actually sent us a couple of weeks ago, and
and at this point, it's going to be many more
weeks before this episode even comes out because we are
getting ahead of things to prepare for our upcoming tour.
Leah says, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I'm writing in as
a long time listener of the show, who, like many others,
greatly appreciate how much you've both improved my commute and

(30:51):
many road trips. I wanted to reach out because your
episode about the poet Edna St. Vincent Malay was one
of my favorites. I've been planning to take a trip
to see her home of Steepletop for some time, but
when I went to check its hours for tours recently,
I found out that the property is in danger of
closing to the public at the end of the eighteenth season.
Long story short, I contacted Malay's literary executor to find

(31:12):
out more about why, and I ended up writing this
article on how people can help. Essentially, the society that
manages the property has been operating at a loss even
as more and more people find out about Malay and
visit the site. I thought I would share as I
probably wouldn't have found out about this if not for
your episode about her. Thank you both for all your
hard work on the podcast. Regards Leah. Thank you Leah

(31:33):
for this note. I'm on the Steepletop mailing list, so
I had gotten a note about this back at the
beginning of the spring, I think, but we haven't really
mentioned it on the show. Um that visiting Steepletop was
part of the research for that episode. That's a two
part episode on edd to s Vinci la Um and
it is a beautiful house and a beautiful grounds with

(31:55):
a beautiful poet that's connected to all of it. So um,
we will it all link to that article, uh in
the show notes for this episode. I few would like
to write to us about this or any other podcast
Where History podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and
we're also all over social media, miss in History. That's
where you can find us on Facebook and Twitter and
Instagram and Pinterest. You can come to our website, which

(32:18):
is missing history dot com, where you will find show
notes for all the episodes that Holly and I have
ever done together and a searchable archive of all the
episodes we have ever done, ever, and you can subscribe
to our show on Apple podcasts and Google podcasts and
where else you get your podcasts. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.