01 / ANIMAS
A river.
A place to belong.
Before it was the name of a fragrance, Animas was a river—and a thread running through the life of a place.
THE ANIMAS RIVER · NORTHWEST NEW MEXICO
A trail follows the water. Cottonwoods gather along the banks. A bridge carries the path across, and the river continues underneath. Along Farmington’s Animas, the landscape and the life of the town meet at the water’s edge.1
Before it reaches home
The Animas begins in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. Its course connects Durango, the state line and Aztec before reaching Farmington, where it joins the San Juan River.2
On a map, that journey is a line between places. On the ground, there are crossings, paths and towns along the way. Farmington is not the river’s beginning, and the confluence is not an end to the water’s journey. It is a meeting place: one river becoming part of another.
Making room along the banks
The familiar paths have a history of their own. In the mid-1980s, landowners donated property that helped make Berg and Animas Parks possible. Farmington and the River Reach Foundation worked together on the corridor; planning in 1986, followed by the City’s 1990 Riverine Plan, helped shape its development.1
These were decisions about land, but also about what a town could share. A river running through a community and a place for that community to gather are not quite the same thing. The paths, bridges and public spaces brought the two closer.
In the City’s account, the banks are also a setting for music, food and art at Riverfest, and for children listening—and later telling their own stories—at the Four Corners Story Telling Festival.1
What makes a place familiar
There is the river’s long journey, and there are the smaller journeys made beside it. Both belong to this story.
A place can be remarkable without being distant. Sometimes it is the stretch of water through your own town: a landmark that becomes a meeting place, a route that becomes familiar, a name that begins to mean home.