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We’re about to start a run of posts featuring towns out on the eastern plains of New Mexico, some not far from the Texas state line. A few of these aren’t absolute ghost towns in the sense that the populations range from perhaps a couple individuals to around 70. But they’re all pretty obscure. So obscure, in fact, that in many cases all I can find on them, historically-speaking, is what Robert Julyan has to say in The Place Names of New Mexico. But, to me, these are fascinating, picturesque, and photogenic places, each persisting as best it can, whether populated or not, on the lonesome, windswept prairie.
Let’s start with Causey, New Mexico, located in Roosevelt County at the crossroads of NM 114 and 321, 35 miles southeast of Portales and about a mile from Texas. Despite some previous conjecture that the moniker was intended to flatter a railroad VP and get a line through Causey, it now seems agreed that the town was named for at least two of the Causey brothers, T.L. “George” and John. The brothers were buffalo hunters, working in the southeastern part of the state and George, in particular, established a reputation for being one of the most successful in the history of the American West. Estimates by outside observers put the number of buffalo he personally killed at around 40,000. One of George’s hunting companions, George Jefferson, known as “Old Jeff,” said “Causey killed more buffaloes in one winter…than Buffalo Bill Cody killed in his entire lifetime.”
The problem with shooting that many buffalo is that eventually you run out. Of course, that’s how it went and, after hunting through the 1870’s, by 1882 Causey had shot the last of the wild buffalo on what is known as the Llano Estacado, or “Staked Plain,” of eastern New Mexico.
While George Causey generally operated to the south, the town of Causey is on the west central part of the Llano Estacado, one of the largest tablelands in North America, the majority of which is in northwest Texas. Coronado had this to say upon stumbling onto the Llano in 1541:
"I reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I traveled over them for more than 300 leagues...with no more land marks than if we had been swallowed up by the sea...there was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by."
To translate for those of us no longer using leagues, Coronado covered more than 1000 miles.
Thus turning to ranching on the Llano, George Causey established himself south of Lovington, maybe 60 miles from present-day Causey. Mr. Causey promoted the suitability of eastern New Mexico for ranching and farming and, as one of the earliest settlers in the area, opened it up for those who followed, not least by being the first to discover the rich supply of groundwater in the region.
In 1902, Causey was thrown from a horse during a mustang round-up, badly injuring his spine. After traveling all over the country depleting his finances in a failed effort to find medical relief for his severe headaches, and increasingly disenchanted with the rapidly changing West, Causey sold his ranch to pay off debt, married his nurse, and moved near Kenna, 30 miles southwest of the town that bears his family name. He shot himself in his bed on May 19, 1903, his body discovered by his nephews, Vivian and Ralph, who’d heard the report of their uncle's gun. I don’t know if the town of Causey had been established by that time or not; the post office didn't open until 1907.
The earliest date I can put on Causey is 1907, when the post office opened. It remains operational to this day. The townsite was actually moved by Ezra Ball sometime after WWI and is now three miles north of where it was first established. These days you will find some well-kept homes and a few residents. The population as of the 2000 census was 52 and I imagine that’s decreased a little. There is also the ruin of a massive WPA-built school which is collapsing and disappearing into the overgrowth. It was surprising to me that such a large school existed in Causey, but F. Stanley reported in “The Causey (New Mexico) Story,” published in 1966, that there were at least 150 students attending the school in 1942. That's more than I would've guessed. Here’s a taste of how things were back then:
"The Causey school has over fifty in high school and over one hundred in grade school, Supt. L. E. O'Hare stated last weekend. The attendance has been good. The school board has not decided when it will dismiss school for crop gathering, but Supt. O'Hare is of the opinion it will be about the first of next month. There have been no resignations of teachers so far." (Sept. 7, 1942) The school is pictured below.
Also, in 1960, the senior class was said to have visited the "Insane Asylum" in Las Vegas, NM as part of a long field trip. I wonder if the kids lobbied to put that on the itinerary.
Stanley himself said of Causey that, “The most surprising thing is the school system and the fire house, worthy of larger cities.” He went on: “Time is unimportant to the teachers. They give so much of it to the school. Many a trip took me through Causey and teachers would be noted at their desks far into the night. There may be a thousand reasons for this; there may be none save that they love their work.”
Next to the school is a massive metal, armory-like structure with a caved-in roof. I've heard this was the school gymnasium and also held the agricultural shops. Someone else told me they’d played basketball inside the school, which would indicate the gym was there. Heck, maybe there were gyms in both places. (UPDATE: There were two gyms! I've been told the bigger was the "New Gym," probably built in the mid-to-late 1960's. However, it may not have been used as such for long because the school closed sometime in 1970-1971.) Inside the armory were a couple bedraggled pick-up trucks and the first abandoned semi tractor I’ve ever seen, now crushed under the huge roof.
