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Pedestrian deaths lead to business owner's fight to close bar

By Carrie Seidman
Thursday, October 2, 2003

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Sometimes what it takes to reduce the number of pedestrian deaths is a citizen unwilling to take no for an answer.

Tom Wheeler, owner of the Hogback Trading Co., just off the Navajo Reservation near Shiprock, fought a long battle to close a tavern near his busines, a bar that was the site of many pedestrian deaths in the early '80s.

The Turquoise Bar, just across the street from Wheeler's business on N.M. 64 in Hogback, was a drawing card for partiers, fighters, panhandlers and inebriated pedestrians.

The rowdy atmosphere damaged Wheeler's business in Indian arts, but the fatalities he witnessed damaged his psyche.

"I've probably seem more pedestrian deaths than anyone in the state of New Mexico," says Wheeler, whose family has been in the area since 1871.

Wheeler was often the first person on the scene when a pedestrian died in Hogback and for a time until it had "too many pages" he kept a scrapbook of pictures for the StatePolice.

Wheeler went on a one-man, five-year campaign to get the Turquoise closed. He figures it cost him close to $100,000 in attorney fees and countless hours and trips to Santa Fe.

He persisted, even after a judge told him: "Tom, you'll never get a bar in New Mexico closed for a violation of the law."

But Wheeler was goaded on by the memory of a family from the Midwest. The family members were traveling through when their car hit and killed a man in the road.

"They were just devastated," Wheeler says. "The husband this big, burly guy was just sobbing. The man had come right through his windshield."

Finally, after countless police citations and a settlement with the Alcohol and Gaming Division, the Turquoise closed in 1985. Its liquor license was transferred to a convenience store across the street that could sell packaged liquor only.

Today, the Turquoise is boarded up and badly weathered. Weeds clog its gravel driveway. A flock of pigeons has made the roof its own. The birds are its only visitors.

"The bar closed, and it was like you turned on a light," Wheeler recalls. "The accidents stopped; the pedestrian fatals stopped. It was amazing how quickly it ended.

"Of course, it doesn't mean the problem itself has ended," he adds. "I don't know if it ever will."