Day #93. September 19

Last night, as we lay contentedly in our bunks, we heard yipping coyotes and the deep, rich “who-hoo-hoo-who” of a Great Horned Owl making sure we knew he knew we were near his territory. I like to think that if he saw the tiny camper we live in he would feel less threatened. I like to think he is saying to himself, “these people can be that bad, surely not as bad as those idiots in those huge RVs that were here last weekend”.

The Great Horned Owl ranges over all of North, Central and South America looking for love and rabbits, hares, mice, rats and voles to munch on. Just like we do, but we tend to chicken, pork and pasta.

The American Pima Indians, whose ancestral stomping grounds include what is now Central and Southern Arizona, believed that owls were reincarnations of slain warriors who fly about at night. Peyote probably helps with this poetic approach to life.  

After a life reviving coffee fix away we go northeast on 90 through White Signal, NM (population 181), Oak Grove, NM (population 0) and finally to the outskirts of Silver City, NM (population 10,000) where we see the Tyrone B Complex, an enormous large open pit copper strip mine, part of a complex of copper mining sites in the area. Tyrone A Complex lies just northeast of Silver City. Together these mines sit on the second largest documented copper deposit in New Mexico. 

Tyrone Mine Complex B. These pictures do not begin to convey the enormity of this landscape scar.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold, Inc. operates the Tyrone mines. Various companies have used open strip mining techniques here since 1968. Before that, in the early 1860s, brave souls mined in dangerous, hand dug tunnels. Before that, way before that, around 600AD, Native Americans, who were smart enough not to make dangerous holes in the ground and crawl in them, surfaced mined turquoise.

In 2003, Freeport began reclamation activities at Tyrone; to cleanup tailings, acid water, impoundments and waste rock. They have been at it ever since. No wonder copper pipe is so expensive. Damn those onerous, nitpicky, environmental regulations. Not to worry. Scott (“I don’t give a damn what people think, I’m flying first class”) Pruitt, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator from hell, is taking care of that for President Bone Spurs.

We drive into Silver City, home of the Western New Mexico University Mustangs. Silver City was once an Apache campsite, then Spaniards showed up, evicted the Apaches or got them so drunk it didn't matter whether they were there or not, chased off those itinerant turquoise hoarders and started mining copper. Then the usual band of American prospectors, responding to rumors of the discovery of silver, showed up bringing rot gut whiskey, guns and more guns, prostitutes, disease, violence and mayhem. The silver played out and the violence got worse.

In 1874, a new cop, Harvey Whitehill, Grant County Sheriff, came to town and put the kibosh on all the fun and games. In 1875 he arrested Billy the Kid, arrested him twice in fact, both times for theft. Billy frequented Silver City often. His mother, Catherine McCarthy, an Irish immigrant, resides in a grave there. I bet she lived a 'colorful' life.

In 1878, the town hired its first town marshal, “Dangerous Dan” Tucker, who some claimed had stabbed a man to death in Colorado and killed others in El Paso and Santa Fe. In Silver City Dangerous Dan killed a drunk Mexican who had been fighting in a ‘dance hall’ and later, in the same year, tracked down and killed another drunk Mexican who had been throwing rocks at the good townsfolk.

Damn those drunk Mexicans. Texas Sheriff Joe Arpaio is, no doubt, proud of Dangerous Dan, for profiling and taking out those dirty, rapist, illegal, drunk Mexican immigrants. Wait, weren't they here first?

We poke around Silver City for a while and learn there is a thriving downtown artsy district with many musicians and music venues. Good news.

Traveling east on route 180 next we pass the Tyrone Mine Complex A (Chino Santa Maria Mine), another sprawling open pit, strip copper mine. Active mining going on, predicted to play out in twenty-five years. What are we going to use to make pennies then?

The Tyrone Complex A Santa Maria Mine. That is One Big Hole in the Ground.

Route 152 northeast through Hanover (population 167) and San Lorenzo (population 97) takes us through dramatic landscape in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness of the Gila National Forest to the summit pass at 8,185 feet. Very little traffic. Windy roads, precipitous drops.