F. Stanley noted in 1966 that, “Causey had a long, hard road to travel, but it has made the grade and the future looks good.” It is referred to as “one of the business centers of Roosevelt County,” with a population of 234 as early as 1920. Like so many small towns, the future Stanley spoke of appears to have, in the end, been at least as hard as the past.
Information for this post came from the aforementioned The Place Names of New Mexico, as well as F. Stanley’s long out of print “The Causey (New Mexico) Story.” Some biographical information on George Causey can be found at the Texas State Historical Society. Wikipedia will give you demographics. If you get really into George Causey and the Llano, you will want to read Cowboy Life on the Llano Estacado, written by his nephew, V. H. Whitlock aka Ol’ Waddy. Roosevelt County History and Heritage, by Jean M. Burroughs, wife of former NM governor John Burroughs, documents the county, but doesn’t say a whole lot about Causey.
Next time…Pep, NM!
It’s been awhile since we’ve visited an operating historic hotel, but over the last couple years we've seen the Express St. James in Cimarron and the Schaffer Hotel in Mountainair. So, it's fitting that we also take a look at the recently restored Murray Hotel in downtown Silver City, NM. A beautiful Art Deco building, it was constructed on the site of the Broadway Hotel, which was torn down in 1925. Across the street is the Palace Hotel, another lovely place, which opened March 1, 1900 in the former Meredith and Ailman Bank building, built 1882.
Construction on the Murray Hotel began in 1937 and, with the country still reeling from the Great Depression, it was no trouble to get very skilled craftsmen to build the joint, which was originally designed to have 52 rooms, three retail stores, a restaurant, a coffee shop, a bar, and a luxurious lobby. Steam closets and low shower heads were even installed in the bathrooms so that women would be able to get the wrinkles out of their clothes while cleaning up after a long, hot, bumpy, and rumple-inducing journey.
Below is an iconic photo of 16-year-old Martha Ryan, granddaughter of the hotel’s developer and NM state senator W.D. Murray, on her horse in the terrazzo-floored lobby. It was taken to promote a Fourth of July Rodeo in 1938, before the hotel was even finished. Incidentally, W.D.’s grandson, Murray Ryan, was a long-time NM state representative. The Murray officially opened in October ’38 with a grand celebration. Anyone who was anyone in southern New Mexico turned out, including hotel magnate and Paris Hilton antecedent Conrad Hilton.
In 1949, as the American economy boomed post-WWII, another 48 rooms were added to the Murray in a north tower, making an even 100, and a spring-suspended maple-floored ballroom was installed. The parties held in the ballroom remain legendary among local old-timers. The hotel also took on a more explicitly Western vibe and the bar, which had gone by the mining-themed moniker Copper Lounge, became the Branding Room, where ranchers and businessman wheeled and dealed beside a large mural depicting local ranch brands.
For decades the Murray was perhaps the social center in Grant County. However, by the late 1970’s a lot had changed and the hotel was struggling to stay afloat. Area mines had closed, travelers were staying elsewhere and, by the early 1990’s, the once-grand hotel was shuttered and appeared abandoned. Eventually, local residents decided that the iconic building should be saved, but it would change hands several times in the ensuing years before anyone could figure out quite what to do with it.
Finally, in 2005, the Murray was bought by the Albershardt’s, who began a long and expensive restoration. Extensive cleaning was required as the hotel had seen its share of vandals and homeless residents and it was a given that the original Art Deco design elements needed to remain intact. The hotel re-opened for business in spring 2012 and, at this point, I believe as many as 82 rooms have been restored, as well as the ballroom and various banquet and meeting rooms.
My visit to the Murray Hotel occurred last Christmas during a freak (well, this is southern New Mexico) blizzard that earlier had me cut-off from my desired route to Silver City through Hillsboro, 
Kingston, and the Black Range. The Murray, however, was warm and inviting and sipping complimentary herbal tea in the lobby, which looks just as it did when Martha Ryan parked her horse there, was…well, not exactly a rugged, Western way to spend a holiday evening. But I can’t ever complain when in Silver City, even if snowbound and unable to brave the elements for just the short walk to Billy the Kid’s childhood cabin. The rooms were likewise cozy and still have a vintage feel to them, despite the extensive updates.
Obviously, I highly recommend a stay at the Murray Hotel, which has been so faithfully restored as to leave one pretty convinced they’ve entered an Art Deco time portal back to the late 1930’s. Now if they would just re-open the Branding Room and maybe book a Duke Ellington gig.
Information for this post came mostly from the Murray Hotel itself. Check out their website and Facebook page for reservations, correspondence, and all that kind of thing. A tour of the hotel can be found on You Tube.
