Silver City


One may ask why we decided to spend a night in Silver City, NM. Besides the fact that it is a nice breaking point on the drive to Marfa from Sedona, and the fact that an old college buddy had retired to there, I was planning on moving to Silver City in 1980.

I was a young Mining Engineer working for Exxon Minerals, and we were planning on developing a resource in Pinos Altos, just outside of Silver City.

Here are some of the core samples from the deposit. It was going to be an underground mine, but then the commodities market fell apart, and the mine was cancelled.

The deposit has not been mined to this day.




But Silver City is a very attractive little town now. There are two active mines (Surface, big ones) that provide a solid economic base for the city, and there is also a lot of hiking, biking, and other outdoor activities in the nearby Gila National Forest.

This is the view from our hotel room:
 


This is the hotel. It used to be a mansion from an old Silver baron, built in the '30s.


Out room. The "Leopold" room. Named after you know who.


They were having an installation on the property that lamented genocide. We all lament genocide.

As we were hiking on the property, we saw this installation.

Ceramic bones.

Luckily, there is a whimsical bench at the top of "Contemplation Ridge" so we could relax a bit after the bones.


And, as everywhere in this country, there were deer.


It is a beautiful place. I would like to spend more time there.


Catching up with my old college buddy was much more uplifting than the bones. He is a graduate of Michigan Tech, and we worked together at the Hillsboro Mine of Consol Coal. (that was, I believe, in 1977). He stayed in mining his whole career. but moved from the digging side to the prep side, and finally the environmental remediation side as time went by. He has retained his Yooper accent though, after all these years. He is now roasting coffee (good hobby!), brewing beer, and making moonshine. He gave us some of the moonshine, which I will report on later.

This was a great stop, and we'll find some time in the future to return.

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