Gilman Tunnels

Gilman and the Tunnels
Past Jemez Pueblo but before you get to the Walatowa Vistors’s Center there is a turn off to the west side of the road that takes you to the tiny vallage of Gilman. Gilman almost became a ghost town at one time but there are people moving there now to live in retirement homes or weekend homes. When we first found Gilman in the late 1970’s there was still a small gas station and store there, now there is only private homes there. On the map it is listed as NM 485.
The Gilman Tunnels are to the northwest of the village. Built in the 1920’s the road was first a railroad track for a small steam engine train that carried loggers in and out and brought out the logs they cut. The two tunnels were blasted out of rock in what is known as the Guadalupe River Gorge.


I remember one time in the ‘70’s when Lee and I were coming out of the mountains and were at the tunnels at dusk. A large, black cat came down the side of the cliff and across the road in front of us to disappear along the river right where the gorge starts. We figured it was a cougar. But a black one? I have never heard of a black cougar in the west but there are lots of stories about them back in West Virginia where Lee is from. Lee’s dad had one walk right by the porch one evening while he was sitting out there relaxing. http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-08-09/sports/17176647_1_lion-wildlife-mountain
http://www.nhptv.org/NatureWorks/jagurandi.htm

We have seen cougar tracks a couple of times in the Jemez but have never seen another one. If it was a cougar. I know that there used to be a cat called a Jaguarondi in New Mexico. It was smaller than a cougar but larger than a bobcat, and very dark in color. I haven’t heard of anyone seeing one since the 1950’s, and then there was more in Arizona than here. Could this have been one? Aunt Milly was my granddad Boyd Green’s sister. She and her husband lived in Tucson, Arizona most of their life. During the year that we lived in Tucson in about 1965 we visited with Aunt Milly frequently. I don’t remember ever meeting her husband, he had died by that time, nor do I remember his last name. I really like Aunt Milly and

I have vague memories of her telling about having a pet jaguarondi when she was first married in Tucson. I have heard that they were kept as pets in South America and some of the old-timers, especially miners kept them when they could find young kittens in their northern range in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. Miners, also, liked to keep ring-tailed cats, which are actually a type of desert weasel as pets to help keep mice down. I have thought I have glimpsed a ring trailed cat a couple of times in the Jemez and I am sure I have seen a couple around the Silver City, NM area. I remember seeing one on Trans Mountain one evening when Dustin and I were driving across that desert mountain that lies between El Paso and Chaparral, NM where Dustin lives now. That ring tail was sitting on a post at the end of one of the guard rails by the edge of the road as we went by.
http://www.desertusa.com/mag01/mar/papr/ringt.html


There aren’t supposed to be any wolves in the Jemez either, but one day way, way, way back in somewhere. I have forgotten exactly where we were that day, but it was way off the normal dirt roads on a very, narrow dirt trail that we could barely get over in 4 wheel drive. Suddenly I saw a coyote through the trees at the edge of a meadow. Or at first I thought it was a coyote. We stopped and watched it for several minutes. We discussed how large it was. It was a good ways off and still looked larger than any coyote we had ever seen. I have seen lots of coyotes here at the house and in the mountains, plus I have seen the Lobo wolves that are on display at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque. At a distance they could look very similar. Could this have been a Lobo wolf? And I will say that this happened before there were wolves returned to the wild in the Gila River area of Grant County New Mexico and over in Arizona. Unless there were some turned loose that the public weren’t told of. I would like to think that it was a Lobo.

The road is paved on this road from Gilman to the tunnels now but not when we first were going up there in the 1970’s. It is unpaved from about this point which is where we saw the black cougar or jaguarondi which ever it was.

http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Publications/region/3/santa_fe/cultres9/contents.htm

The above web site is of a book Jemez Mountains Railways, Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico. A long time ago I found this book in the library and was able to look at it. That book is no longer in the Rio Rancho library. I would give anything to find a copy I could buy. At least I have found a website that has the whole book and photos on it. Thanks to who ever put it on the web taking the time to scan in the whole book. The photos were taken in the 1920’s when the railroad was in use. It is interesting to look at the photos and hard to believe that they are the same places we go to now as they look so different. But I am glad the logging was stopped then and the Jemez was allowed to return to being the beautiful mountains that they were before the logging started. There is one photo taken in 1968 of the New Mexico Timber Company Sawmill in Gilman when I was first there on a Girl Scout camping trip.
Photos of Gilman Tunnels can be seen on my other blog http://tumbleweedcrossing.blogspot.com