Marc Simmons Collecting Guide

The Santa Fe Trail was Marc Simmons’s signature subject, the topic to which he returned more often and with more sustained attention than any other. He did not simply write about the trail — he walked it, drove it, studied its ruts and its river crossings, mapped its variants, and founded the organization dedicated to its preservation. No other twentieth-century historian did more to document and popularize the history of the Santa Fe Trail.

Following the Santa Fe Trail: A Guide for Modern Travelers is the foundational Simmons trail book and one of the most practically useful works in his entire bibliography. The book is exactly what the title promises: a mile-by-mile guide to the trail from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with historical context at every stop. It was designed for people who wanted to drive the trail themselves, and it delivers that experience with the clarity and thoroughness that defined Simmons at his best. Multiple editions were published over the years as the trail landscape changed and new research surfaced. First editions of the earliest printing are the collector target, but any edition of this book is a working reference that NM history collectors use regularly.

The Old Trail to Santa Fe: Collected Essays gathered Simmons’s trail research into a single volume and provided a broader historical framework for understanding the trail’s significance. Where Following the Santa Fe Trail was a field guide, this was a study — the political, economic, and social history of the commerce of the prairies from the 1820s through the railroad era. Simmons drew on primary sources in English and Spanish, on traders’ accounts and military records and land-office documents, and he synthesized them into the kind of readable narrative that made his work accessible to people who would never pick up a monograph.

Murder on the Santa Fe Trail: An International Incident, 1843 is one of Simmons’s most compelling shorter works — a focused narrative history of a specific violent episode on the trail that illuminates the larger dynamics of commerce, diplomacy, and danger that characterized the Santa Fe trade. The book demonstrates Simmons’s ability to take a single incident and expand it into a vivid window on an entire era. For collectors, the shorter Simmons titles like this one are often the hardest to find in first edition because their print runs were smaller and they went out of print quickly.

Simmons also edited and introduced numerous trail-related works by other authors, adding scholarly apparatus and contextual essays to primary-source accounts and earlier histories. These editorial projects are sometimes overlooked by collectors who focus on books Simmons wrote entirely himself, but they represent a significant portion of his contribution to trail scholarship and are worth acquiring when they surface.

Simmons’s doctoral research at the University of New Mexico focused on the Spanish colonial period, and that early scholarly investment produced some of his most enduring work. Spanish Government in New Mexico, published by UNM Press, was his first major book and remains a foundational text on how the Spanish colonial administration actually functioned in this remote northern province. The book is based on archival research in Spanish-language documents, and it treats the institutional machinery of colonial governance with a rigor that satisfied academic historians while remaining readable enough for general audiences. For collectors, the first UNM Press hardcover edition is the target. It was a scholarly monograph with a correspondingly modest print run, and first editions in good condition are not common.

The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest is Simmons’s account of the 1598 Oñate expedition that established the first permanent European settlement in what is now the American Southwest. Oñate is a controversial figure — celebrated by some as the founder of New Mexico and condemned by others for the brutal Acoma Pueblo massacre of 1599 — and Simmons treats the subject with the measured, source-driven approach that characterized his best work. He does not shy away from the violence of the colonial enterprise, but neither does he reduce Oñate to a simple villain. The book is the most thorough popular account of the Oñate expedition available and is regularly cited in both academic and general works on the Spanish colonial period. The UNM Press first edition is the collector target.

Simmons also wrote extensively about the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the Spanish reconquest under Diego de Vargas in 1692-1693. These events — the only successful Native American revolt against European colonizers in North American history, followed by the complex, negotiated return of Spanish authority — are central to New Mexico’s identity, and Simmons treated them in multiple works. His contributions to this subject appear both as standalone titles and as chapters or sections in broader NM history surveys. Collectors should be aware that Simmons’s colonial-period material is sometimes scattered across multiple books rather than concentrated in a single definitive volume, which means building a complete picture of his colonial scholarship requires acquiring several titles.

New Mexico: An Interpretive History is Simmons’s single-volume survey of the entire arc of NM history from the pre-Columbian period through the twentieth century. It is not a colonial-specific work, but the colonial sections draw heavily on his doctoral research and represent some of the clearest popular writing on the subject available. The book went through multiple editions and printings, and first editions of the earliest printing are the collector target. Later printings and revised editions are common and useful as reading copies but carry minimal collector premium.

