SILVER CITY STREET SCENE
BLACK RANGE
SEEKING SILVER CITY: GHOST TOWNS AND FORGOTTEN GLORY IN THE GILA
This land was once inhabited by the Mimbres (willow) people, related to the Mogollon, considered early Puebloan people, who dwelled in these mountains and along the Mimbres river, known for their classic black-and-white pottery. It was also the territory of warrior-shaman Geronimo, descendent of the Mescalero and Chiracaua Apache tribe, during the 19th century; his determination led his people in remaining the last holdouts against American expansion.
Cross 8,000-foot Emory Pass in low gear to navigate the steep, steady climb of 8 miles from Kingston to Emory Pass. Then come the sweeping turns downhill to NM 61 at San Lorenzo. From there see the rolling hills leading into Silver City. The descent through the ponderosa forest is wonderful. Continue the descent west through Gallinas Canyon, which has dramatic rock formations. Bicycling Magazine has written up the ride as one of the great climbs in the country. Find views of the Hurley open-pit mine and Kneeling Nun rock formation along the way. William Emory, a topographical engineer, with Kit Carson as a guide, charted this remote area proximate to the Continental Divide with the Army of the West in 1846. You will be traveling along the southern portion of the Geronimo Trail National Scenic Byway. A century ago, this was the summer land of the Chiracauhua Warm Springs Apaches. Magnificent scenery highlights this curvy drive through the Black Range and over the 8,200-foot Emory Pass. The Vista Point at Emory Pass is a handicap-accessible place to take a break and enjoy the eye-popping views. Restroom, tables, and grill are available at the Vista, also a trailhead.
Starting in the town of Caballo just south of Truth or Consequences, the road snakes along, dips and climbs from 4,100 to 5,140 feet as it heads west to Silver City. From I-25 to Silver City is 75 miles.
From T or C, travel 13 miles on I-25 south to the NM 152 exit. Go right. Be prepared to travel slowly with extreme caution over the shoulderless switchbacks of Emory Pass. Allow time to browse the ghost towns of Hillsboro and Kingston and to take photos from the summit of McKnight Mountain at 10,165 feet. There is no cell phone coverage between Hillsboro and Silver City.
From the I-25 exit, go 17 miles on NM 152 to Hillsboro (once the center of gold and silver mining activity and the gateway to the Black Range. Or take the backroad, NM 187, from T or C down to Caballo Lake State Park.
It doesn’t take long, once you leave the main highway, to know you are headed for somewhere long ago and faraway. In fact, the Old West is only a whisper away here. It only happened yesterday, it seems. Over $6 million in precious metal was extracted here back in the day, when as many as 10,000 prospectors lived here. Cowboys drew from a hat for the honor of naming it. Hillsboro was well on its way to becoming a true ghost town when it was discovered by a few urbanites who moved in and fixed up the old houses, built between 1877 and 1940, or built new ones indistinguishable from vintage properties. Turning first from mining, then to ranching, it became celebrated as a center for apple growing, before settling into its current station as home to artists, old-timers, and visitor’s intent on exploring every corner of the state. The Hillsboro Café, in addition to serving homemade food and coffee, with daily specials, is an excellent place to meet those old-timers, who may stroll in with spurs on, and who, with a little patient prodding, may part with their tales. Biscuits and gravy, steak specials, and healthy portions of healthy food may make this your dream come true of a roadside café. The Black Range Museum was once home to British-born madam Sadie Orchard, local lady of the night with a heart of gold. She served the town during epidemics, donated to good causes, and ran a stagecoach line. The museum tells the story of Sierra County’s early days with an emphasis on mining. Hillsboro was the county seat for 30 years and the site of one of the state’s most famous, or infamous, trials: that of Oliver Lee for the murder of Judge Albert Fountain and his son Henry, which brought Sheriff Pat Garret to town and remains unsolved to this day. Percha Creek Traders is a co-op gallery featuring a few dozen local artists who do clay, photography, weaving, and quilting. It is a stop on the New Mexico Fiber Arts Trail. Black Range Vineyards specializes in New Mexico vintages, gourmet snacks and occasional live music. The road to Lake Valley, a deserted silver mining town, winds out of Hillsboro.
