From Mining Camp to Mountain Retreat
Near Red River, New Mexico
When the miners left Red River, the homesteaders moved in. It was a practical arrangement. The miners had built cabins, and the homesteaders could rent them to visitors from the flatlands of Texas and Oklahoma who wanted cool summer air and a cold mountain stream. By the nineteen twenties, Red River had reinvented itself as a summer retreat.
The transformation was gradual. Families drove or rode up from the lowlands, rented an abandoned miner's cabin for a few weeks, fished the Red River for trout, and rode horses through the surrounding mountains. The town added hotels and lodges alongside the old mining buildings. Outfitters began running trips into the backcountry. The clean, cold air that had been simply weather during the mining boom became, in the resort era, the main selling point.
The summer economy gave Red River a reason to keep existing after the ore was gone. Then came winter. Skiers discovered the high valley in the nineteen forties and fifties, and when the Red River Ski Area opened, the town completed its second reinvention. A place that had survived the death of its first industry by becoming a summer resort added a winter resort on top of that. The old mining boomtown had become a year-round mountain destination, and it has stayed one ever since.
