Shakespeare, New Mexico, Silver Boom, Saloon Brawls, and Hanging Trees

Shakespeare is one of the best-preserved ghost towns in the Southwest, sitting a few miles off Interstate Ten just south of Lordsburg. It began life as Mexican Springs, a Butterfield Overland Mail stop in eighteen fifty-eight, then went through several boom-and-bust silver and gold cycles across the late eighteen hundreds. At its wildest it was called Ralston, a full-on silver boomtown, with a population reported at as many as three thousand.

Russian Bill and Sandy King, a pair of outlaws, were lynched here in eighteen eighty-one, reportedly hanged from the dining room rafters of the Grant Hotel, because townsfolk were tired of them. The site was eventually purchased by the Hill family, who preserved it as a private museum, opening it for living-history weekends where costumed guides roam the old saloons, assay offices, and stables. Billy the Kid washed dishes here as a teenager, or so the legend goes.