Gold Rush to Ghost Town: The Mining Decade
Near Red River, New Mexico
In the eighteen sixties, gold and silver were discovered near Elizabethtown in the Moreno Valley, just over the mountains from Red River. Elizabethtown became a roaring boomtown, and its miners began scanning the surrounding ridges for new ore. What they found when they crossed into the Red River drainage looked promising.
The first serious prospectors arrived at Red River around eighteen ninety-five, and within months the place had the shape of a real town. At its peak, the camp held an estimated three thousand residents, sustained by saloons, stores, hotels, boarding houses, and the other businesses a mining camp needed. The surrounding canyons were riddled with mine shafts going after gold, silver, and copper.
The boom did not last. The richest ore proved to be near the surface. As miners dug deeper, yields dropped. By nineteen oh five, the mining and the population had dwindled. The mines made a few more serious attempts over the following decades, but the last sustained effort wound down around nineteen thirty-one. In less than four decades, the peak had come and gone. What Red River had left was scenery, clean air, a cold trout stream, and a set of empty buildings that would eventually become something else entirely.
