Ghost Towns in New Mexico and Texas

Copyright 2006 by Ronald B. Standler

It is difficult today to imagine a time in the late 1800s and early 1900s whenwere not available. In addition, many people lived on small ranches or farms, where the nearest neighbor might be more than a mile distant. In other situations, people lived in towns with a population of less than a few dozen people, far from a big city. Either way, people were hours away from the nearest hospital, law enforcement, fire department, water mains, sewer, library, and other resources that city dwellers take for granted. This isolation meant that people needed to be self-reliant for most of their needs, as well as for their recreation and entertainment.

During 1959-1962, my father often took me hiking in the desert or mountains around El Paso, Texas, where we lived. These hiking expeditions frequently included visits to old mines, long-abandoned towns (so-called "ghost towns"), and old military forts. The dry, desert climate in southern New Mexico and western Texas is ideal for preserving old buildings. Unfortunately, vandals had already pilfered or defaced many of these old sites when I visited them in the early 1960s. This webpage collects some links to other websites on these old mines and ghost towns, as well as my recollections. The subject of old mines and ghost towns is an example of where there is more information in books in libraries than on the Internet.

One needs to be careful in visiting old mines. I recall once, sometime around 1960, hiking on Sugarloaf Mountain in El Paso, Texas and finding a thin piece of rusted sheet metal covering a deep, vertical mining shaft into the mountain. In 2000, a high school student fell 200 feet to his death in an abandoned mine shaft near Orogrande, NM, which motivated the government to fill in some of these mines. (List of people who died in abandoned mines since 1999.) Furthermore, most of these historic sites are in very isolated terrain. There are many unobvious hazards in old mines.

Ghost Towns

General Links:

GhostTowns.com is a commercial website, which has lists of ghost towns, arranged by state.

Art Pike's personal website, with photographs and notes of ghost towns in New Mexico.

David Pike's personal website, with photographs and notes of ghost towns in New Mexico.

Dan Gulino, a professor of chemical engineering at Ohio University, has a collection of photographs of ghost towns in the Western USA, including New Mexico and Texas.

Daniel Ter-Nedden and Carola Schibli in Switzerland established a website on ghost towns in the Western USA, including New Mexico. They have very beautiful photographs.

Robert C. Jones, wrote a book, Ghost Towns (and Historic Towns) of New Mexico, and some of his photographs and text are reproduced at his website.

Ghost Towns in
Southern New Mexico

Orogrande & Brice

I recall visiting Orogrande many times. The present Orogrande is a collection of a few buildings located on US highway 54, mostly selling gasoline and food to travelers between Alamogordo and El Paso. The historic Orogrande is located in the desert west of the present Orogrande, and was built during 1905-1920 for gold mines in the Jarilla mountains. The ghost town of Brice is a few miles north of historic Orogrande. The Bureau of Land Management webpage says there are more than 350 abandoned mines in this area.
Webpages about these old mines:
  1. The Ragingmain website has text about — and many photographs of — Orogrande and Brice.

  2. photographs of Brice ghost town, plus many photos inside three old mines: Garnet Mine, Iron Queen Mine, and Iron Annie Mine.

  3. Mineralogy Database has a list of minerals found, and locations of mines, in the Orogrande area.

  4. topographical map, showing mines west of Orogrande and bed of old railroad.

Lanark

Lanark was a small collection of buildings, water tank, and fuel depot built for trains on the Southern Pacific Railroad track from El Paso, Texas to Los Angeles. Lanark was about 30 miles northwest of El Paso. Lanark had a U.S. Post Office from 1905 until 1923. The name "Lanark" continues today as the name of a U.S. Geological Survey 7.5 minute topological map, for which Lanark is the principal "town" in this desert area. Lanark is near Kilbourne Hole, a large, volcanic, steam blow-out hole (technically a "maar") that resembles a meteor crater. Kilbourne Hole is a famous site for collecting rocks containing olivine, also called peridotite. ("Kilbourne" is sometimes spelt without the u.)

Tyrone

The Phelps-Dodge copper mining company established a large town at Tyrone during 1912-1921, to service their copper mine, which was about 5 miles southwest of Silver City. Unlike other old towns, the company town at Tyrone was designed by an architect, and included a magnificent railroad station, hospital, and other buildings constructed of stone. Historic Tyrone disappeared when Phelps-Dodge began a new open-pit copper mine in 1969 and the old buildings were either demolished or buried by the mine.
Articles on Tyrone can be found at: Wikipedia and the RootsWeb genealogy site.