Alright, enough of the shiny and new(-looking). Next time it’ll be back to some abandonment. We’ll travel way across the state and return to the eastern plains near the Texas border to hit some little-known towns that I can barely dig up any information on. So, those of you who have been fervently wishing for less time-consuming posts will be sighing with relief. I’ll be sighing with relief myself, actually.
Like Hillsboro, Kingston, New Mexico isn’t a ghost town. But it’s also not the place of which it was said that on nights when the miners had been paid you couldn’t walk ninety feet in 30 minutes for the crowd, a place with 22 saloons, 14 grocery stores, three hotels, three concurrently-operating newspapers, an opera house, and a school, a place where the bank once held $7,000,000 in silver and the population topped 7,000. Nope, it’s not that place now. And it never was. There may be few Old West mining boom towns that have had their history so exagerrated. Kingston has even been considered to have once been the biggest town in territorial New Mexico.
Now, everyone agrees that in the early 1880’s precious metal, particularly silver, was found in the area. Ralph Looney’s Haunted Highways recounts the story that Kingston’s establishment can be traced to a drunkard, Jack Sheddon, who became such a nuisance in Lake Valley that the sheriff put him on a burro with food and whiskey and sent him north. En route to Chloride, he made a stop near what would become Kingston, had a good long drink, and passed out on a rock. When he came to, he noticed that his stony pillow had flecks of metal in it. This was bornite, a silver ore, and he quickly established the Solitaire Mine. Soon prospectors were descending from every direction. It’s a great tale, but not really true. Prospecting was underway before Sheddon even arrived (he at least did exist) as a few miners had already moved the 10 or so miles west from Hillsboro, which had been established in 1877.
(The above photo shows a house that was also once a store on Kingston's eastern edge. The sign in the window says, "Dr Dans Medicine Show 1/22/11". Near the bottom of this post is a shot of the microwave tree around the side. Interesting, eh?)
In the fall of 1882, James Porter Parker, General G.A. Custer’s former roommate at West Point, platted Kingston, which took its name from a local mine, the Iron King. Soon it was reported by the Tombstone Epitaph in Arizona that there were 45 men working area mines. By 1885, a year after Kingston’s oft-reported peak population of 7,000, Territorial Census figures show 329 residents in Kingston and the adjacent Danville Camp combined, even with Spanish and Chinese included in the tally.
It may well have been a rowdy place though. In an 1886 edition of the St. John’s Herald out of east-central Arizona (at the time Kingston didn’t have one newspaper) a citizen expressed upset at their town’s lack of a school, church, or, indeed, any public institution. Reverend S.W. Thornton even referred to Kingston as “the typical mining town in all its wickedness.” In 1888, construction of a stone church began which would serve Kingston’s now-1,000 residents. Sometimes claimed to have been spontaneously financed by prostitutes, gamblers, and dancehall girls, it’s more likely that Rev. N.W. Chase solicited the funds.
In 1890, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Kingston’s population reached 1,449, a count it probably never surpassed by much. The 1893 economic panic sent silver prices crashing and the number of Kingston’s occupants plummeting quickly back into the low hundreds at best. By the time it was really all over in the early 1900’s almost $7,000,000 in precious metal had been mined in the vicinity, not an inconsiderable sum. But it took over 20 years; that amount was never in the Percha Bank at one time.
Even the usually no-nonsense Philip Varney slips up when it comes to Kingston, mentioning in New Mexico’s Best Ghost Towns that Chief Victorio’s band of Apaches once descended on the town,
but because the miners were assembling a hunting party and thus had their firearms at hand they were able to quickly drive the attackers out. It’s said Victorio decided to leave Kingston alone after that and the happy populace named their new three-story hotel The Victorio in his honor. The problem is that Victorio died in 1880, two years before Kingston was established. It’s not entirely Varney’s fault; there are many stories about Victorio and his band’s depredations in and around Kingston. And Varney didn’t have Wikipedia in the 1970’s.
You may also hear of the ironically-named Virtue St., on which was an infamous Kingston brothel. While you will find a very short side street named Virtue today, it was created after Kingston's initial abandonment. But don't fret! The world has not gone entirely topsy-turvy; there certainly was a brothel in early Kingston.
Walking the two short thoroughfares, many have wondered how a town could’ve risen and fallen so precipitously. Since it didn’t, it’s not as surprising that only one historic building exists wholly intact: the Percha Bank. The old Assay Office, remodeled as a private home, and a vastly reconfigured hotel—The Victorio—also persist. Floods and fires have certainly done their damage, but there was never as much to disappear as is usually imagined.
Much of the confusion over Kingston is attributable to James A. McKenna’s classic Black Range Tales, which, it should be noted, contains the word tales in the title and not facts. Some of McKenna’s yarns, which most ghost town sources at least reference, take place in a Kingston of 7,000 rabble rousers,
"the metropolis of the Southwest" which, while possibly true to the spirit of the day, never quite existed. The same year that Black Range Tales was published, 1936, Madame Sadie Orchard told an interviewer of a peak population of 5,000. Few having actually been there, such wild overestimates made their way into subsequent Kingston literature. In the end, maybe the Kingston of myth is just one of those places in the Wild West of our collective imagination that people wanted to exist so badly that it was finally wished into being. It’s not the worst thing to have happened to history, I suppose.
