A ghost, a museum and a tragic story

So here we are in NM chasing down ghost towns with somewhat mixed success.

Steins was our first stop, a ghost town right over the NM border.



It's actually been restored so it's more of a Living History Museum, complete with the cutest little old lady who runs the place. According to her the town has been occupied almost continously since it began in the late 1800s.

It ceased to be a town in the 1920's when the mine closed but people still lived there until the 1950's when it was bought for a young guy whose parents wanted him out of the house. She says it was probably cheap because it was considered "old junk instead of valuable antiques." The young guy moved in to one of the existing buildings with no money so he just unearthed old pots, pans, beds, shelves etc. that had been left by former inhabitants and set up housekeeping.

In 1988, the little old lady was living in Phoenix and her husband called and said "Honey, sell the house! I bought a ghost town!" (she thought he might have lost his mind but she eventually came around) They renovated the interior of one of the houses and moved in and have lived there ever since. They give a guided tour of some of the more intact buildings (we didn't take it) and have a small store in the Steins Mercantile building. She was adorable and I love to see someone taking care of historical buildings so they'll be around for the rest of us. This is the Blacksmith shop.

Unfortunately, our next stop was the complete opposite kind of experience. We were looking for a town called Tyrone, built in the early 1900s with rococco style "palatial mansions." The ghost town website said that there's nothing else like it in the Southwest . It was sort of a vanity project for a rich widow who spent over 1 million dollars on it.

We arrive in modern day Tyrone and look around for these old mansions, we hike around and drive around and find nothing. So we ask a local mom who was out with her kids, she has no idea what we're talking about ("there's a ghost town around here?") so she calls her mom who tells her what happened.

Apparently a miner named "Petey" bought the land the old mansions were on and wanted to build a mine so he bulldozed all the old buildings.

They're completely gone. How tragic is that? New Mexico history just bulldozed into the ground. This is the part about NM not preserving their historical sites...

We had been looking forward to this town and were really upset by the fact that it's gone for good. I'd almost rather not know that and just think that I couldn't find it. We eventually rallied, though that story cast a pall that lasted for several miles, and drove up past Silver City where we almost accidentally found the very last remains of a little town called Andrews. This is all that remains.

But there was a great little window

So we stomped around in the mud and enjoyed this lonely litle valley and the remains of this homestead. It was a small town even in the beginning, only 100 people at it's peak, and I doubt it will last another decade. But we got to see it before it vanishes for good.

Of course the sunset was lovely, though sort of mild for New Mexico

And it's been a great day all around, lots of rain, clouds, cool weather (probably 60 tonight) and the people in NM are amongst the friendliest I've ever met while traveling.

Tomorrow we've got more ghost towns in store and then some 4 wheeling and camping in the Gila Nat'l Forest. We drove through parts of it today and it's gorgeous, tall pines and huge rock formations,so I'm looking forward to more of that.

Catch you on the flip side...