Back to West Virginia

The family was supposed to camp at Coopers Rock in West Virginia over Labor Day weekend, but there was rain of tsunami-like proportions.  I ended up staying by myself over Friday and Sunday nights.  My wife stayed by herself on Saturday night.  All our camping gear got saturated.  But it was a good place to be.

I hiked alone down to the bottom of the canyon that you see in the top photo and found the peaceful Cheat Lake.  I camped out on the Shavers Fork of the Cheat River late last fall--way, way up in the mountains and very far from this part of the state.

And then last Sunday I finally took my kids to do the tour of the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville.  It was spectacular!  One of Jimmy Stewart's worst and last movies was filmed in that area of West Virginia--Marshall County--and I watched it in its entirety on YouTube.  There are scenes from the prison.  A very young Kurt Russell is also in the flick.

It's a stately enough place from the outside, but truly hellish within.

This cell is 5 feet x 7 feet, and they used to cram three prisoners into these cells by adding a top bunk and making the weakest or smallest one sleep on the floor with his head under the toilet.  The tour guide said that if they tried to sleep with their heads near the cage doors, someone would cut their throats in the night.  Ghost chasers love this place.  In fact, they love the whole town of Moundsville, which is built on an ancient Indian graveyard--apparently.

We took the historic tour of the prison; they also do a "haunted" tour in which they take you into solitary confinement, the psych ward, and the hospital ward.  

New Mexico Trip, Chapter 6: The Long Road Home

 

This little homestead appears on my 2016 New Mexico Gazetteer as the Feliz Ranch.  It sits atop a very broad and treeless plateau just off NM highway 104.  We had reason to approach the place and found it to be a lot less impressive than its name would indicate.

I mean, not many houses get to be named on maps.  And that's pretty much all there is here at Feliz Ranch: a rickety old ranch house, a few outbuildings, and a view that looks more like Kansas than New Mexico.

With natural splendor all around, the Feliz Ranch sits in its own little bowl of ugly.  And yet, even ugly in New Mexico has a kind of beauty to it.

And that's a pretty expensive car sticking its nose out of the garage at Feliz Ranch.

Oh, that it would rain out over this barren land.  And I hope for a good, heavy snowfall in the mountains this winter, so the lakes and reservoirs and water tables can be restored.  

But recent rains did make for a greenish landscape, despite the fact that it was merely a superficial health masking the deep dryness beneath.

Beautiful New Mexico, this place has been haunting me, calling to me for years and years.  I first came here in about 1991.  My friend and I drove here in his jalopy from Oklahoma City because I wanted to get out of a date with a girl I didn't really like.  I left a note on her door saying that I'd have to cancel our date because I was in New Mexico.  She left a poem about disappointment on my door, and the poem was named "New Mexico."  (I've sometimes made the right decision.)

The long, empty roads, the grueling heat, the sweet smell of pinyon and juniper.  I love this place most of all in the winter.

Along highway 104, after passing through the empty husk of Trementina and beginning the long ascent to the nearly empty husk of Trujillo, you'll see a church-like structure on the distant hill.  This is a shrine to Mother Mary--in deference to the Catholicism practiced by most generational New Mexicans of Spanish ancestry.

It's just that, a shrine with statues, and candles, and all kinds of gewgaws and trinkets and kitsch.

In a human-made grotto, there's a place where you can leave prayers to the Mother of God.

Personally, I don't have much use for the statues and fake flowers and beads, but someone finds comfort here.  See the notes, and cards, and rosaries that people have left.

This odd-looking thing is a larger-than-life rosary.

And here's a miniature Calvary.

Ah, but all journeys must come to a close, and time drew me back to Oklahoma City and the flight back East.  Oklahoma City was never a glamorous place.  It always felt to me like a temporary town or an outpost in some desperate hinterland.  Despite improvements, it still kind of has that feel.

