Socorro Crossing

I haven’t posted on here very much recently. In fact, it’s been almost a year. I strive to do better this year. I stopped doing industrial archeology things because the SIA required vaccination cards, and I was simply not going to supply this information to them.

However, there’s nothing stopping me from doing my own thing.

For this week, I am posting about a train I saw on 10/30/23 on US-60 in Socorro. I used to see trains all the time on this spur line that were headed out to the pearlite mine. I moved away from Socorro, but still work here, so I don’t see the trains quite as often. I was glad to see one on this particular day.

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Locomotives Passing Through Belen

I had the opportunity to see a few trains pass through the Belen BNSF train station on Wednesday. Typically, it’s all BNSF locomotives, but every once in a while, something else will pass through. Unfortunately for me, there were multiple trains passing through at about the same time, and so I was only able to take pictures of one of them.

This train had three locomotives on one end, and I left on the NM Railrunner before the train had finished, so I don’t know if there were more on the back end.

BNSF 5039

CSX 731

BNSF 4463

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Dowlin Mill, Ruidoso, NM

On October 17, 2020, JoAnna was in a race near Ruidoso. After the race, we cruised around Ruidoso a bit and found the Dowlin Mill.

The Dowlin Mill was built in 1868, and was the town’s oldest building. It was a water-powered mill used for grist and several other milling operations. Rumor has it that Billy The Kid used to dance here and may have even evaded law enforcement by hiding in a barrel here.

It fell into disrepair, but was restored in the 1940s, and became a tourist destination by the 1950s. More information can be found https://maps.roadtrippers.com/us/ruidoso-nm/points-of-interest/old-dowlin-mill

Unfortunately, a gas leak, explosion and fire destroyed the mill in 2017. https://www.kxan.com/news/iconic-building-in-new-mexico-tourist-town-devoured-by-flames/ has more information on the fire.

The site is being rebuilt- and that’s what we saw a year ago.

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Plaza Hotel 10/30/21

This past weekend, we spent a night in the Historic Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, NM. You can learn more about the place, or book a room for yourself: https://www.plazahotellvnm.com/.

Recently, it, and the Castanada Hotel have been renovated by the same investor, and we are appreciative of his efforts. Soon, the Santa Fe 2926 will deliver tourists to these, and they can get the full steam train experience, complete with staying in an old hotel or a former Harvey House. Las Vegas may once again become a destination.

Built in 1882, it has been recently restored to its former glory. Movie stars, politicians and all manner of VIPs have stayed in this place. We stayed in room 317, which was the quarters of early silent-film director, Romaine Felding, who rented the entire hotel for several years to film westerns. Speaking of films, it has been in many modern films and TV-series, such as No Country for Old Men, Longmire, and Battlestar Galactica.

In the stairwells, hallways and rooms, were antique furniture (other than the beds and TVs), including this old desk in our room.

I will post separately about one neat piece we saw in one of the hallways.

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Facebook Groups of Interest

I have been slowly cleaning up my Facebook feed so that it shows me fewer political posts and more things that I’d like to see instead. Over the past few months, I’ve found and joined a number of Facebook groups that I found worthwhile, and figured I would pass them on to you. The links below will likely only work if you are a Facebook member.

Besides the Society for Industrial Archeology’s group, https://www.facebook.com/groups/60093278387, most states have an “abandoned” group. Here are the “abandoned” groups for New Mexico, https://www.facebook.com/groups/266803690369324, and Virginia, https://www.facebook.com/groups/AbandonedInVirginia/, and https://www.facebook.com/groups/600723370686981/. The abandoned groups have everything from abandoned houses to factories to cars. I enjoy all of it.

I also found one specifically for abandoned railroad equipment and railways: https://www.facebook.com/groups/abandonedrails/

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Ancho, NM

Last weekend, we took a quick trip through Ancho, NM, a ghost town about 23 miles north of Carrizozo.

