Welcome to the Missile Range

In 2023, I started a media brand called Carrizozo Studios. That brand took its name from a town in southern New Mexico where I spent a lot of time as a child. Much of my family comes from Carrizozo and surrounding environs (Roswell, El Paso, Artesia, etc.), and I learned a lot about it from them.

The history of the Tularosa Basin is the history of America in microcosm. The land was home first to the ancient Jornada Mogollon - a people who farmed the then-fertile land and carved their marks on the stones of the Carrizozo Malpais.

These were followed by the Mescalero Apache, nomads who earned a reputation as fierce guerilla warriors after the re-discovery of the new world. Spanish settlement in the area was relatively light - it seems that the conquistadors who worked their way up to Santa Fe by way of the Rio Grande learned that these were a people not to be trifled with.

My ancestors arrived as among the first Anglo settlers to the region after the Mexican-American War, coming from elsewhere in America to play their hand in the Wild West.

My great-great-great-great-grandfather, George “Dad” Peppin, was among them. He was appointed Sherriff of Lincoln County during the Lincoln County War, playing a bit-part in fighting off Billy the Kid and his band of Regulators.

Once the chaos of the old West died down, his children would go on to live quiet lives over the next few decades on the edge of civilization.

It’s easy to see why - there’s a magical quality to the land - the cool and dry climate of the high desert, the wide open spaces for grazing and settling, and the high mountains towering over all. These same qualities that draw many to the “land of mañana” also made it a great place to test weapons of war. At least, that’s what the eggheads at Los Alamos thought.

The first atomic bomb was detonated at the White Sands Proving Ground on July 16, 1945. Much of my family was living in Carrizozo at the time - 35 miles due east of what we now call the Trinity site.

Soon thereafter, while we New Mexicans were still fixing our windows, the same Nazis we were trying to bomb out of existence were shipped out to White Sands with their V2 missiles. The wild west was over, the space age had begun.

The White Sands Proving Ground became the White Sands Missile Range, where scientists and engineers send their schemes to make first contact with reality. They built weapons of both war and peace - to damn our nation’s enemies to hell and send our bravest explorers to the heavens.

Carrizozo Studios, to bring it back to the present, was named as an homage to that region. The residents of that town and that region lived through so much history - too much to hold in your head all at once. And, if I wanted to start an offshoot of that brand focused on experimentation - projects that could either shoot me to the moon or blow up in everyone’s face, there’s only one name I could have chosen.

Welcome to the Missile Range.