Silver City, New Mexico became a bustling town due to the discovery of gold and silver in the 1870s. One of its most famous citizens was Billy the Kid. We know his reputation from Pat Garrett’s book “The Real Life of Billy the Kid.” Pat Garrett was the sheriff who killed Billy. Billy, I’m sorry, it was very mean. He moved to Silver City as a child in 1873 with his mother and stepfather William Antrim. Billy’s mother was sick with tuberculosis and passed away in 1874. Billy’s stepfather spent most of his time mining for gold and silver. So Billy was left alone with his little brother. Like any unsupervised rebellious child, he got into trouble with some petty theft. Sheriff Whitehill wanted to scare him and teach him a lesson. He put him in jail. Billy escaped by going out the chimney. He was very thin; he weighed only seventy-five pounds and was constantly bullied. This came to a head at the age of seventeen, shooting a blacksmith, who was harassing him in an Arizona bar. Billy returned to New Mexico and got caught up in the Lincoln County Range Wars. Here the legend of him grew.
Silver City is also notable for its Ditch Park. This was the main street of the city and was carved out by a series of floods from 1895-1906. The Silver City Museum has photographs of the devastation caused by this flood. The museum is located in the former home of HB Ailman, who made his fortune in gold and lost it by opening a bank. (Hmm!) There were no bailouts in those days. The museum has permanent and rotating exhibits. It has an extensive research library on Silver City and its mining history.
Up the hill, Western New Mexico University has a wonderful museum in Fleming Hall at the end of 10th Street. It houses an extensive collection of Mimbres pottery and other artifacts. The ceramic designs are beautiful, they represent animals and geometric designs. Many of them have holes in the bottom of the bowls. The bowls were placed on top of the head of a deceased person and a hole was made. This was to allow the spirit of the deceased to depart to the afterlife. No photographs were allowed in the museum.
Sixty-five miles northwest of Silver City is the town of Glenwood, which Butch Cassidy frequently visited. The big thing about town is that it’s the gateway to the Catwalk National Recreation Trail five miles east on 174. The Catwalk runs along Whitewater Canyon. Miners erected it in 1893 to process gold and silver ore three miles into the canyon. They built a pipe to carry water from the top of the canyon to the base where the crusher was. At first, four-inch pipes were adequate. Later, when a larger generator was installed, eighteen-inch pipes were installed. Some of these are still visible today, along with some of the rigging for the pipe.
The area is called the catwalk, because the men had to walk the pipes like cats to do maintenance. CCC workers in the 1930s built the current walkway and trail. The trail is 1.1 miles long and takes about an hour to an hour and a half to make the round trip. The first half mile is paved with a 0-10% grade. After that, the grade increases with many steps and bridges. Elevation ranges from 4,923 feet at the parking lot to 5,234 feet at the end of the trail. This does not account for the effect of the four or five times the trail goes into the water and then climbs ten to forty feet above it. Little kids were able to take the trail along with older folks like me. If you have knee problems, I recommend that you take only the paved section.
There is lots of wildlife along the trail: squirrels, birds, chipmunks, and lizards. The cougars, the sheep with big horns, the fox and a wild cat, which they are trying to catch, were not seen.
A must-see stop along the way is the Aldo Leopold Picnic Area, twenty miles into Silver City. There are beautiful views of the Gila National Wilderness, which he helped establish.
The next day we went to the other side of the Gila Mountains (pronounced He la) to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. We take Route 15 through Pinos Altos over the continental divide and into the Gila National Forest. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES USE AN RV ON THIS ROAD. The highway is, at best, one and a half lanes wide with no intermediate lines. There are more twists and turns than on a crowded club dance floor on a Saturday night. We white knuckled the entire eighteen miles. The views, when I could see them, were spectacular. After the twists and turns the road meets up with rte 35 and becomes more manageable.
At the end of the road is the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, forty structures built inside seven caves 180 feet above the creek floor.
The tour guide, provided daily at noon during the winter season, explained that these were probably ceremonial chambers and meeting places for the Mogollon (pronounced mugg e Yon) around 1270 during a time of severe drought. There are some pictographs in one of the caves. According to astro-historians, one points to the Pleiades during the summer solstice.
A cave was used for food preparation: nuts were shelled and ground, and corn and beans were processed. The people of Mogollón were both hunter-gatherers and farmers who planted the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash.
The next cave was the kitchen, whose holes were formed in the rock. Stones were heated and put into these holes. The food was then put into bowls and heated over hot coals.
The third cave is practically sealed, but it has a window reminiscent of the Anasazi culture. This window is in the shape of a Tao cross. No one knows its purpose.
The fourth cave has the most buildings. As there were no written records and the site was stripped of most artifacts before archaeologists arrived, most of what is known is speculation. Most of the rooms seem to be used for different ceremonies. Some of them might have been dwellings for the medicine clan as they searched for their visions and dreams. The cave is the largest of all and is quite impressive.
The National Monument is run primarily by volunteers. Only the Superintendent is paid. These volunteers are very knowledgeable and friendly.
They discussed the pictographs at the Lower Scorpion Campground, which was on the way back to the visitor center. There were three quite different ones drawn in red paint.
The volunteers also said that an archaeological site with more than three hundred building foundations was found on the National Monument property. These, most likely, were the homes of the Mogollon people, rather than cliff dwellings, which would have been quite indefensible.
We headed back to Silver City via route 35 and 152. We thought 152 was a wonderful route and that we would take it the next day to go to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
On the 152nd we passed the Santa Rita copper mines near Bayard, New Mexico. These are open pit mines, stretching for miles. They are beautiful in their own way.
The next day we hit Route 152 with our trailer. It was a disaster waiting to happen, forty miles of winding roads, just going up and up all the way to Emory Pass at over 8,200 feet. It took us five hours to go the fifty miles and we almost missed a transmission. I’m happy we have a transmission thermometer. Saved the day.