There's really not much to photograph in Oklahoma City.  Here's "The Roanoke," on Northwest 12th Street, where I had my first apartment--in the lower righthand corner.  The neighborhood was dicey even back then, in the early 90s.  It's about the same today, though many buildings seem to be the worse for wear.  The once-busy church behind the apartment building is long abandoned.  This was the first place where I lived on my own out in the big world after college.  It was here that I had my first phone number, my first utility bills, my first real home.  I made the place nice--with lots of books, and mood lighting, and artistic prints, and candles, and old furniture, and dark music, and the aroma of coffee, and incense, and clove cigarettes.  Oh the freedom of being young, and gainfully employed, and single in the city, even a dumpy city like that one.  In some ways I miss it.  

New Mexico Trip, Chapter 5: In Search of Sabinoso

Lonely NM Highway 419 winds languidly beneath the baking sun.  Come up a hill and around a bend to find a regular green and white sign that announces the village of Sabinoso, turn left and go five miles.  The sign is as authoritative as any sign pointing the way to Santa Fe or Taos.  But really?  Just try it.  Just turn left and travel the well-maintained gravel road for five miles...and before descending down into the canyon where the village stands, you'll come to this open gate.  "Private property."  No outsiders allowed.  This whole town is mine now!  Scram.  And so we turned around and left without seeing the ghost-town we'd set out to explore.

It's barren countryside and kind of bleak in a lovely, blinding sort of way.  But we drove a pretty "far piece" (as my grandpa used to say) to get to Sabinoso.  It was disappointing to find it posted.

Before reaching the gate, you can peer down from the roadside onto the floor of the canyon far below to see this pleasant ranch.  A broad green valley surrounded by rocky mesas and juniper bushes...so scenic and so very southwestern.

There's a lot of information on the internet about the newly-accessible Sabinoso Wilderness Area, which is nearby and named after the village.  But there's almost nothing about the ghost-town itself.  Here is a photo of my friend taking shelter in the shade of a juniper...like the Buddha beneath the bodhi tree.  I was disappointed to miss out on Sabinoso, whose church at least--Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe--seems to be pretty and worth a visit.  It also has a cemetery.  Does anyone know who owns this place?

New Mexico Trip, Chapter 4: Ghost Towns of San Miguel County

Ah, La Liendre, how you've slipped away in the course of these past 12 years!  La Liendre was open to the public in past years, but it's now posted as private land.  But the kind rancher had given us permission to travel here, and so we went back to see what was left of La Liendre.

The cemetery above La Liendre is spectacular, but we did not have enough time to pay our respects at that sacred spot for a second time.  Besides, my friend shouted and screamed and cursed so fiercely at the horseflies in the cemetery at the last town that I had to shush him and remind him that he was on hallowed ground.  I didn't want to expose yet more sleeping Spaniards to his profanity.

Not exactly Spaniards, but people of Spanish and Indigenous American descent.  The people here are careful to point out the fact that they are not Mexicans.  They never crossed the border; the border crossed them.  They even say that they speak the Spanish of Cervantes, and it's true that when they speak English their accents are charming, distinctly Spanish but not like any other Spanish accents I've heard.

The desert was blossoming in places.

And in other places, too.

Just outside the kitchen of this small house, someone seemed to gather the shards of china in an attempt to put them back together.  Good luck.

"Road" is a relative term out here in the hinterlands of the cattle ranch.

But the main road through the ranch was once maintained by the county, and so it has a few decaying bridges.

Weight limit 4 tons....

Maybe don't try to put 4 tons on that.

The road down into La Liendre can be a bit harrowing...

New Mexico Trip, Chapter 3: Ghost Towns of San Miguel County

Is this not beautiful country?  New Mexico captured my heart many years ago and never fails to recapture it.  This is the road--such as it is--to an abandoned town that I dare not name.  The nearest hill is known as Mesa Lauriano.

Exploring this ghost-town was the highlight of my week-long trip out West.  And yet, I cannot tell the name of this place because it would be a betrayal to the friendly cowboy who gave us permission to visit this place.  

