Arizona, New Mexico & the Grand Canyon Trips (Lonely Planet, 1st Edition) - Aaron Anderson [164]
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PLANNING YOUR TRIP
The 150-mile Geronimo Trail is technically a loop, starting and ending in Truth or Consequences, but most people only tackle the first two sections described in this trip. That’s because the 46 miles along triangular loop’s western edge are rough packed-dirt only accessible to 4WD vehicles. If you have the right wheels, however, this is a great off-road trip through the green wilderness of Gila National Forest. From Chloride, continue west on Hwy 52 until reaching Forest Rd 150 south. Follow it all the way to Silver City.
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Continue west after lunch, and keep an eye out for the “dead end” sign that points to Kingston. With 100 people fewer than Hillsboro, the sign is pretty appropriate. A blink-and-miss-it community of just 30 people (compared to 7000 in its heyday), Kingston is just a small clutch of wooden buildings lining a narrow portion of the road. The place is very quiet – so quiet, in fact, it’s hard to believe this was once the biggest, baddest city in New Mexico, boasting 27 bars catering to everyone from Chinese fortune seekers to Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy and Mark Twain. The only building that looks almost exactly as good as it did during the 19th century is the beautifully restored Percha Bank, c 1884. Complete with an enormous working vault, the bank building is now a museum and art gallery. The friendly owners create, and sell, very fine quality letter-press printing. Spending the night in a true ghost town is a hair-raising experience. There’s just something special – an almost tingly feeling – about slumbering amidst all that history and hardly any people. In Kingston, stay at the atmospheric Black Range Lodge. The main building dates to the 1880s and features thick stone walls and wooden beams on the ceiling. Rooms are cozy and warm with antiques and old quilts. A full breakfast is served in the morning and you’re welcome to use the big kitchen for self-catering at night (which is good because there isn’t anywhere else to eat in Kingston!).
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DETOUR
The Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is just 44 miles northwest of Silver City, in the pristine Gila National Forest at the end of Hwy 15. Inhabited by native people for one generation at the end of the 13th century, the monument consists of about 40 rooms in a series of five shallow caves. Reach the ruins via a 1-mile round-trip trail 2 miles north of the visitors center on Hwy 15. Parts of the trail are steep and require ladder climbing.
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It’s a very slow uphill crawl around a series of hairpin bends from Kingston to the top of the Black Range, which crests at the 8228ft Emory Pass. The view from the lookout point atop the summit makes the drive worthwhile. From here the dark, craggy peaks disappear into the umber hills of the Rio Grande Valley to the east and the sky, up here above the tree-line, seems bigger and bluer than anywhere else on the trail. Continue on towards Silver City, stopping at the Santa Rita Chino Open Pit Copper Mine Observation Point, about 6 miles from the intersection with Hwy 180. Worked by Native Americans and Spanish and Anglo settlers, it’s the oldest active mine in the Southwest. The open-pit mine is a staggering 1.5 miles wide and 1800ft deep, and produces 300 million pounds of copper annually.
Silver City, the grand-daddy of New Mexico’s boom-bust-boom town success stories, is your final destination. Silver City’s streets are dressed with a lovely mishmash of old brick and cast-iron Victorians and thick-walled red adobe buildings, and the place still emits a Wild West air. Billy the Kid spent some of his childhood here, and a few of his haunts can still be found