The Spanish colonial titles occupy a distinctive position in the Simmons bibliography because they bridge the gap between academic and popular history more directly than any of his other work. Spanish Government in New Mexico is genuinely scholarly; The Last Conquistador is genuinely popular. Together they demonstrate the range that made Simmons unusual among NM historians — he could write for specialists and general readers alike, and he did both well.

Kit Carson and His Three Wives: A Family History, published by the University of Oklahoma Press, is Simmons’s biography of the most famous mountain man in New Mexico history. Christopher Houston Carson — Kit Carson — lived in Taos, served as a guide for John C. Frémont’s western expeditions, fought in the Mexican-American War, commanded the U.S. Army campaign against the Navajo that culminated in the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo in 1864, and became the most mythologized frontiersman of the American Southwest. Simmons’s biography does not attempt to burnish or demolish the myth. Instead, it focuses on the domestic and family dimensions of Carson’s life — his three marriages, his children, his property, his daily existence between the expeditions and campaigns that made him famous. The result is a more human portrait than most Carson biographies offer, and it draws on Spanish-language sources that earlier English-language biographers had neglected.

The University of Oklahoma Press first edition is the collector target. Oklahoma was a prestige publisher for Western Americana, and their production values were consistently high — cloth bindings, good paper, accurate printing. Simmons’s Carson biography sits in a strong catalog alongside other major works of Western history published by the same house. For collectors who focus on regional press first editions, the Oklahoma first of Kit Carson and His Three Wives represents Simmons at his most traditionally publishable — a major biography from a major university press, the kind of book that receives trade reviews and library standing orders.

Simmons also contributed to the broader mountain man and fur trade literature through shorter works and essays. The mountain man era in New Mexico — the period from roughly 1820 to 1845 when Taos served as a supply base and winter camp for Anglo and French-Canadian trappers working the streams of the southern Rockies — overlaps substantially with the Santa Fe Trail period, and Simmons’s trail research frequently touches on the trapper community. His writing on Charles Bent, the first American governor of New Mexico who was killed in the Taos Revolt of 1847, connects the mountain man era to the Mexican-American War period and to the broader political transformation of the region.

The Carson biography and the related mountain man material are important for collectors because they represent Simmons working at the intersection of biography and regional history. The Carson book is one of his most conventionally book-shaped works — a single-subject biography with a narrative arc, published by a major university press. Many of Simmons’s other titles are more diffuse: essay collections, topical surveys, compilations. The Carson biography shows what Simmons could do when he committed his full attention to a single subject for an extended narrative, and the result is one of his strongest books.

Albuquerque: A Narrative History, published by UNM Press, is Simmons’s single-volume history of New Mexico’s largest city. The book traces Albuquerque from its 1706 founding as a Spanish colonial villa through the railroad era, the tuberculosis-sanatorium period, the World War II military-industrial expansion, and the postwar Sunbelt growth that transformed a small river-valley town into a sprawling metropolitan area. Simmons writes about Albuquerque with the same archival rigor and narrative clarity he brought to all his subjects, and the book remains the standard popular history of the city. It is regularly cited in planning documents, historical surveys, and preservation arguments. UNM Press issued it in hardcover and paperback, and it went through multiple printings. The first hardcover printing is the collector target.

For Albuquerque-area donors considering what to do with their NM history collections, Albuquerque: A Narrative History is one of the titles I see most frequently. It was widely purchased when it came out, it was given as gifts, and it sat on the shelves of city officials, real estate developers, teachers, and anyone with a professional interest in Albuquerque’s past. The sheer number of copies in circulation means that the book is easy to find in any edition, but first printings with dust jacket — especially signed first printings — are a different matter. Those are the copies that carry collector interest.

Simmons wrote about Santa Fe history in multiple formats: standalone books, contributions to edited volumes, columns, and essays. His Santa Fe material covers the city from its founding in 1610 (making it the oldest state capital in the United States) through the American period. His work on the Santa Fe plaza, the Palace of the Governors, the role of the Santa Fe Trail in transforming the city from a remote colonial capital into an American commercial center, and the twentieth-century reinvention of Santa Fe as a tourist and arts destination represents a substantial body of urban history. Much of this material was published by Ancient City Press, a Santa Fe publisher that specialized in regional titles and that produced some of the most attractive Simmons editions.

The city history titles are important for collectors because they demonstrate the breadth of Simmons’s interests. He was not only a trail historian or a colonial specialist. He was genuinely interested in how New Mexico’s cities grew and changed over time, and he wrote about urban subjects with the same care he brought to wilderness and frontier topics. For collectors building a comprehensive Simmons shelf, the city histories fill out the picture and complement the more dramatic trail and colonial titles.

