Truth or Consequences: The Town That Changed Its Name

The town you are approaching is called Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, which is almost certainly the strangest place name you will see on an interstate highway sign. It has been that way since nineteen fifty, and the story of how it happened is exactly as absurd as it sounds.

For the first part of its modern life, the town was called Hot Springs. The name was accurate: geothermal water has been percolating to the surface here along the Rio Grande for millennia, and the Warm Springs Chiricahua Apache regarded this place as sacred ground for healing. By the early twentieth century Anglo settlers had built a resort economy around the baths. There was just one problem. There were hundreds of Hot Springs towns across the country, including famous ones in Arkansas and Montana, and the confusion was a constant commercial headache.

In nineteen fifty a radio host named Ralph Edwards was preparing to broadcast the tenth anniversary episode of his NBC program, Truth or Consequences, one of the most popular game shows of its era. Edwards made an offhand announcement on air: he wished some American town loved his show enough to rename itself after it. The Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce heard the idea relayed through the New Mexico State Tourist Bureau and decided to play along. The residents voted, and on March thirty-first, nineteen fifty, Hot Springs officially became Truth or Consequences. The broadcast aired the following evening, April first.

What started as a publicity stunt turned permanent. Edwards showed up for the broadcast and fell in love with the town. He came back every May for the next fifty years. His annual visit grew into a town-wide fiesta with a parade, a pageant, and a park named in his honor that still stands today.

Just outside town you can see another chapter of the region's history. Elephant Butte Dam, completed in nineteen sixteen, was when finished the largest irrigation reservoir in the world and the first dam built under an international treaty, dividing Rio Grande water between the United States and Mexico. The rocky island that gives the reservoir its name rises from the water in the unmistakable profile of an elephant's head and shoulders.

The hot springs still flow here, and the bathhouses still operate, fed by the same geothermal water the Apache called a place to pray.