Craig Springer, Black Range historian, founding member of the Hillboro Historical Society, and co-author of Around Hillsboro, does the best (and, to date, just about only) full-blown analysis of Kingston’s popular history, "Kingston Myth," in the June 2012 issue of Desert Exposure, turning up many inaccuracies and doing an excellent job of tracking down primary sources of more reliability. I reference his work throughout this post and thank him for his input.
Below is the layout of Kingston circa 1887, which shows that three years after the town's supposed peak the place was still not real big. The plat is from the General Land Office of the BLM, which has all kinds of good stuff.
Most accounts of Kingston mention Victorio’s harassment, but a quick check of Wikipedia will confirm that he died on October 14, 1880. You might also have heard that Billy the Kid visited Kingston, but as he was shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881 in Fort Sumner it would’ve had to have been a very different sort of ghost town then indeed. Finally, if you’re in Kingston don’t forget to check out the real and factual Percha Bank, now a museum! Call before you visit as hours are limited.
Next post, I believe we’ll have a look at the newly remodeled Murray Hotel in Silver City. Then there will be a flurry of posts about towns on the eastern plains of New Mexico that not much has been written about. With such enforced brevity I might even be able to post more often!
Hillsboro, New Mexico, at the foot of the Black Range, almost 20 miles west of I-25 on NM 152, the scenic route to Silver City, is not a ghost town, as anyone that lives there will tell you. But it’s also not quite the place it was in the early 1890’s, when 2000 people called it home. Perhaps one-third of these were children, indicating something like the presence of family values, a bit unusual in a Wild West mining town of the time. (As of the 2010 census, Hillsboro’s population was 124.) Also, Hillsboro has plenty of historic heft, which makes it rather nice for inclusion here at City of Dust.
Hillsboro was a mining town and a gold mining town at that. In April 1877, Dan Dugan and Dave Stitzel found color along Percha Creek, just beside present-day Hillsboro, and suddenly a rush was on. Four months after Dugan and Stitzel had their ore assayed at $160 in gold to the ton someone built a house nearby and by December, with fresh claims springing up all around, it was decided to name the newborn town.
Over the years, I’ve put a lot of effort into describing the origins of the monikers of some of these places, but Hillsboro is easy: Everyone says they pulled the name out of a hat. Originally, it was Hillsborough, but all those extra letters were quickly deemed unnecessary. Or is it so easy? A lesser-known version has it that Joseph Trimbel Yankie, possibly the third prospector to arrive in the area, was given the honor of choosing the name. Because he was from Hillsboro, Ohio, he chose...Hillsboro. This account is now considered correct. Remember, when in doubt, always pick the less-interesting story.
(The building above, on Percha Creek, is *not* the pre-1893 Romelia Chavez Luna home, as I once speculated. It's the ruin of a circa 1920-30s service station. The Luna house is on the other side of Perhca Creek and, happily, remains occupied.)
Within two years, Hillsboro had a population of 300, as well as saloons, grocery stores, and a post office. It also had a problem with Apache raids, so four companies of soldiers were stationed nearby to provide protection. Once, when Victorio went raiding, everyone moved across the mountains to the mining camp of Georgetown to wait things out.
A lot of money was soon being pulled out of the region and Hillbsoro became a center of activity,
as well as the Sierra County seat in 1884, eventually resulting in the construction of an ornate, two-story brick courthouse for $17,000 in 1892. The sturdy, red-brick Union Church was also built that year. In the end, six million dollars in gold and silver was found in the rugged landscape, with all the attendant trading, banking, ranching, and rabblerousing such a thing would engender. Stagecoaches ran back and forth between adjacent Black Range towns and, of course, they were often robbed, so the jail was plenty big.
Hillsboro’s last jail, a stone affair built near the courthouse in the mid-1890’s, housed some interesting people, including Oliver Lee, James Gilliland, and William McNew, accused in the infamous 1896 disappearance near White Sands of Judge Albert J. Fountain and his eight-year-old son Henry. Fountain had been indicting suspected cattle thieves in Lincoln and Lee, Gilliland, and McNew had each been named. Incidentally, despite having been an outspoken opponent of Billy the Kid and his gang, Fountain had been selected to defend Billy in his 1881 trial for the murder of Sheriff William Brady, a case he obviously lost.
