The mine encroaching on Santa Rita, circa 1915. Photo courtesy Silver City Museum
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"The Santa Rita is, perhaps, the most famous mine in Western America, for it was here that the techniques of copper mining were first developed in the Southwest." So wrote Carey McWilliams in his 1949 book, North From Mexico.
Santa Rita – some 15 miles east of Silver City, site of today’s mine and yesterday’s town – is in a region of greasewood flatlands, of yucca patches and carpets of creosote brush, with an offering of cacti in many varieties. Wildlife is abundant: canine and feline mammals, reptiles and a bird congress created to make sweet an ornithologist’s dream. Hazy mountains humpback on all horizons, abrupt arroyos cut into the hard desert earth. But in spite of the wildness, the loneliness, the feeling of things far away from everywhere, the air is sharp with industry, for in its midst the Kennecott enterprise is ever burrowing, digging, loading, hauling, milling and smeltering the precious substance – ripping out the Santa Rita as mining men have for all but 16 years of the last two centuries.
But where is the town of Santa Rita?
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Fort Bayard began in 1866 when Company B of the 125th U.S. Colored Infantry under the command of Lieutenant James Kerr established an encampment near the gold and silver mining communities of Pinos Altos and Silver City, New Mexico. This location commanded Apache war trails from their lands near the present Faywood Hot Springs to numerous mining areas. According to Lieutenant Kerr, it was “. . . a beautiful situation on the eastern slope of the Pinos Altos Mountains,” with abundant wood, water, and forage.
Alma, five miles north of Glenwood on U.S. 180, was a hideout for Butch Cassidy and his gang. when they worked for the W-S Ranch in the 1890s. It is said the gang members were good workers, and Cassidy was even offered a permanent job there. A post office existed from 1882 to 1896, then again from 1900 to1931. Mail now goes to Glenwood.
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