Photo credit: Alanna Romero
When Patricia French saw Big Bird building an horno on Sesame Street in 1975, she knew she wanted to live in New Mexico.
In 1978, she moved to the state with her husband and two-year-old son in tow. As they drove across the country from New York, French remembers singing Buffy Sainte-Marie’s refrain from the series: “Sunny day, on my way to Santa Fe.”
French is the mind behind the New Mexico Historic Women Marker Program, which launched as a 2005 initiative to commemorate women’s contributions to the state’s history. And although she didn’t know it at the time, Buffy Sainte-Marie’s influence on Sesame Street’s New Mexico series proved to be an auspicious beginning to a project that honors women from many cultures in New Mexico.