This old town site is extremely isolated, deep inside a very large private ranch.  Two young cowboys found me inspecting the chained gate leading into the ranch, and they kindly gave me the phone number of the ranch manager.  These broad vistas and striking views are reserved for ranch hands and cowpokes...and cows, of course.

But with a lot of persistence and the right map, you'll find the ancient Spanish settlement, some of which is surprisingly still intact.  It's a five mile walk from the last cattle guard, and take careful note of the trail you take because it's possible to get lost on your way back.  My friend and I did...and you should have heard him moaning about it....

With a roof, this old house would still offer shelter from the elements.

One house had an old tin ceiling collapsing into one of its two rooms.

Click on this photo to enlarge it.  There are several homes visible here.

The road into this place is barely visible even by daylight, but people were still traveling it as recently as the early 2000s in order to visit loved ones in the village cemetery--which we never found.

We did meet a few reptilian friends along the way, like this horny toad.

My friend nearly stepped on this rattlesnake on the long trudge home--as we frantically looked for traces that we had passed along that same road on the way to the town.  We may or may not have gotten slightly lost, or at least confused about our route, on the way back to the campsite.

And this little fellow was the only one home when we visited one of the larger houses in the village.

This is the first building you see in the town, approaching from the north.

Click on this photo to see the window in the middle where the old wooden latticework is still partly intact.

The tufted clouds above complement the tufted ground below.

This particular town has all sorts of artifacts on the ground outside the buildings.  Old pieces of broken glass.  Shards of patterned china.  Old hardware, tools, and bits of unknown paraphernalia.

When these adobe bricks erode, they simply return to the earth--which is how buildings ought to be: biodegradable.

See the bare ribcage of a long-gone roof above this otherwise sturdy stone house, with similarly shaped mountains in the distance.  The architecture here seems to rise right out of the earth, and it returns into the earth so gracefully.

One of the handsomest structures in town was probably once a mechanic's shop where cars were repaired.  Look at the excellent stonework.

Once again, the stone-laying is perfect--crisp, even, straight, and tight--and yet entirely without mortar.  It makes use of a variety of stone sizes, and colors, and shapes to create a beautiful composition of stonework.  At first glance, it's simple and easy to overlook.  At second glance, every simple two-room house is a work of art--deceptively intricate in its stony design.

My favorite building was this little homestead.  Some of the paneled wooden doors were still standing in their doorways.  Ceilings, floors, and walls were still solid--probably due to its good roof.

Here's the interior.  This house was almost entirely intact, aside from broken windows and a whole lot of crud.  Clean it up, close up the windows, and it could be a home again.

From a distance, the barn, ranch house, and corral here seemed like they were still in use.  This is the newest architecture in town, and the windmill in the background just keeps pumping away in the dry western wind.

The ranch manager told us that the last inhabitant left the town in 1982--though most left before that time.  I'm pretty sure this little white ranch house is where that last townsperson lived.  Click on this photo to see the rusty can of Dinty Moore beef stew on the counter with another in the cupboard.  It was probably an overnight shelter for cowhands.

But the town's crowning glory is its crumbling bridge across the Gallinas River! 

And I use the term "river" lightly.  It's more a string of stagnant mud puddles.  Here's the bridge and the river as seen from above.

Some interior shots...

A room with a view.

I would happily live here, wouldn't you?

This building was large and low with two very big rooms.  I'm guessing it was once a barn.

We never did find the cemetery that belongs to this town--and all these old ghost-towns have charming cemeteries filled with humble gravestones etched with simple Spanish folk art.  But there were plenty of open water wells, most of them dry as dust and plenty dangerous.  We almost took the wrong road on the way back to our campsite, 5 miles away, and had a very anxious march back to our tent.  "Is this the right road?  I don't know.  Do you see our footprints headed the other direction?  I don't think so."  Ah, but we made it back alright.  The moon came up full and glorious, and it lit the cool night with a glory I've rarely known.  The Buck Moon, my friend's wife called it.