In 1899, after Lee and Gilliland had escaped Sheriff Pat Garrett and following political wrangling too labyrinthine to go into here, the accused were brought to Hillsboro, trial proceedings being moved from Las Cruces at the request of the defense. Oliver Lee and Jim Gilliland were tried for the murder of Henry but not his father and, after the judge pulled jurors out of their beds at 11:30 PM demanding a decision, a verdict of “not guilty” was delivered in eight minutes. Despite blood and signs of struggle at the scene of the alleged crime, there were still no bodies to prove that anyone was actually dead. Charges against McNew were dismissed. The case has never been solved.
Valentina Madrid, a sixteen-year-old girl, and her seventeen-year-old friend, Alma Lyons, also knew the jail. In 1907, they were accused of poisoning Valentina's husband by sprinkling his coffee with "Rough on Rats" for a week. The girls said they were forced to do it by Valetina's would-be suitor, Francisco Baca, though he was acquitted. The girls were sentenced to be hung, but public outcry got them life sentences. Thirteen years later, both girls were pardoned by Governor Octaviano Larrazolo on the condition they secure “honorable employment," remain in New Mexico, and never set foot in Sierra County again.
Hillsboro had already begun a steep decline by the late-1890’s, but revived a bit during WWI, then started to decline again in the 1930’s, although after a devastating flood in June 1914 the town was never going to be the same.
In 1938, Hillsboro lost the county seat to Hot Springs (now Truth or Consequences). The story goes that residents of Hillsboro kept traveling to Hot Springs to bring all the county’s files and documents back to Hillsboro. This allegedly happened so often that the courthouse was eventually taken apart brick-by-brick so there would no longer be anywhere to bring the files back to. Whether that’s true or if the courthouse in Hillsboro was simply sold in 1939 for $440 to provide construction material for the new one in Hot Springs, I can’t say. The courthouse may have even remained whole into the mid-1940's. But it was never entirely dismantled and what remains is a picturesque ruin.
Evidence of Hillsboro’s past is all around, including in the Black Range Museum, once the Ocean Grove Hotel. The hotel also functioned as a high-end brothel established in 1886 by Sarah Jane Creech, better known as Sadie and usually (and mistakenly) said to be British, when she was just 21 years old. Amongst other things, Sadie and her girls were known for fearlessly tending to the town's residents during the influenza pandemic of 1918.
Hillsboro’s present is as a charming small town nestled in the Black Range with a couple cafes and restaurants and The Enchanted Villa Bed & Breakfast. While there might not be much gold in them thar hills anymore, there’s still plenty of reason to stay in Hillsboro.
I attempted to rectify information from three sources for this post, Haunted Highways, published in 1968 by Ralph Looney, New Mexico’s Best Ghost Towns, published in 1981 by Philip Varney, and Ghost Towns Alive, published in 2003 by Linda Harris. I did my best to sort out the minor discrepancies and omissions amongst them, but you know how that goes. All state that Hillsboro's name was picked from a hat. The Place Names of NM is one of the few published sources that mentions both naming stories, but locals (and the Albuquerque Evening Citizen) know it was Yankie. The story about Valentina Madrid and Alma Lyons came from the Hillsboro Historical Society, who also commemorated the presumed murder of Albert and Henry Fountain.
Now we’ll head west a few miles to Hillsboro’s misunderstood younger sister, Kingston.
There’s not been much written about Engle, New Mexico over the years. The usual ghost town books I consult only mention the town in the context of its stage and rail connections to other places. But Engle, now not much more than a handful of buildings persisting in the relentless heat of a dusty former rail stop 20 miles east of Truth or Consequences, sits within an area that has played a major role in the histories of Spain, Mexico, and the U.S. Currently, it is the home base for an enterprise owned by a well-known cable television magnate and, in the future, may be passed through by some very wealthy people on their way to…orbit.
It makes sense to start the story of Engle with the Jornada del Muerto, the “Journey of Death,” which runs through the town. Or, perhaps, a couple hundred feet west, if you want to get technical. Considered the most treacherous part of El Camino Real, this stretch, beginning slightly north of Las Cruces, traversed a desolate wasteland devoid of water, firewood, or shelter. So, if the Apache didn’t get you, the desert itself might. Just imagine traveling over an ancient lava bed by horse in the early 1600’s without a Wal-Mart or 7-11 in sight. It might sound like heaven now, but let’s not romanticize too much. The closest city to the north, a long 90 miles away, was named Socorro (i.e., succor, relief, aid, etc.) for a reason. But, all that aside, plenty of travelers did survive the journey and thus, for many years, one of the most important trade routes in the history of the world passed right outside what would become Engle’s front door.
Founded in 1879, Engle was, like so many other towns in the West, born of the railroad. Named for R.L. Engle, the railroad engineer who supervised construction of the line through town, due to a paperwork error Engle was officially known as "Angle" for its first six months. An attempt to rename the town "Engel" in the 1920's, in honor of Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe (AT&SF) vice-president Edward J. Engel, was halted in the 11th hour when "cowboy chronicler" Eugene Manlove Rhodes asked Senator Bronson Cutting to pull some strings.