Marc Simmons lived on a ranch for the better part of five decades, and his interest in rural New Mexico was not academic. He knew what it was like to mend a fence, to deal with livestock in bad weather, to live in a place where the nearest town was small and the nearest city was far away. That direct experience informed a cluster of books on ranching, cowboys, and the material culture of rural life that are among the most charming and unusual works in his bibliography.

Ranchers, Ramblers, and Renegades: True Tales of Territorial New Mexico collects stories from the rough, violent, and colorful territorial period when New Mexico was not yet a state and the rule of law was often more aspiration than reality. The book is vintage Simmons — short, vivid narrative essays based on primary sources, each one illuminating a moment or a character that formal histories overlook. The stories are well-researched but never heavy, and they read like campfire tales told by someone who has spent a lifetime in the archives. First editions are genuinely scarce because the print run was small and the book went out of print without a reprint.

His writing on corrals, fences, and the physical infrastructure of ranch life deserves special attention from collectors. Simmons understood that history is not only about great events and important people. It is also about the material world — how people built their shelters, enclosed their animals, fed their families, and organized the landscape. His work on NM ranch architecture, fencing technology, and livestock management practices draws on a combination of documentary research and personal observation that gives it an authenticity academic historians who have never mended a fence cannot replicate. These shorter works were often published as pamphlets or slim volumes by Sunstone Press or Ancient City Press, and they are among the most difficult Simmons titles to find because they were produced in small quantities and were not widely distributed outside New Mexico.

The ranching and rural-life titles are also some of the most distinctively New Mexican works in the Simmons bibliography. The Santa Fe Trail is a national subject. The Spanish colonial period is an international subject. But the corrals and fences of the Cerrillos hills, the ranch life of the Galisteo Basin, the material culture of rural NM — these are intensely local topics, and Simmons wrote about them with the intimate knowledge of a man who lived among them. For collectors, these titles represent the private Simmons, the man who chose to live on a small ranch rather than in a university town, and who found in the material world of rural New Mexico the same historical depth he found in archives and libraries.

Witchcraft in the Southwest: Spanish and Indian Supernaturalism on the Rio Grande is Marc Simmons’s most widely read book and the title that introduced more readers to his work than any other. The book surveys witchcraft beliefs and practices among the Spanish colonial population and the Pueblo Indian communities of the Rio Grande valley, drawing on Inquisition records, court documents, folk narratives, and ethnographic accounts to build a picture of the supernatural world that existed alongside and intertwined with the official religious culture of colonial and territorial New Mexico.

The book works because Simmons takes the subject seriously without taking it literally. He does not claim that witchcraft was real in any supernatural sense, but he demonstrates persuasively that belief in witchcraft was a powerful social and cultural force that shaped behavior, influenced legal proceedings, and structured community relationships for centuries. The Inquisition records he draws on are genuinely fascinating primary sources — accounts of accused brujas and brujos, descriptions of counter-spells and protective rituals, testimony about shape-shifting and the evil eye — and Simmons presents them with the narrative skill that characterized his best work.

Witchcraft in the Southwest was originally published in the 1970s and went through multiple editions and printings. The first edition is the collector target, but this is a book where later printings are also worth acquiring because the content is so useful and readable. For collectors interested in NM folk belief, the book pairs naturally with the broader NM witchcraft and brujeria collecting field, where Simmons’s work is a foundational text.

The book’s popularity has an interesting consequence for collectors: it is the Simmons title most likely to be found in non-NM estate libraries. Readers across the country bought Witchcraft in the Southwest because the subject matter was inherently compelling, even if they had no particular interest in NM history. This means that copies surface in estate sales from coast to coast, not just in New Mexico. It also means that the first edition had a larger print run than most Simmons titles, making first editions more findable but also meaning that the book is less scarce than collectors sometimes assume. The combination of wide distribution and multiple printings means that careful edition identification is especially important with this title.

Marc Simmons published with four primary houses over his career, and understanding the publisher landscape is essential for collectors trying to identify first editions, assess relative scarcity, and evaluate condition expectations.