Dripping Springs

Not all of New Mexico is a desert. There are natural springs in some canyons that support lush vegetation. One such place is Dripping Springs, in a canyon in the Organ Mountains, approximately 17 miles east of Las Cruces. Col. Eugene Van Patten built a small (approximately 15 rooms) resort hotel there in the 1870s. Van Patten added another 18 rooms in 1906. In 1910, a tuberculosis sanitarium was built further up the canyon by a Dr. Boyd. Boyd purchased Van Patten's hotel in 1917. The sanitarium was apparently last used sometime in the late 1930s. The buildings were vandalized during the 1940s, and thereafter remained unoccupied. In 1988, Dripping Springs became a nature preserve. There are several webpages about Dripping Springs:
  1. Edward Rozylowicz's text and photographs
  2. RagingMain text and photographs,   sanitarium
  3. LostDestinations text and photographs,   sanitarium
  4. Mary Saxon's photographs
  5. Charlotte Geier's photographs
  6. Pritchard's photographs

Ghost Towns in
Western Texas

List of Texas ghost towns, with links to their webpages containing facts and photographs. (list by region)

The Handbook of Texas, searchable online Texas history.

Old Airfields

During the 1920s and 1930s, the U.S. Government established what were known as "intermediate airfields" — emergency landing strips for civilian airplanes that encountered mechanical problems while flying between municipal airports. These airfields had a rotating beacon for use in guiding pilots at night.

Other historic airfields include those built for training during Word War II. Each of the big military training airfields were commonly surrounded by "satellite airfields", to which student pilots and student navigators could fly and return in a few hours. The military airfields near a town sometimes became a municipal airport after the military closed the airfield.

General Links:
  1. Paul Freeman's Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields is a first-rate resource, including old photographs.

  2. David W Brooks's list of both active and inactive airfields in the USA.

  3. Scott D. Murdock's list of intermediate airfields used by the military in the 1940s.

  4. NOAA collection of historical aeronautical charts (i.e., maps).

Pyote, Texas

An example of an abandoned military airfield is at Pyote, Texas. Pyote is located on I-20, approximately 25 miles east of Pecos and 15 miles west of Monahans. An Army Airfield was built in 1942 at Pyote to train B-17, and later B-29, flight crews. After World War II, the Pyote Army Airfield was used as an airplane storage facility, because of the dry climate. In the 2000 census, Pyote had a population of 131 people, a far cry from the peak population of more than 6500 people at the Army Airfield during World War II. In 1967, the state of Texas established a facility for juvenile delinquents at the former Army Airfield, and many of the old military buildings were demolished in the mid-1970s.
Links to Pyote:

Biggs Air Force Base (El Paso, Texas)

During WWII, Biggs Army Airfield trained bomber crews for B-17, B-24, and B-29 airplanes.

From 1948 until 1966, Biggs Air Force Base was part of the Strategic Air Command, which operated heavy bombers (e.g., B-36, B-47, B-52). Although my parents' house was located about 3.5 miles from the Biggs runway, I still remember hearing the loud roar of the large jet engines as bombers took off on training missions.

From 1939 until 1966, aircraft from Biggs also towed targets for anti-aircraft gunners on the range north of Ft. Bliss, which was the U.S. Army school for anti-aircraft artillery and missiles.

In 1966, the Air Force departed and Biggs again became an Army Airfield. With one of the longest runways in the USA (the 30 degree north (3/21) concrete runway has a length of 13,572 feet, with an additional 1000 feet of asphalt surface at one end), Biggs is a reminder of the large bombers used during the Cold War in the 1950s. Biggs Air Force Base would probably have become an abandoned airfield, except for the fact that Ft. Bliss surrounded Biggs, making it easy for Ft. Bliss to absorb Biggs.

Links to Biggs Army Airfield or Biggs Air Force Base: Links to the B-36 bomber, which was famous for the loud drone of its six piston engines (plus four jet engines):

This document is at   http://www.rbs0.com/abandon.htm
created 28 May 2006, revised 28 June 2006

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