The railroad soon built a station and Engle thrived as a shipping point for cattle from surrounding ranches. Horses, mules, stagecoaches, and eventually trains transported ore east from the more remote mining towns on the edge of the Black Range, including Cuchillo, Chloride, and Winston (then known as Fairview), and from Engle it all moved on to larger cities, such as El Paso. A post office opened in 1881 and the place was off and running.
From 1911-1916, the construction of Elephant Butte Dam, about 10 miles west, increased the population greatly. Housing in Engle was convenient and the town was the switching point for the AT&SF spur that carried materials to the dam. The peak at that time was about 500 residents, but with completion of the dam workers left immediately and Engle began its decline. By 1919, 300 people, over half the peak population, had left. Seven years later, only 75 souls remained. In 1945, much of the land to the east and south of town was claimed by the federal government for White Sands Missile Range, snuffing out most of Engle’s remaining light. But not quite all of it.
While the post office closed in 1955, a few people live in Engle yet. The train still rumbles by, however, it doesn’t stop.
Not many original buildings stand, but one, the old schoolhouse, occupies what would seem to be the spiritual center of town. That’s not just on account of it being the most prominent building you see as you cross the railroad tracks, but because it’s now the Engle Country Church featuring “bible preaching and gospel singing” at 10 AM on the third Sunday of every month. Conveniently, there are some vineyards being tended nearby, too, in case the supply of wine runs low.
Engle has also become the headquarters of the Armendaris Ranch, a massive 362,885-acre spread owned by Ted Turner of CNN and Jane Fonda fame. Word is that when he comes to town, his entourage lays the necessary groundwork a few days in advance and then Ted blows in, checks on his buffalo, maybe does a little hunting, and is off again. Turner owns two other huge ranches in New Mexico and is the second-largest private landowner in the state.
Moving into the totally surreal, Engle is poised to be a way station for those heading to Spaceport America. Anyone not flying directly into and out of the spaceport or coming up from Las Cruces would be obliged to go through Engle. It is strange to imagine that some of the richest, most famous people on the planet might see Engle shortly before they are launched into orbit for a few seconds. On the other hand, those who traveled the Jornada del Muerto hundreds of years ago might well appreciate the irony. For the dusty little patch of Chihuahuan Desert on which Engle persists has a habit of being a quiet witness to great journeys.
It’s not easy finding information on Engle. The usual physical sources overlook it, but on-line you can find most of what seems to exist at ghosttowns.com. Even Legends of America won’t tell you anything about the town. But they will tell you that, in the 1880’s, Bill Hardin, famous gunfighter John Wesley Hardin’s first cousin, was lynched by a mob after killing a man near Engle. Oddly, the “Ghost Towns of Sierra County New Mexico” promotional card is one of the better resources, even at all of five sentences. NM Place Names recounts how Engle came to be called Engle (and then almost wasn't). Otherwise, Wikipedia will tell you about the Jornada del Muerto and Spaceport America will tell you about Spaceport America.
Next time we’ll cross I-25 and move nearer the Black Range to visit the relatively well-known partial ghost town of Hillsboro, NM. Until then, have a happy 4th of July and safe travels, everyone.
JULY 2014 UPDATE: Mr. William M., former resident and continued aficionado of the wide-open spaces of New Mexico,
has contributed a very interesting photo postcard. Postmarked from Engle to Mrs. Anna Martin of Cuchillo, NM, William guesses the card is from about 1910. Note the sparse address and even sparser message, which reads, "Hello Anna Dady (sic)." The few words speak volumes about this time and place. We can only assume that the stoic desert fellow pictured is indeed Anna's father, probably captured by a photographer traveling through Engle. William adds, "It was sent from one ghost town to another ghost town – only in New Mexico."
Thanks for the great addition, William!
Okay, it’s true that Monticello, New Mexico isn’t a full-on ghost town. Some folks do indeed live there. But it’s got its fair share of old, empty structures, including an impressive adobe school built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). In 1980, Philip Varney included Monticello in New Mexico’s Best Ghost Towns because of its “extraordinary charm.” Well, in this case, perhaps not much has changed over 34 years because Monticello remains extraordinarily charming. Judging from Varney’s photos, some buildings look better and some perhaps worse. However, if you stopped for a couple hours to eat lunch on the shady steps of the school and listened to the birds sing while the wind blew gently through the tall cottonwoods, as I did, and then explored the rustic little plaza, you might think about buying a secluded retreat in Monticello, as I also did.
Monticello, in southwestern NM, is 25 miles northwest of Truth or Consequences, not far from Cuchillo, and was originally founded in 1856 as Cañada Alamosa. The name honored the town’s cottonwood-lined canyon. The Alamosa River flows alongside. Clearly, in the green, 23-mile-long Monticello Valley within which the town sits, cottonwood trees have always been a big deal.