University of New Mexico Press was Simmons’s primary academic publisher and the house that produced his most important scholarly works. UNM Press first editions are identified by checking the copyright page for printing history. A true first edition from UNM Press will show only the original copyright date without additional printing lines or reprint notices. Some UNM Press titles use a number line where the lowest number present indicates the printing — if the number line begins with 1, you have a first printing. If the number line begins with 2 or higher, or if the copyright page states “Second printing” or “Revised edition,” the book is not a first. UNM Press hardcovers from the 1960s through the 1990s were produced to good academic-press standards: decent cloth bindings, acid-free paper in later decades, and dust jackets that were functional if not always visually striking. The press also issued many titles simultaneously in hardcover and trade paperback, and in some cases the paperback was the only format. Collectors need to determine which format was issued first for each title.

Sunstone Press, based in Santa Fe, was Simmons’s most prolific publisher for later-career works and for shorter-format titles. Sunstone is a regional publisher with a strong list of NM and Southwestern history, art, and culture titles. Their production quality has varied over the decades — some Sunstone books are handsomely produced with good paper and printing, while others are more modest. Sunstone first editions are identified by the copyright page, where the printing history should show only the original copyright date. Be aware that Sunstone issued many titles as trade paperback originals, meaning the paperback is the first and only edition. There is no hardcover to hunt for. For the titles that were issued in both formats, the hardcover first is the collector target. Sunstone’s distribution was primarily regional, which means their print runs tended to be smaller than UNM Press runs, and their books are less likely to be found in estate libraries outside the Southwest.

Ancient City Press, also based in Santa Fe, published several important Simmons titles, particularly those focused on Santa Fe history and culture. Ancient City Press was a small regional publisher with modest print runs and limited national distribution. Their books are among the most difficult Simmons titles to find in first edition because so few copies were printed and because the press eventually ceased operations. First editions from Ancient City Press carry a premium among Simmons collectors simply because of scarcity. The production quality was generally good — Ancient City Press took care with their NM history titles — and the books tend to hold up well physically when they are found in good estate condition.

University of Oklahoma Press published Simmons’s Kit Carson biography and was a natural home for his work given the press’s deep list in Western Americana and Native American studies. Oklahoma Press first editions are identified by the copyright page, where the first printing will show only the original copyright date without reprint notices. Oklahoma Press production quality was consistently high throughout the period when Simmons published with them. Their books are more widely distributed than those from NM regional publishers, which means Oklahoma Press Simmons titles are more likely to surface in non-NM estate sales and used-book shops.

For decades, Marc Simmons wrote a weekly history column called Trail Dust for the Santa Fe New Mexican. The column appeared every week without fail, and over the years it accumulated into an extraordinary body of short-form historical writing. Each column was typically 800 to 1,200 words — a compact essay on some aspect of NM history that caught Simmons’s attention. The topics ranged from major historical events to tiny curiosities: the origin of a place name, the biography of an obscure territorial-era figure, the history of a particular building or road or tradition. Taken together, the Trail Dust columns constitute a kind of informal encyclopedia of New Mexico, written in the accessible voice of a man who genuinely loved this state and wanted everyone else to love it too.

Several compilations of the Trail Dust columns were published in book form, and these are the versions that matter for collectors. The compilations gather selected columns into thematic or chronological groupings, sometimes with updated information or additional context. They represent Simmons at his most accessible — no footnotes, no academic apparatus, just clear and engaging short essays on subjects that matter to anyone who lives in or cares about New Mexico.

The Trail Dust compilations are solid Tier 2 collector targets, particularly in signed first editions. They are useful as reference works because they cover topics Simmons never treated at book length. If you want to know about a particular NM county, a forgotten territorial governor, an obscure piece of NM material culture, the Trail Dust compilations are often the first place to check. The columns also reveal Simmons’s range more directly than his full-length books do, because the short format forced him to write about subjects he might not have committed an entire book to but that interested him enough to spend a week researching and writing about.

For collectors, the key challenge with Trail Dust compilations is distinguishing first printings from reprints. The compilations sold well within New Mexico, and several went through multiple printings. Check the copyright page carefully. A first printing will show only the original publication date without reprint notices. If you find a signed copy of a Trail Dust compilation in first printing, you have a genuinely useful and collectible piece of the Simmons bibliography.

The original newspaper columns themselves — clipped from the Santa Fe New Mexican — occasionally surface in estate cleanouts, usually in scrapbooks or filing folders maintained by readers who saved the column every week. These clipping collections are ephemeral and fragile, and they have some interest as artifacts of the column’s readership, but they are not as collectible as the published compilations because newspaper clippings deteriorate quickly and cannot be practically preserved over the long term.

Marc Simmons produced an enormous amount of material in formats shorter than a conventional book. Pamphlets, chapbooks, booklets, museum publications, historical society proceedings, and other short-run items make up a significant portion of his total output. These items are among the most interesting and the most challenging parts of the Simmons bibliography for collectors.