Gila National Forest Scenes

Kingston, NM (population 32) is next and we cross Perchy Creek where we stop long enough to walk across the Perchy Creek Truss Bridge, now registered on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Perchy Bridge. Look at Those Lava Cliffs in the Background. 

Ancient Bridge Steele-o-glyphs by Drunk Mexican Rapist Illegals Carrying Black Water Bottles Coming to America to Take Our Jobs.

We descend to Hillsboro (population 1,000). Here we meet a ‘seasoned citizen’ in his store busy making custom leather chaps. He was gracious and very willing to talk with us. Not much else happening in Hillsboro. In fact he was the only person we see here today on our way through. Traditionally he has made the very nicely tooled and, in some cases, bejeweled chaps for cow pokes to wear to protect themselves from rattlesnake bites. Lately though he has found a new clientele. Harley riders. I suppose the bikers, as they poke along on their hogs minding their own business, are afraid that rattlesnakes might jump out of the creosote bush along the road, wrap themselves around the sunburnt, tattooed, legs of the innocent bikers and inflict painful bites. Distinct sweet odor of marijuana in the air in the shop. That makes chap making lots of fun I bet.

The Doctor Is In Hillsboro, NM. He Didn't Have a Lot to Say When I Told Him About My Troubles.

We continue on 152 and intersect with I25 south of Truth or Consequences, NM. Truth or Consequences got that name in 1950 when the town, named at the time Hot Springs, changed it to Truth or Consequences after Ralph Edwards, host of a popular radio quiz show by the same name, announced that he would air the program on its tenth anniversary from the first town to name itself after the show. Hot Springs won out. Edwards kept his word and, in fact, for the next fifty years returned to the town every year in May to broadcast the show again. The event became known as Fiesta and included a beauty contest, a parade and a stage show. To this day the good townsfolk still put on Fiesta. A mainstay event in recent years at Fiesta is the crowning of the Hatch ‘Chile Queen’.

We travel south on I25 alternating with parallel route 187 down the Rio Grande River Valley through Arrey (population 232), Garfield (population 132), Salem (population 942) and finally Hatch (population 1650).

People have tapped the Rio Grande for water to sustain life in this dry, hot country. A thirty mile wide green strip of Rio Grande River irrigated land stands in dramatic contrast to the bone dry desert beyond.   

And life for current residents in this hot, dry country means growing chilies. Chilies, chilies and more chilies. Throughout this portion of the Rio Grande River Valley the chili is king, queen, prince and princess. Green chilies, red chilies, white chilies, purple chilies, blue chilies. Big chilies, little chilies. Hot chilies, hotter chilies and atomic, ‘hot damn’ hot chilies. And tequila, lots of tequila to wash the chilies down. Just for diversity's sake they grow cotton, pecans and corn also, but not outside that verdant strip of irrigated land.  

Hatch is the ‘chili capital of the world’, thus the annual crowning of the Chile Queen at Fiesta.

All the local communities crown their own Chile Queens during harvest season and every year in the fall in Hatch the, by this time, drunk on chili laced tequila and sick to death of the summer heat townsfolk stage a mud wrestling contest featuring all the local Chile Queens, who duke it out for the top honor, to be this year's Supreme Chile Queen.

I just made that up.  But pretty good idea you must admit!

Flicka II forges on, down the Rio Grande Valley on I25 to Las Cruses, the ‘City of the Crosses’, then on route 70 east, ascending the San Augustin Mountains to the San Augustin Pass at 5,710 feet with the mighty Organ Mountains Desert Peaks just to the south.

We leave I70, turn on Aguirre Springs Road and enter the Organ Mountain Desert Peaks National Monument where we find a clean, delightful, Bureau of Land Management campground with breathing taking views of the Desert Peaks in the background to the west and equally as pleasing views of White Sands, NM to the east.

Whew! What a day.

Sunset Deepens the Color of the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks

Can't Get Enough of This Magnificent Country