Early on, Cañada Alamosa was the headquarters of the Southern Apache Agency. By 1870, 500 Apaches lived in the area and Cochise, the Apache leader and namesake of Cochise County, AZ, brought his entire Chiricahua Band in with him in the winter of 1871. But, in 1874, when the agency was moved a handful of miles northwest to the Ojo Caliente Reservation, near present-day Dusty, in what's now known as the Monticello Box Canyon, the Apache were dispersed. Almost 20 years later the town became known by the much less poetic moniker Monticello.
In 2003’s Ghost Towns Alive, Linda Harris says the name change was the result of postal system bureaucracy. The story goes that in 1892, Alphonse Bourguet and his brother, Aristide, French emigrants, wanted to establish a post office in Cañada Alamosa. However, the policy of the day dictated that postal names be a single word. Alphonse had once been postmaster in Monticello, NY and Aristide must've figured that worked pretty well the first time because he submitted Monticello as Cañada Alamosa's replacement. This is all similarly recounted in The Place Names of New Mexico.
But I have read other accounts, including in New Mexico’s Best Ghost Towns, stating that John Sullivan was the town’s first postmaster, also from Monticello, NY, and he made the change. However, I think this is now considered incorrect. Some Bourguet’s and Sullivan's still live in Monticello. Perhaps they can tell us! Whatever his role, John Sullivan’s home was reportedly a stage stop, claimed to be the first in Sierra County. Sullivan’s place still stands off Highway 142, which leads into town and passes the plaza. For some reason, New Mexico True says his home was the San Ignacio Catholic Church!
The Monticello Valley has always been a ranching and farming community and it remains so today, producing organic vegetables and award-winning balsamic vinegar. But it’s true that it’s not as bustling as in the past. The large Monticello Public School, mentioned earlier, has been reduced to a picturesque shell. Built in 1935, it's said the school burned down when a student's chemistry experiment exploded. However, that may be nothing more than a rumor propagated by my friend at Viva New Mexico. The plaza, quiet and empty during my visit, once provided a thick-walled adobe fortress complete with gun holes to guard against Apache attacks. A couple homes on the outskirts of town, one fairly large, appear long-abandoned, with vintage vehicles parked outside in various degrees of decay. Of course, I was in heaven.
On the other hand, the San Ignacio Catholic Church, built in 1867, is well-maintained and lovely. Located on the north side of the plaza, services are still held there.
There may yet be a dried-out pump organ in the choir loft. Restored territorial-style homes with corrugated tin roofs peak from behind lush greenery. What appears to have once been an antique store sits silently to the east of the plaza. Quite derelict in a photo in Varney’s book, it’s clearly been restored, even if it’s now vacant again. Within its cool, blue walls are many of the antiques that must’ve once been for sale and the ceiling shows several large, beautiful vigas running lengthwise. Outside are a low, weathered, wooden patio and an old bench. Anybody want to go in on the place with me? That's it below.
In 1910, at its peak, Monticello had 573 residents and there may have once been more than 1,000 families throughout the valley, which includes the adjacent town of Placita. The 2012 census has the population at 135, yet most folks probably don't live in town year-round. I saw only a few people, all of which passed by in cars or trucks as I took photos along the roadside.
I attempted to get to the cemetery southwest of the plaza, but after crossing the shallow Alamosa River ran into several private property signs without a graveyard in sight. It’s a shame, because I hate to miss an old cemetery. But it does provide an excuse for a return visit. As if I needed an excuse! To further prove that point, as I left, four cow ponies crested the rise beside the cars pictured below. You might be able to make out the hawk soaring through the upper right of the frame. Extraordinarily charming indeed.
Most information for this post came from the NM ghost town books of Varney and Harris, with a bit from The Place Names of New Mexico. Viva New Mexico, and Legends of America were also useful. Ghosttowns.com has a couple interesting tidbits and Bestplaces.net presents demographic info from 2012. The Wall Street Journal did a great piece on the local balsamic vinegar and referenced peak population. New Mexico True, the state's official tourism website, gets much more wrong than right, but at least they tried. Maybe someday I can do a post about the healing waters of Ojo Caliente and the ruins of the Apache agency.
Next time, we’ll cross I-25, head through T or C, and have a look at Engle. Once filled with workers busy constructing Elephant Butte Dam, this dusty railroad wayside is now poised to be the gateway to Spaceport America.
I pretty much can't bear to read articles about myself. Luckily, I don't have to do it very often! In this case, the pain is balanced out by the fact that the piece was written by the excellent Columbia, South Carolina-based author Tom Poland and published at "Like the Dew: A Journal of Southern Culture and Politics." Mostly about my photography in Georgia and South Carolina, it does lead off with a sly reference to a Replacements song they've actually been playing recently (and, no, it's not Left of the Dial). Thanks to Tom for being so kind to myself and City of Dust.