It’s only 9 miles west down NM 152 through the Box Canyon of Percha Creek and dramatic rock formations to a for-real ghost town, Kingston, where a sign proclaims THE SPIT AND WHITTLE CLUB DWELLS HERE. Hard as it is to believe, this spot in 1890 was a rip-snortin’ mining town of 7,000 with 22 saloons, plus brothels and banks and the distinction of being New Mexico’s largest city. Even the most famous singer of her day, Lillian Russell, performed here with her troupe. The Percha Bank Museum and Gallery is the only intact building remaining from those days, and it offers an education on what it was like to live here back then.
NO MATTER HOW YOU GET THERE, THE HILLSBORO CAFÉ IS WELL WORTH THE TRIP
When Las Cruces native Catherine Wanek drove here from Los Angeles on her honeymoon, she spotted the old mining hotel called the Black Range Lodge and fell in love with it. She and her new husband decided to buy it on the spot. She turned this rather dark, out-of-the-English-countryside lodge into a merry B&B. Massive stone walls and log-beamed ceilings date to 1940, but the original building dates to the 1880s, when it was built to house miners and cavalry. Cyclists and tourists from all over the world are drawn here to enjoy Wanek’s informal hospitality, her breakfast buffet featuring preserves made from apples and plums from her orchard on home-baked bread, and her claw-foot tubs. Catherine has become a well-known authority on straw bale construction and has built several straw bale buildings on her premises, including an all-natural meeting room that hosts live music, talks, films, and special events.
If you are planning on driving the entire Geronimo Trail Scenic Byway, which begins in T or C and loops back at San Lorenzo on NM 152, plan for an all-day trip at 220 miles, and you may want to overnight in Kingston. At the intersection of NM 152 and NM 356 is the small, easy-to-miss Santa Rita Shrine, fronted by a memorial to Vietnam veterans killed in action. Be on the lookout for the rock formation landmark known as the Kneeling Nun looming over the massive strip mine.
The journey across Emory Pass to Silver City begins in 8 miles as you leave Kingston and gain altitude. Travel 48.5 miles to Silver City, a drive of one hour and 20 minutes, an excellent base for exploring the Gila Cliff Dwellings; attending the many annual arts, music and food festivals; and enjoying birds and other wildlife. In 1821, this area changed from Spanish to Mexican control; then, in 1853, it became an American territory with the signing of the Gadsden Purchase.
BLACK RANGE LODGE IN THE GHOST TOWN OF KINGSTON PROVIDES RUSTIC COMFORT WITH HOMEGROWN PRESERVES AND CLAW-FOOT TUBS
Silver City, population 10,000 and elevation 6,000 feet, originally the site of an Apache encampment, has two museums; Western New Mexico State University; an abundance of artist studios, galleries, and cafés; and an historic downtown to explore. Founded in 1870 and named for rich silver deposits west of town, its period architecture is well preserved, with dozens of Queen Anne and Victorian homes to admire. It is one of the most pet-friendly places you will ever visit. Billy the Kid, known then as Henry Antrim, roamed these streets when he was growing up, as did Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. Billy’s mother, Catherine Antrim, is buried in Silver City in the Memory Lane Cemetery. The Visitor Center parking lot holds a log cabin from a movie set for The Missing that replicates the sort of place Billy would have lived in. Two historic downtown hotels, the Palace, a Victorian brick, and the art deco Murray Hotel, are of interest. A popular walking and birding area is Big Ditch Riverwalk Park, with the feel of a small forest hidden away in town. A series of devastating floods between 1895 and 1910 washed away the original Main Street and created a Big Ditch. Businesses started using their back door entrances on Bullard Street, and eventually Bullard became the new Main Street.
