ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) — Off Coors and Paseo Del Norte, one of the west side's largest arroyos also serves as an art installation. The lower Calabacillas Arroyo is known for a faux dinosaur fossil display that can be seen from the highway, but if you make a stop and venture further, you'll find a myriad of different art pieces.
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It started back in the 90s when the Albuquerque Metropolitan Arroyo Flood Control Authority was looking to work on that particular arroyo. The main goal was to improve the sides to protect the nearby neighborhood. By the end of 1996, a proposal was made to the board of directors about installing additional, affordable art to the channel siding. The concept was "geologic layers."
"The very bottom of the arroyo is a soil cement that has different angles on it that's supposed to look like old sedimentary beds, and then they picked different eras and created the shotcrete using different colors that represent these different eras," AMAFCA Executive Director Kevin Troutman explained. "So you go from very basic organisms, fossils, to the dinosaur bones that you see that are usually featured, and then you go across the way, you've got saber-toothed tigers, and then if you keep going further down, you get into the more recent eras, and it starts with typewriters, and then it goes to computers." At the end of installation, there are infant footprints meant to represent the unknown.
Throughout the installation, there's a number of pieces including the front of Oppenheimer's car, a microscope, an atomic bomb, and a box of Jell-O. There's also a cockroach in every layer of the piece, as they've been prevalent in each represented era. Artist Mike Wallace designed the pieces, then had some help when it came to installation process. They've been in the arroyo since 1997.
As for finding it, you can head north on Coors Boulevard NW past Irving, then take a right on Westside Boulevard. "And then there's these white gates and you just drive in there and you can go along one side of it," said Troutman. "At the bottom, the Corps of Engineers and City of Open Space have created this area for picnicking. So it's a good open space access point as well."
The arroyo itself is one of the largest ones on the west side with a watershed of about 78 square miles. It goes to the top of the escarpment in Sandoval County before dropping off. Troutman recommends checking out the arroyo's art installation on a sunny, clear day.
"If there's a threat of rain, it's probably not a good idea to be in that area just because of the environment that it is a flood control structure," said Troutman. "Fortunately, the Calabacillas doesn't run as fast or as frequent as some of our east side channels, but they're still just as dangerous as anywhere else." He added that if you see water in an arroyo, it's not a good idea to enter it.
