Chloride – Ghost Town – Sierra County – New Mexico

March 2, 2020 / mikelbclassen / Leave a comment

Those of you that know me, know I love a good ghost town. This is one of the best I’ve seen. In 1880, Silver was discovered in the north of the Black Range Mountains. The ore was discovered by a Brit by the name of Henry Pye. A few months after he filed his claim, he was killed by Apaches. but Pye’s discovery had gotten out. The town of Chloride was born and eventually swelled to nearly 3000 people.

Heny Pye’s cabin is pictured above. There were 12 producing mines and nearly 500 holes that had been dug by prospectors throughout the surrounding hills.

Chloride had 9 saloons, 3 general stores, restaurants, butcher shops, candy store, lawyers, doctors, Chinese laundry, 2 hotels, livery stable, smelter and sawmills.

Chloride began as a tent city. Hard Rock miners came from all around to try their hand at finding a motherlode in the mountains and canyons to the west of the town. The town grew as fast as it could be built.

Much of the town still remains and the words “Ghost Town can be applied loosely here. There are still a few hardy souls living here. They take care of the town and recognize it for the historical treasure that it is. A few locals keep it open for those of us that like to visit these kinds of places. There is no shortage of visitors to Chloride.

Main street in Chloride goes through the one tree that makes up the Chloride National Forest. It’s a 200 year old oak that was there when the town began. I believe this tree was Chloride’s “Hangin’ Tree.” Though I haven’t found out how many men met their end here. For it to be named as it is, there had to be a few.

There is a museum at Chloride which is kept open most of the time. It is run by volunteers and is inside one of the old General Stores. The Pioneer Museum is housed in one of the original 1880 buildings and the interior is full of era correct artifacts. The building was originally built by a James Dagliesh who had the old timbers logged out of the nearby mountains. Eventually it became the local post office, pharmacy, and the local newspaper, The Black Range, was printed in the top floor beginning in 1882. Eventually, when the town becan to die, so did the store.

When the store finally closed up for the last time, the owners boarded it up and covered it with metal roofing leaving the inside just as it was in 1923. They left everything including all of the stock, newspaper equipment, postal records, town records, original records of some of the early businesses, and even some of old copies of “The Black Range” newspaper. The building was sold in 1989 and after 4 years of restoration and cleaning, bats and rats had been living quite happily inside, the old store was turned into the Pioneer Museum. The items inside were a treasure trove. The end result is a great step back into time. I was also able to pick up a great map of New Mexico ghost towns for 10 bucks.

One of the things I really like about Chloride, is that the look and feel of the old silver mining town is still here. When the silver panic struck in 1893, Chloride began to die. The miners and settlers basically packed up and left everything as it was. A few stayed for a few years hoping that silver would recover but it never did enough to make it as profitible as it once was. An entire town was left behind. The dozen people that still live here, keep the town going for ghost town buffs and visitors. There is a small picnic and rest area in the heart of town next to the museum, visitation is encouraged. I recommend it.

The drive to Chloride is well worth it. Located between Socorro and Truth or Consequences just off New Mexico 52. The road goes through Cuchillo and Winston which are both ghost towns as well and worth checking out. A sign at Winston points left and Chloride is two miles down the road.

I don’t know why ghost towns hold such a fascination for me, but when I go to places like Chloride where people are working hard to preserve a quickly vanishing past, I always get a sense of wonderment and my imagination shifts into overtime. I can picture the town of old, people filling the streets in their search for riches and prosperity. I can almost hear the racket from the saloons and smell the manure and mud that made up the streets. I have to admit the horses in a nearby corral didn’t hurt that effect. It was a different world then, though seemingly romantic, it was also hardship and often, death. The Apaches didn’t want settlers digging up their land and they retaliated. The mud and the manure created typhiod and scarlet fever. Tuberculosis was rampant. It was a harsh life. Only the hardy made it. Looking around Chloride, it is easy to see.

Writing and photography by Mikel B. Classen. Copyright by Mikel B. Classen 2020.

For more information on Mikel B. Classen, his writing or his photography, visit his website at www.mikelclassen.com

Mimbre Artist and His Art – Pictographs and Cliff Home – Trail to the Past – Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument – Gila National Forest – New Mexico

February 26, 2020 / mikelbclassen / Leave a comment

Author’s Note: Many of these pictographs are subtle and faded. The more you study the pictures, more will appear in the stone. Spend a little time looking for the buried images in the rock.