You can find the feature and attendant photos HERE.
I should have a post on Monticello, New Mexico up in the next couple days. I'm pretty happy with some of the photos I took, so that's always a good start. More soon!
A couple of years ago I wrote about Two Guns, Arizona, an old Route 66 trading post with a history of violence and tragedy dating back to when the Navajo and Apache fought in what is now known as Canyon Diablo. Twin Arrows, christened in homage to Two Guns and just a few miles to the west down I-40, hasn’t got quite as bloody a background, but that doesn’t mean what remains isn’t fit for City of Dust. Surely I haven’t become that macabre, have I?
Originally known as Canyon Padre Trading Post and likely built sometime after 1946 (it’s absent from that year’s comprehensive A Guide Book to Highway 66 by Jack Rittenhouse), the roadside stop was named for a nearby gorge. Canyon Padre Trading Post then seems to have remained relatively obscure until its name was changed to Twin Arrows Trading Post and two very tall wooden arrows complete with tips and feathers were installed in the parking lot to guide travelers to the right place.
While one could argue that death and sorrow did more damage to Two Guns than the destruction of Route 66 by I-40, it was the interstate that began to put the nails in Twin Arrows
coffin in the 1970’s, even though the trading post was given its own exit. The gas station, diner, and gift shop advertising itself as the “Best Little Stop on I-40” (perhaps once the “Best Little Stop on Route 66”?) was apparently sold and re-sold until 1995, when the towel was finally thrown-in. The state of Arizona then became the owner and probably wasn’t too pleased about it, either. The gas station, diner, and arrows began to deteriorate in the harsh northern AZ desert.
The ruination of the dining car, in particular, is a shame because it’s a Valentine Diner. These were prefabricated restaurants designed and built by Arthur Valentine out of Wichita, Kansas and sold from the late 1930’s to the late 1960’s. Valentine started out as an owner and operator of pre-fab lunchrooms in the early 1930’s and this got him thinking about a more transportable version.
Some of Valentine’s first dining cars were made before the end of the ‘30’s, but he didn’t really get his operation going until material shortages eased after WWII. He then began offering an 8-10 seat restaurant that could be bought from a catalog for $5000 and paid off in monthly installments of $40. Arriving virtually complete with grill, tables, and stools, it was said the Valentine Diner could be set on a concrete slab and made operational in mere hours. I guess those were the days of realistic American entrepreneurship. I’ve heard rumors of them before. The photo below shows that grill, tables, and stools are all gone now.
Arthur Valentine died in 1954 and his company was sold to the Radcliff family who continued on for just over a decade, ceasing operation in August 1968. While most of Valentine’s creations have certainly ended up on the scrap heap by now there are still some surviving Valentine Diners around the country. Six can be found along Route 66, although I don’t believe any are open. One from Winslow, AZ was taken to Oregon but I’m unsure of its present status. Albuquerque's has been turned into a police substation on Central Avenue. Magdalena's was moved from west-central NM, up to Edgewood and onto a sleepy stretch of old Route 66, an interesting turn of events. It may still be in the process of being restored.
The Twin Arrows Trading Post and its Valentine Diner are not doing well behind a wall of concrete Jersey Barriers. Twin Arrows fate (i.e., prolonged decay) had long seemed assured as absolutely nothing happened at exit 219 for nearly fifteen years. But, in 2009, the arrows were spruced up by the Hopi tribe. Then, almost exactly one year ago, the Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort opened across I-40 to the north. The Navajo Nation owns the sprawling monster and its massive parking lot. In 2013, the casino built a huge digital billboard. The Hopi's arrows weren't doing the trick, it seems.
Is additional restoration in the cards then? I wouldn't bet on it. More might've been planned, but some kind of impasse apparently developed between Arizona and the Navajo Nation and the Twin Arrows Casino isn't off to a very profitable start now anyway. I've read that the Hopi Tribe have purchased more land on the south side of I-40 and the Navajo Nation are said to be considering doing the same. So, the site may eventually be bought and become...who knows? In the meantime, you can see for yourself how things have turned out at the old Twin Arrows Trading Post. Arthur Valentine wouldn’t be impressed.
Weird Arizona by Wesley Treat contains much of the basic background on Twin Arrows. If you want to dive into the history of Valentine Diners, the Kansas Historical Society provides a lot of info, as does Legends of America. The Flagstaff Business News mentions Valentine Diners in Arizona and Twin Arrows, specifically. Want more photos? Ghostownaz has some good ones.
Next time we’ll be back in New Mexico to visit Monticello, a picturesque little village not far from Truth or Consequences. Monticello isn’t a true ghost town, but I’ll do my best to make it look like one.