The pamphlets were typically produced for specific occasions or organizations: a historical society anniversary, a museum exhibition, a trail-marking ceremony, a commemorative event. Print runs were small — often a few hundred copies — and distribution was local. Many were given away rather than sold. The result is that these items are genuinely scarce. They were not cataloged by most libraries, they were not listed by most book dealers, and they were often discarded or lost after the event that prompted their creation had passed. The ones that survive tend to be found in the personal libraries of people who were involved in the NM historical community during Simmons’s active years — historical society members, trail association members, museum board members, local historians, and university faculty.

For collectors, the pamphlets and chapbooks represent the deep end of the Simmons bibliography. They are where completists go after they have acquired the major books, and they are the items most likely to produce genuine surprises. A pamphlet on a particular Santa Fe Trail site, a booklet on Cerrillos mining history, a commemorative piece for a historical society event — these items can be quite interesting historically and quite difficult to locate. They also tend to be signed at a higher rate than the full-length books because they were often produced for events where Simmons was present and signing.

If you are cleaning out an NM estate and you find a box of pamphlets and booklets mixed in with the full-length books, do not throw them away. Check them carefully for Simmons authorship. A slim, saddle-stapled pamphlet with a Simmons byline and a historical society imprint may be harder to find than any of his full-length books, and the collector community knows it. These are the items that experienced NM book collectors look for most eagerly, because they represent the gaps in their collections that the major books cannot fill.

Marc Simmons signed a lot of books. He signed them at Collected Works Bookstore on Galisteo Street in Santa Fe, which was his de facto home bookstore and the place where he did more public signings than anywhere else. He signed them at Santa Fe Trail Association meetings in towns along the trail from Missouri to New Mexico. He signed them at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, at the New Mexico History Museum, at county historical society meetings from Mora to Dona Ana. He signed them at book fairs, at library events, at museum openings. He signed them for anyone who mailed a book to his ranch near Cerrillos with a return envelope and a polite note. He never turned anyone down.

The result is that signed Marc Simmons copies are abundant in the NM market. This is not a Tony Hillerman situation, where signed copies are uncommon because the author was selective about signing. This is the opposite situation: Simmons signed so generously and so consistently that a significant percentage of his books in NM circulation bear his signature. In estate libraries that contain Simmons titles, I find signed copies in roughly one out of every fmy collections. That is an extraordinarily high rate.

The abundance of signed copies means that the signature alone does not carry the premium it would for a more reluctant signer. A signed Simmons is not automatically valuable the way a signed Cormac McCarthy is. The collector premium on a Simmons signature is real but modest — it is the combination of signature, first edition, good condition, and a desirable title that creates meaningful collector value. A signed third printing of Witchcraft in the Southwest in a worn paperback is a nice thing to own, but it is not a collector item. A signed first edition of Spanish Government in New Mexico in dust jacket is.

That said, the signature pool closed on April 7, 2023, and it is not going to reopen. Every signed Simmons copy that exists today is the last one that will ever exist. The pool was enormous, but it is now fixed, and as copies are absorbed into institutional collections, destroyed by damage or disposal, or passed to new owners who do not put them back on the market, the available supply will decline over time. This is the fundamental dynamic of the closed signature pool: even a large pool becomes smaller every year after it closes.

Simmons’s signature is typically found on the title page or the half-title page. He usually signed with his full name in a clear, legible hand. Inscriptions — copies signed to specific individuals with a brief personal note — are common and add a modest amount of interest to the copy, particularly if the inscription is to a known NM historical figure, a fellow historian, or a prominent community member. Association copies — copies with an inscription connecting them to someone in Simmons’s professional or personal circle — carry more collector interest than generic signatures.

Where do signed Simmons copies surface? The primary sources are NM estate sales, Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe (which has maintained a stock of signed NM books for decades), the annual Santa Fe Trail Association rendezvous, NM historical society book sales, and the Albuquerque and Santa Fe used-book markets. Online, signed Simmons copies appear regularly on AbeBooks, eBay, and through specialist Western Americana dealers. The supply is steady but gradually declining, as one would expect from a recently closed pool of this size.