While visiting the Cliff Dwellings at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, there is another site that is also worth visiting. The “Trail to the Past” is located at the Lower Scorpion Campground and it is right along the road where most visitors drive by and never see. The site explores a Mimbres artist and his home.

There is a parking lot at the Lower Scorpion and towards the east end of the lot a hiking trail labeled “Trail to the Past,” leads to a rock wall that has prehistoric pictographs painted on it.

Only a few feet down the trail and it splits. To the left is a trail to a cliff house, more on that later. To the right is the rock wall where the pictographs are painted. There are quite a few here and many of them have faded though they are still visible. These have been painted over the last thousand years. There were several generations of rock artists living here.

Figures and designs adorn the rocks, most whose meanings have been lost to time. These messages from the past have yet to be understood. Their beauty and symetry are ever apparent.

When I stood here looking at these, I saw more and more images as I looked more intently. These are worth more than a glance and the more I looked, the more I saw. There was something painted on nearly every flat surface, some faded while others could have been created yesterday.

Many of the pictures baffle me as to what they were intended by the artist, while others stand out and are easily identified. The one above is one of those that is difficult to figure out. It appears as if it were several images upon each other.

This is one of those pictograph clusters that the more you look at it, the more you see. There are several different paintings in this picture. See how many you can find.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, the “Trail to the Past” splits in two directions. To the right is the pictographs, to the left is a cliff dwelling and was undoubtably the home of the artist.

This shows a bit of the interior of the dwelling but it also shows a large red patch in the rocks above. This was likely where the painters of the pictographs got their color pigment for the pictographs. The red shade is the same as that of the rock art.

The trail to both the pictographs and the cliff house is quite short. The trail to the pictographs is handicapped accessable and is only about 50 yards from the parking lot. The trail to the cliff house is not handicapped accessable but is only about 100 yards. This place in the lower Scorpion Campground is overlooked by most visitors and it takes very little effort to spend a little time here. I was the only visitor at the time. This is well worth the minimal effort it takes to explore this ancient artist’s home and his art from prehistoric America.

Writing and photography by Mikel B. Classen.

For more information about Mikel B. Classen and his writing and photography visit his website at www.mikelclassen.com

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument- Gila National Forest – New Mexico

February 24, 2020 / mikelbclassen / Leave a comment

This was sort a bucket list kind of thing for me. I’ve always wanted to see these and I finally got there. Of course it was raining the entire time, though I suppose it could be worse. It could have been snowing. I will admit that it didn’t diminish the impact of this ancient city in the mountains.

The drive there is a sometimes windy and treacherous roadway. It goes up across the Continental Divide and reaches nearly 9000 feet at one point. The scenery is breathtaking and one has to be careful to concentrate on the drive and not gawk at the scenery. Admittedly it is easier said than done. It takes approximately two hours to drive 45 miles. There are two roads that will take you there, New Mexico 15 out of Silver City which is the more difficult drive, it is paved all the way, but it has steep grades and very hairpin curves. The other way is by taking New Mexico 35 out of San Lorenzo and Mimbres. Though this is a longer route it is the easier to drive of the two.

When you arrive at the National Monument, established by Theodore Roosevelt in 1907, there is a visitors center where you can learn all the secrets of the Cliff dwellings. A short mile later and you are at the parking lot for the trail into the cliffs. The hike isn’t long, round trip is about a mile, and the path follows a small stream that appears to have been cutting through the rocks for millenia. Then the climb begins.

There is about a 200 foot climb up to get on the level of the cliff dwellings. It is well worth the effort. The dwellings can be seen peeking out of the cliffs above on the left. Since it was raining, it was easy to come to the realization that these rocks are very slippery when wet. The pathway follows closely to the cliff edge and watching your step can save your life or serious injury.

One of the best things about visiting here is the fact that the Cliff Dwellings are not roped off. Visitors can walk in and through the interiors of this ancient village.

One can only marvel at the effort it must have taken to build these magnificent buildings so high in the air inside these caves. It is a feat of engineering that is almost hard to comprehend.

Because of the unrestricted access, the buildings can be seen with every perspective. Inside these caves would have been fairly cozy living for these ancient times. They are well sheltered and it wouldn’t have been often that wind or weather would have penetrated these caves.