Silver City has something of a dual nature; the town seems divided between newcomers like tourists and amenity migrants and old-time copper miners. If you just stay in the downtown, you may not be aware this town continues to struggle with issues of poverty, unemployment, addiction, and health problems specific to miners. The downtown, loaded as it is with galleries, cafés, microbreweries, and one of the state’s oldest food co-ops, may seem at first like the place where old hippies never die, they just retire and write poetry and play the guitar. The Chino Mine, also known as the Santa Rita Mine, an immense strip mine, is located 15 miles east of town on NM 152. The 1950s film Salt of the Earth, about miners organizing, was made here.
The Silver City Museum, a brick Mansard-Italianate style home built by prospector Harry Ailman in 1880, showcases local history exhibits. Western New Mexico University is a hidden treasure housing the largest collection of prehistoric Mimbres black on white pottery in the nation. Casas Grande pottery, mining artifacts, prehistoric tools and jewelry are also on display.
Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is 44 miles north of Silver City along the Trail of the Mountain Spirits Scenic Byway. Take N 15 north from Silver City into the Gila National Monument for 115 miles through Pinos Altos, Lake Roberts, Mimbres River and the Santa Rita open pit copper mine. Allow at least two hours.
The Gila Hot Springs Campground is a private business owned by Allen and Carla Campbell. It offers camping and natural hot spring pools beside the Gila River in southwest New Mexico. The springs vary in temperature from 147o to 154oF and are considered sweet springs (no sulphur odor). It is located 40 miles north of Silver City and about 4 miles from the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, declared a national monument in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt. The area is surrounded by the Gila Wilderness and the larger Gila National Forest.
A short drive from the visitor center along the West Fork of the Gila River, a 1-mile loop leads through the dwellings, natural caves fashioned into 40 rooms with stone quarried by the indigenous farmers who lived here starting in CE 100 to 400. These Mogollon people raised squash, corn, and beans on the mesa tops and along the river, also making exquisite black and white pottery between the 1280s and the 1300s.
The trail actually passes through rooms used by the ancient Puebloans as it rises 180 feet above the Gila River, gleaming on the canyon floor. A drought in the 13th century probably drove them out. The trail is steep in places, with a 180-foot elevation gain above the river, making for a lovely, shady walk during which to contemplate the spirits of the ancients.
Back at NM 35 junction, follow the road east along Sapello (Spanish for “little toad”) Creek toward Lake Roberts for 63 miles until you reach the lake. Continue down NM 35 along the Mimbres River into the valley.
Leave Silver City for Las Cruces via US 180, and then go 56 miles to Deming, a town named for a woman. Deming is named after Mary Ann Deming Crocker, wife of railroad industrialist Charles Crocker, known for her good works in the area. A silver spike was driven here in 1881 to commemorate the meeting of the Southern Pacific with the AT&SF railroad and the second transcontinental railroad line. Today Deming is a quiet place of 14,000, peopled largely by retirees and snowbirds, that bills itself as Rockhound’s Paradise, although it remains a center of ranching and farming activity. The town’s big event used to be the Deming Duck Race, but now it is the annual Rockhound Roundup, held in March, generally coordinated with Pancho Villa Day, in honor of the Mexican revolutionary who “invaded” the United States by crossing the border at Columbus, 32 miles on NM 11 to the south.
A worthwhile attraction is the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum, with a quilt room, a doll room with over 600 antique dolls, the military room with mementos of the Pancho Villa Raid, and the Indian kiva, with outstanding Mimbres pottery and native basketry. The museum is housed in a 1916 armory with a motorized chairlift. It also holds the “silver spike” mentioned above. Another worthwhile stop is the mothership of St. Clair Vineyards. Tours are offered Saturday and Sunday, and tastings are generous with a free glass of the wine of the month plus tastes of two additional wines. Cabernet, Chardonnay, Zinfandel, and sparkling wines are made here. Nearby Adobe Deli Steakhouse has been featured on food TV and is known for the décor of wall-to-wall mounted heads and more importantly, for sublime sandwiches on freshly baked bread and signature onion soup.
