The Free State of Socorro

1953 was a weird time in Socorro::

It all began in early 1953 with a simple traffic ticket issued on the dusty streets of Socorro, population 4,300.

A 60-year-old plumber named Elmer Brasher had been drinking too much and made the serious mistake of trying to drive. Police officer Lorenzo Lopez stopped Brasher and cited him for breaking the local ordinance against Driving While Intoxicated.

...Judge Fowler dutifully asked to see the Socorro city ordinance regarding DWI arrests. After a considerable search of the courthouse, the original ordinance could not be found, although a reference to it was discovered in the back files of the local newspaper, the Socorro Chieftain. Someone wrote out the reference in pencil and brought it to the judge.

...And if Socorro’s DWI ordinance lacked authority, what about the city’s other ordinances? Did they have any more authority than the DWI ordinance? A March 19, 1953, Socorro Chieftain headline announced the disturbing news that “Socorro Laws Probably All Are Null and Void Says Judge.”

Without city ordinances, some local residents questioned the legality of not only the laws but the city itself. The Chieftain’s editor, Ed Stanton, went so far as to declare, “Nobody’s done anything legal around here since Oñate” and the Spanish conquest of New Mexico in 1598.

...Maybe they could create a whole new state, if not something much larger. According to newspapers in many parts of the United States, “The more Socorro people thought about it, the better idea it seemed just to secede from the United States and start all over again.” 

By April, the Socorro Chieftain reported “a serious but small group of patriots” had spent much of an evening drafting a Declaration of Independence.