There is beauty and aestetics here. Primitive yet elegant. Walking in the footsteps of these long lost people brings a feeling of timelessness that reaches deep into the soul. There is a memory there, one from the ancestors, powerful and almost familiar. Is there an ancestral memory here? Probably or at least something close to it.

Above is the gorge the small stream had cut that the path followed on the way in. This is what they saw from their homes. This rugged wild region has likely not changed since the Cliff Dwellers occupied this place. This would have been what their world looked like.

Some of the buildings could still be lived in. They are well preserved enough that the Mogollon could come back and start over without much difficulty.

This village dates back to 1200 – 1400 AD. It was continously occupied through those years and it is believed they left because of environmental changes. In the early 1900s some mummified bodies were found and were lost by looters and collectors. There was a child mummy found and that is the only mummy to make it to the Smithsonian.

Archaeologists have Idenfied nearly 50 rooms inside of the dwellings where they believed there were 10-15 families living. They even had bathrooms.

There are five caves all filled with rooms like these. Most of them consist of three rooms and though the are quite close together, each dwelling was definitively destinct as its own seperate structure.

This was one of those things that I have done in my life that I felt was quite profound. Realizing how old this village was, and how we overlook these pre-European civilizations with our education and history, it is a moving experience to stand amongst the remnants of this overlooked culture. The Mogollon achieved much in their two centuries on these cliffs. Though they didn’t leave much of a record, what they did leave behind tells a story of art, engineering and tenacity. They were able to carve out homes in the most formidable of environments, live their lives where most would have perished, and raise generations of family in harmony with their surroundings.

For more information on Mikel B. Classen go to his website at http://www.mikelclassen.com

Crossing the Emory Pass – Sierra County, New Mexico

February 19, 2020February 19, 2020 / mikelbclassen / 1 Comment

The Black Range Mountains are part of the Gila National Forest. The road above, New Mexico 152, runs between Caballo and Silver City through the heart of the Black Range Mountains crossing the Continental Divide. The drive is amazing and dangerous. Tight hairpin curves and sheer drop cliffs where ditches should be makes this an exciting drive.

The Emory Pass reaches and altitude of nearly 9000 feet and is breathtaking. It is named after William Henry Emory who crossed the Black Range in 1846 on the way with the Army of the West which marched from New Mexico to California to liberate the Californians from the Spanish. For the record many of the Californians did not want to be liberated and rose up and nearly defeated the American intruders.

There are over 3 million acres in the Gila National Forest. It encompasses the entire Black Range and is as rugged of a mountain range as any. Part of the national forest is known as the Leopold Aldo Wilderness Area. It comprises nerly 300k acres and includes much of the Continental Divide in this region.

Leopold Aldo was born in 1887 and fell in love with the outdoors at an early age. He eventually went to Yale Forest School and joined the U.S. Forest Service which had just been established in Arizona and New Mexico. In 1922 he developed a plan to manage the Gila National Forest as a wilderness area, the first of its kind. A few years later he wrote the first textbook on wildlife management. He became the first wildlife manager in the nation. He died from a heart attack fighting a neighbor’s grass wildfire in 1948.

At the top of the pass is the Continental Divide. A hiking path runs the ridge that makes up the divide for 30 miles. The hike meanders through the depths of the Black Range where legends of lost gold and stories of Apache wars abound. The Apaches used these mountains regularly before they were driven out.

This is the view from the top of the pass at the Continental Divide. There is a pullout here and this is a sight that shouldn’t be missed. I got out here and the smell of pine and melting snow made me feel at home. It smelled like the Upper Pennsula of Michigan.

The Continental Divide Hiking Trail, a rough and treacherous trail. Not for the faint of heart.

Passing the Divide, streams run to the west and the melting snow is feeding the mountain streams. This is one of the origins of the Gallinas River. Driving down the other side of the pass, the stream grows as the elevation drops.

The speed through here is slow. When the say 15 miles an hour for a curve, heed it. This is a place where going into a ditch puts your vehicle in the top of a 40 foot tree. It takes time to negotiate this road with hairpins and S-curves. The beauty is magnificent and worth the drive.

This picture is looking back at the Black Range from the West. Back down in the desert lands, the trip almost seems like a dream, the wondrous world that exists in the Emory Pass, is behind, but it will be there for the next time I decide I need a fix for the Black Range Mountians.

For more from Mikel B. Classen visit his website at www.mikelclassen.com