Silver City, New Mexico and the Gila National Forest

Silver City, New Mexico grew to a bustling city because of the gold and silver discovery in the 1870s.  One of its most famous citizens was Billy the Kid.  We know of his reputation from Pat Garrett’s book “The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid.”  Pat Garrett was the sheriff who killed Billy.  Billy, I feel, has been much maligned.  He moved to Silver City as a young boy in 1873 with his mother and stepfather William Antrim.  Billy’s mother was sick with tuberculosis and passed away in 1874.  Billy’s step-dad spent most of his time mining gold and silver.  So Billy was left alone with his younger brother.  Like any unsupervised rebellious young boy, he got into trouble with some petty thefts. Sheriff Whitehill wanted to scare him and teach him a lesson.  He put him in jail.  Billy escaped by climbing out the chimney.  He was very slender; weighing 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 Range Wars of Lincoln County. Here his legend grew.

Silver City is also noted for its Ditch Park.  This was the main street of the town and was carved out by a series of floods from 1895-1906.  The Silver City Museum has pictures of the devastation caused by this flooding.  The museum is housed in the former home of H.B. Ailman, who made his fortune in gold and lost it by starting a bank. (Hmm!) There were no bailouts in those days.  The museum has permanent and rotating exhibits.  It has an extensive research library about 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 designs of the pottery are beautiful, depicting animals and geometric designs.  Many of them have holes in the base of the bowls.  The bowls were placed on top of the heads of a deceased person and a hole was made.  This was to allow the spirit of the deceased to depart for the afterlife.  No photos were allowed in the museum.

Sixty-five miles Northwest of Silver City is the town of Glenwood, which Butch Cassidy frequently visited.  The important thing about the town is that it is the gateway to the Catwalk National Recreation Trail five miles east on 174.The Catwalk runs along the Whitewater Canyon.  Miners erected it in 1893 to process the gold and silver ore three miles into the canyon.  The constructed a pipeline to deliver water from up in 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 pipeline.

The area is called the catwalk, because the men had to walk the pipes like cats to do the maintenance.  The CCC workers in the 1930s built the present day catwalk and trail.  The trail is 1.1 miles in length and takes between one and one and half-hours to make the round trip.  The first half-mile is paved with a 0 to 10% grade.  After that the grade increases with many steps and bridges.  The elevation varies from 4,923 feet at the parking lot to 5,234 at the end of the trail.  This does not count into the effect of the four or five times the trail goes to the water and then ascends thirty to forty feet above.  Little children were able to take the trail along with senior citizens like myself.  If you have knee problems, I recommend you take the paved section only.

There is much wildlife along the way: squirrels, birds, chipmunks, and lizards.  Not seen were the mountain lions, big horned sheep, fox, and a feral cat, which they are trying to catch.

A not to be missed stop along the way is the Aldo Leopold Picnic area, twenty miles toward Silver City.  There are beautiful views of the Gila National Wilderness, which he helped to establish.

The next day we went on the other side of the Gila (pronounced He la) Mountains to Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.  We took Rte 15 through Pinos Altos over the Continental Divide and into the Gila National Forest.  DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, PULL A RV ON THIS ROAD.  The road is at best a one and a half lane wide with no middle lines drawn.  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 are the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, forty constructions built within seven caves 180 feet above the floor of the creek.  

The tour guide, given daily at noon during the winter season, explained that these were most probable ceremonial chambers and gathering places for the Mogollon (pronounced mugg e Yon) around 1270 during a time of severe drought.  There are a few pictographs in one of the caves.   According to astro-historians, one points to the Pleiades during the Summer Solstice.

One cave was used for food preparation: nuts being hulled and ground and corn and beans being processed.  The Mogollon people were both hunter-gatherers and farmers planting the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash.

The next cave was the kitchen, which holes formed out of the rock.  Stones were heated and put in these holes.  Then the food was put into bowls and heated over the coals.

The third cave is pretty much sealed, but has a window reminiscent of the Anasazi culture.  This window is in the form of a Tao cross.  No one knows its purpose.

The fourth cave has most of the buildings.  Since there were no written records and the site was stripped of most of the artifacts before archeologists arrived there, most of what is known is speculative.  Most of the rooms seem to be used for different ceremonies.  Some of them might have been dwellings for the medicine clan while seeking their visions and dreams.  The cave is the largest of all of them and is quite impressive.

The National Monument is run primarily with volunteers.  Only the Superintendent is paid.  These volunteers are very knowledgeable and friendly.  

They talked about the pictographs at the Lower Scorpion Campground, which was on the way back to visitor center.  There were three pretty distinct ones drawn using the red paint.

The volunteers also said that on the National Monument property was found an archeological site with over three hundred building foundations.  These, most probably were the homes of the Mogollon people, rather than the cliff dwellings, which would have been pretty indefensible.

We went back to Silver City via Rte 35 and 152.  We though that 152 was a wonderful road and that we would take it the next day to go to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

On 152 we passed by the Santa Rita Copper Mines near Bayard, New Mexico.  These are open pit mines, which stretch for miles.  They are beautiful in their own way.

The next day we took Rte 152 with our trailer.  It was a disaster waiting to happen, forty miles of twisting roads, which kept going up and up to Emory Pass at over 8,200 feet.  It took us five hours to go the fifty miles and almost lost a transmission.  I am happy we have a transmission thermometer.  It saved the day.

About the Author

John and Maggie Pelley are Geriatric Gypsies. Both of us are retired from the rat race of working. We are full-time RVers, who ran away from home. We began our travels on the East Coast and, like the migrating birds, seek the warmth of the seasons. No more shoveling snow in Chicago. We have discovered volunteering with the National Park System. During our travels we have found that each town has a story to tell: some are more interesting than others. Both of us enjoy good listening music as we go. John has a CD he has recorded of Native American flure music. We have learned that RVing has a learning curve. We want to pass on some advice the help others avoid this trecherous curve. Life is an adventure. We are living it to the utmost.