To visit Rockhound State Park, go south 5 miles on NM 11, then east on NM 141 for 9 miles. Each visitor is permitted a haul of 25 pounds of rocks and can select among jasper, perlite and geodes. Return to the main road and continue to City of Rocks State Park on US 180 (24 miles from Deming, should you skip Rockhound), then 4 miles northeast on NM 61 leads to City of Rocks State Park With the feel of a natural Stonehenge, monumental rock formations—pillars of 34.9-million-year-old, wind-sculpted volcanic ash as high as 40 feet—are separated by paths to give the feeling of a city. A premier dark skies location, there is an astronomy observatory that offers frequent starry-night programs. Truly surreal. Right next to City of Rocks is Faywood Hot Springs Resort at 165 NM 61, with over a dozen shaded outdoor, natural geothermal mineral water soaking pools, both public and private. Overnight guests may use public pools all night. “Limp in, leap out” is the motto here. Faywood offers cabins, RV hookups, and tent sites.
From here it’s 86.4 miles further along NM 80 and I-10, the high lonesome road that shoots straight as a bowling lane through dry empty stretches of creosote, ocotillo, yucca, and tumbleweed along the road to Las Cruces, home of New Mexico State University’s Aggies and the attractions of the Mesilla Valley: New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, Mesilla Plaza, the state’s best Mexican food, and high desert hiking at Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument, whose 496,000 acres surround Las Cruces. Our nation’s newest protected area features recreational opportunities like strolling through desert nature trails and the chance to encounter petroglyph and archeological sites, with Picacho Peak Recreation Area within it, as well as the remarkable Farmer’s and Craft Market downtown on Saturday mornings.
IN THE AREA
Accommodations
BEAR MOUNTAIN LODGE, 80 Bear Mountain Road, Silver City. Call 575-538-2538. $$$$.
BLACK RANGE LODGE, 119 Main Street, Kingston. Call 575-895-5652. Website: www.blackrangelodge.com. $$.
Attractions and Recreation
BAYARD HISTORICAL DISTRICT, 9 miles east of Silver City via US 180. Call 575-537-3327.
GERONIMO TRAIL VISITOR CENTER, 301 South Foch Street., Truth or Consequences. Call 575-894-1968. Website: geronimotrail.com.
GILA NATIONAL FOREST RANGER DISTRICT, HC 68 Box 50, Mimbres. Call 575-536-2250. Website: www.fs.usda.gov/detail/gila/about-forest/districts/?cid=fse_006126.
GILA NATIONAL FOREST SUPERVISOR’S OFFICE, 13005 East Camino del Bosque, Silver City. Call 575-388-8201.
PERCHA BANK MUSEUM AND GALLERY, 119b Main Street, Kingston.
SILVER CITY VISITOR CENTER, 201 North Hudson, Silver City. Call 575-538-5555. Website: silvercitytourism.org.
WESTERN NEW MEXICO UNIVERSITY MUSEUM, Light Hall Theater, 1000 West College Avenue, Silver City. Call 575-538-6386.
Dining and Drinks
ADOBE DELI STEAKHOUSE, 3970 Lewis Flats Road, Deming. $$.
DIANE’S RESTAURANT, 510 North Bullard, Silver City. Call 575-538-8722, Website: dianesrestaurant.com. $$$. Across the street at 601 North Bullard is Diane’s Bakery and Deli, with takeout sandwiches, 20 kinds of artisan breads, and more.
HILLSBORO GENERAL STORE CAFÉ, 0697 Highway 152, Hillsboro. Call 575-895-5306. $$.
JALISCO CAFÉ, 103 South Bullard, Silver City. Call 575-388-2060. $$.
LITTLE TOAD CREEK BREWERY & DISTILLERY, 200 North Bullard, Silver City. Call 575-956-6144. $$.
ST. CLAIR VINEYARDS, 1325 De Baca Road, Deming. $$.