Marc Simmons is one of the most common authors in New Mexico estate libraries. I would estimate that he appears in approximately half of all NM estate collections that contain any regional history, and in nearly all estate collections built by people with a serious interest in NM history. The typical NM estate library with a Simmons presence contains between three and eight titles, usually a mix of Santa Fe Trail books, one or two Spanish colonial titles, Witchcraft in the Southwest, and perhaps a city history or a Trail Dust compilation. Larger collections — those belonging to NM historians, historical society members, trail association members, or university faculty — can contain twenty or more Simmons titles, including pamphlets and ephemera.

When I evaluate a Simmons collection from an estate donation, I look for several things in sequence. First, I check for signed copies. As noted above, signed copies appear in roughly one out of every four Simmons-containing estate libraries. A signed copy gets set aside immediately for closer evaluation. Second, I check for first editions. Many Simmons titles went through multiple printings, and the copyright page is the essential reference. A first printing of a major title in dust jacket is a collector item regardless of signature status. Third, I check for the scarce titles — pamphlets, chapbooks, Ancient City Press editions, early Sunstone Press works, and any title I have not seen before. The Simmons bibliography is large enough that there are titles I encounter only rarely, and those are the copies that generate the most collector interest.

Fourth, I assess condition. Simmons books were working references for many of their original owners. They were taken on trail trips, consulted during research, read on the porch, passed around among friends. This means that many Simmons copies in estate libraries show moderate wear — bumped corners, faded spines, price-clipped dust jackets, occasional marginal notes. This is normal and expected. A Simmons title in genuinely fine, unread condition is the exception rather than the rule, and such copies carry a premium precisely because most copies were used.

For families and estate representatives dealing with a NM history collection that includes Simmons titles, my advice is straightforward: do not discard anything without checking it. The pamphlets and slim booklets are the most easily overlooked items, and they are often the most interesting to collectors. The signed copies are worth identifying even if the book itself is a common title in a later printing. And the first editions of major titles — Spanish Government in New Mexico, Kit Carson and His Three Wives, Following the Santa Fe Trail, The Last Conquistador, Witchcraft in the Southwest, Albuquerque: A Narrative History — are the copies that carry the most consistent collector value.

If you are unsure about what you have, bring everything to me. The New Mexico Literacy Project evaluates every donated book individually. I identify first editions, check for signatures, assess condition, and route each title appropriately. The Simmons titles that carry collector value are handled accordingly, and the reading copies — the later printings, the paperbacks, the well-worn trail guides — go to NM schools, libraries, and community organizations where they continue to serve the purpose Simmons intended: teaching people about this state’s extraordinary history.

Tier 1 — High Collector Interest: Signed first editions of major titles represent the top tier of the Simmons market. The combination of genuine first printing, dust jacket (where issued), and Simmons signature on a major title — Spanish Government in New Mexico, Kit Carson and His Three Wives, The Last Conquistador, Witchcraft in the Southwest first edition, Albuquerque: A Narrative History first hardcover, early printings of Following the Santa Fe Trail — is what draws specialist Western Americana and regional history collectors. Unsigned first editions of the same titles in fine condition with dust jacket also occupy this tier. Scarce pamphlets and chapbooks with confirmed small print runs, particularly signed examples, belong here as well. Ancient City Press first editions of any Simmons title qualify because of the press’s small print runs and current defunct status. Association copies inscribed to known NM historians, trail association officers, or university colleagues carry additional interest within this tier.

Tier 2 — Solid Collector Interest: Signed copies of any Simmons title in good condition, even later printings, occupy the second tier. Unsigned first editions of less prominent titles — the Trail Dust compilations, the shorter topical histories, the edited volumes — belong here. First paperback editions of titles originally issued as paperback originals sit in this tier, as do Sunstone Press first editions of mid-career and later works. University of Oklahoma Press first editions of non-Carson titles, if any were published there, would land here. The key characteristic of Tier 2 is that these are books with genuine collector interest — not just reading copies — but they do not command the premium of the major signed firsts.

Tier 3 — Working Library: Later printings, revised editions, mass-market paperbacks, and reading copies of all Simmons titles make up the working-library tier. These are the copies that NM history students, teachers, researchers, and general readers actually use. They are functional and valuable for their content, but they do not carry collector premiums. The typical NM estate library contains mostly Tier 3 Simmons copies, and those copies serve the most important purpose of all when they are donated: they go to schools, libraries, and community organizations across New Mexico where they introduce new readers to the state’s history. A well-read, spine-creased copy of Witchcraft in the Southwest that ends up in a high school library in Gallup or Las Vegas or Deming is fulfilling Marc Simmons’s life’s work more directly than a signed first edition sitting in a collector’s climate-controlled bookcase.