The town was famous for its bricks. In New Mexico, most of the buildings of the late 1800s and early 1900s were made from adobe, so bricks were an unusual commodity in this part of the country.

The bricks were so popular that several tons of them were sent to San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake to help rebuild the city, according to https://www.newmexico.org/places-to-visit/ghost-towns/ancho/. The Ancho Brick Company produced bricks from around 1901 until 1921.

The population rose during the Great Depression due to the hopes of finding gold in the nearby mountains, though most were unsuccessful in their gold mining efforts.

The final straw for Ancho was when US-54 was placed between Carrizozo and Corona, bypassing Ancho. Railroad service stopped in 1959, and the post office closed in 1969.

We drove through and took a few photos by the ruins of brick buildings:

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Read these for more information about Ancho:
https://newmexicohistoryblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/18/ancho-new-mexico/
https://www.newmexico.org/places-to-visit/ghost-towns/ancho/
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/nm-ancho/

Ore Cart

I was walking around behind one of the academic buildings at NMT and ran across this ore cart. It didn’t have wheels any more, and I’m not sure of its age or its origin.

New Mexico Tech (NMT) has the formal name of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and used to have a major focus on the mining industry. In the early 1900s, all students were required to take a mining course, and they went into the mines on Socorro Peak (“M” Mountain).

When the registrar building burned down and many records were lost, historians were able to recreate some of the lists of students by examining the names burned into the timbers of the mine, as many students used their headlamps to make their mark.

I don’t know if this piece is part of that mine, or is from somewhere else. If the Cooney Mining Club operates this semester, I’ll try to get more information.

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Mystery at White Sands

I was playing around on Google Earth, looking for a spot where I had hit a deer years ago, as I couldn’t remember the town. Anyway, one thing lead to another and I was looking at the Trinity Site at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico.

I found these buildings a ways away from the Trinity site, but still on WSMR property. Not sure what they were for, though the desert is slowly reclaiming them.

The first satellite image shows the buildings arranged in a circle, with two openings in each building. You could put a big ring through these buildings:

The second image shows the general location, and that there is another larger radius circle around the site:

No idea what these were or how they were used. Any thoughts?

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Trains on 4/19/20

With so many “stay at home” orders, it’s hard to do much Industrial Archeology.  However, if we sit in my truck, in the middle of nowhere, and watch trains, there’s not much they can do to stop us.  On Sunday, 4/19/20, we spent several hours sitting by a BNSF crossing along US-60 in Socorro County, NM, a little ways from the Belen yard.  We saw quite a few trains, as you can see from these pictures:

 

 

…a long train of tank cars

At some point, I’ll put together a page dedicated to BNSF locomotive numbers that I’ve photographed.  Stay tuned!

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Arroyo Archaeology

Here in New Mexico, some folks tend not to dispose of their old vehicles properly.  Rather than parking them in their yard like good Americans, they take them to the top of a cliff, roll them off and then shoot them a bunch.

The “Sand Hills” area near Rio Rancho, NM, is no exception.  JoAnna and I went hiking there on 3/21/20, and found quite a few old automobile carcasses.

We were only able to hike up to a few of them (it started to rain), but we will return another day.  We weren’t able to get to any of these; some of these were from the 1960s and older.  I’ve heard that car thieves used to ditch the cars here after they’d stripped them of parts.

The first vehicle we found was a relatively new Toyota Tacoma.  It still had the engine and transmission in it, but no wheels, rear end or driveshaft.  I don’t know its story, and there wasn’t a really good way to photograph more of it.  It looked like it had been in good shape.

There was this old Suburban that had the roof cut off as well:

One of the interesting things for you non-shooters to notice:  the bodies of these cars are not bulletproof.  In movies, people duck behind vehicles and are somehow safe.  Notice that these holes go all the way through the steel; the smallest ones are .22 LR, a really small caliber.  It’s not a matter of “armor piercing” bullets or anything of the sort, but rather a matter of physics.

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