My Family in Silver City, NM

Vacation Trip To Meet Our Families Oct. 1971
It was the first time either of us had ever been to Silver City, NM. My family had moved there not long after I joined the Navy and I hadn’t been to see them since, due to meeting Lee and getting married. Now we were going there for out first visit as a married couple to visit my family. It was, also, Lee’s first time to ever be in my home state of New Mexico and I felt like I needed to show all of it to him. So we were going to a part of the state I had never been to either.
http://www.silvercity.org/index.shtml


My mom had lived in Silver City when she was a girl. She and her family moved there when she was ten years old. A doctor in Texas has told my grandfather that he might live a bit longer if he moved to Silver City which was a good town for people with tuberculosis. Granddad had been ‘gassed’ while he was in France during World War 1. He was having health problems because of it and was told he only had a few months to live if he stayed in Texas. So he sold his small farm in Colorado City, TX and moved his family to Silver City. Mother told us they packed their family of five and a few household goods into and old Motol T Ford and took off. When they arrived in Silver City Granddad got a job as caretaker for some small house rented out by the Cottage Sans Tuberculosis Sanitarium on the outskirts of the small town.
It wasn’t long before Granddad; Boyd Green fell in love with being a gold and silver prospector in a county that has always been known for

prospectors looking for gold, silver, copper, and turquoise. I wish I could remember all the stories Mother told me about their adventures in Silver City and Grant County during the few years they lived their. At one time Granddad had a small turquoise mine that he got quite a bit of good turquoise out of. He learned to polish the best pieces and gave a lot of it to Alma, my grandmother that I called Gram, and to my mom and her sisters. Mother was able to pass on a lot of hers to me and my sisters. It will always stay in our family. Granddad’s turquoise was more of the green stone than the more popular and common blue colors.
http://www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands/21_mining.h
http://www.silvercitymuseum.org/A_about.html

While Lee and I visited with my family we got to visit the area where that old turquoise mine was. My parents, also, took us on a tour of the high points of Grant County while we were there. We went to see into the famous Santa Rita Copper Mine that had been being mined by the native Indians when the Spanish first came into the area and is still being mined today. They took us to see a small part of the Gila National Forest and the

edge of the Gila Wilderness Area. I have a photo of Lee sitting on a huge chain that was around a small area where a huge wild grape vine was to keep people off of the grape vine. The chain was said to be the anchor chain from an old ship. The vine and chain was right beside the Gila River at one of the entrances to the Gila Wilderness. It was our first time to actually be in a Wilderness area where motorized vehicles where not allowed to go. The next year the Gila River flooded out of its banks higher that in recorded history and took that grape vine and chain away to who knows where. I never heard if the chain was found again. http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/about/history/gila/index.htmhttp://fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_RU4?ss=110306&navtype=forestBean&navid=091000000000000&pnavid=null&cid=null&ttype=main&pname=Gila%20National%20Forest%20-%20Home

Near by we visited the Gila Cliff Dwellings. It was a long walk into where the cliff dwellings actually were from the visitor’s center but well worth it. It was like nothing Lee or I had ever seen before. Those tiny, ancient little rock houses where native Indians had once lived. We were walking the same trails that had been walked by true Americans hundreds of years before. How wonderful their lives must have been or we can hope they were. Of course the burning question that all archeologists of southwestern history have always wanted answered was why did the cliff dwellers leave their idealic homes on the edges of the cliffs scattered over New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah? No one has ever been able to answer that question to the ratification of all historians.
http://www.lycos.com/info/gila-cliff-dwellings-national-monument--gila-wilderness.html
http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/new-mexico/gila-cliff-dwellings



Another day in our travels we went to the ghost town of Mogollon, NM where there was a big mine back in the 1890’s. By the 1920’s it was a ghost town. It still is but is becoming known as a haven for artist and another way into the Gila National Forest. Tourists that really want to hit the back country of New Mexico go there. There is a small store, and a couple of Bed and Breakfast places. It is the way into a camp ground called Willow Creek where my family and I had a very memorial camping trip when I was about 8 years old.
http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/nm/mogollon.html

http://www.mogollonenterprises.com/
Near Mogollon is another tourist attraction known as the Catwalk. http://www.southernnewmexico.com/Articles/Southwest/Catron/TheCatwalk.html

It was a water pipeline put in by some miners back in the 1890’s to carry water to the miners of the town of Graham, NM near the slightly larger town of Glenwood. The pipe ran through a very narrow canyon. That canyon is now a scenic trail for those that want to dare to walk it. The pipe has been replaced in most places by metal ‘catwalks’ that are only a couple of feet wide and bolted to the rocky sides of the canyon where there is no way for a trail to be made, and they take the hiker higher and higher up the canyon. Of all the places I have visited over the years I still think that The Catwalk is one of the most unique trails I have ever been on. Not only is it unique it is absolutely beautiful with the fast flowing little river or creek or stream as you may chose to call it running along the trail or beneath the catwalk all the way along trail.
And there are some times that the catwalk can’t be visited as the catwalk does flood out every few years and has to be rebuilt by the forest service. Each spring when the deep snow from the high country above the catwalk decides to melt the waters of the river flood and overflow and it can be very dangerous to walk the catwalk. Every so often the snow melt waters are so bad that the metal walk ways are swept away. If you plan a trip to The Catwalk try not to do it in the early spring and always check with the local forest service centers to find out if it is safe to visit.
These trips to visit and see interesting and historic places in and near Silver City increased my interest in our American outdoors, history, national parks, and forest tremendously. I have never lost this love of the outdoors, mountains, deserts, and especially nature and wildlife. It has grown stronger as I have grown older. I have tried to pass on this love for nature to my son as my parents passed it on to me.