New Mexico Road Trip - Silver City Day 3

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Even with the time change giving us an extra hour of sleep last night, we still slept in this morning.  We did get up in time to go down and get some breakfast from the hotel continental breakfast and spent the rest of the morning enjoying the fact that we didn’t have to hit the road right away.  As much as we are enjoying this road trip, not having to get back in the car again felt good.  I updated the blog since I hadn’t done it last night and relaxed the rest of the morning.

It looks like our streak of good weather is ending as the weather is predicted to turn cold with rain and possibly snow for this afternoon and through the night, so we decided to go out and explore some spots in the area we wanted to see before the rain came.  It was definitely cooler outside, and the clouds were heavy, but the sun was still shining.

We weren't driving any of the scenic drives from the book today, but we did visit the ghost towns of Hanover and Fierro, and the historic Fort Bayard.

There were a couple of ghost towns and an old fort just outside of Silver City we had read about, and that’s where we are headed.  The first town was Hanover which, even though there were a few people living there, was definitely a ghost town.  It didn’t have much character though, so we moved on up the road to the much more interesting town of Fierro.

Highway 180 before the turnoff to Hanover and Fierro.

The road to Hanover and Fierro.

There was and still is a mining area.  That's some old equipment ahead.

Way ahead in the center of the picture you can see an elevated mining road, it is not a public road.

Our only picture of Hanover.

 

Getting close to Fierro, you can see a better picture of the mine road to the right.

Entering Fierro

Fierro

There was no one living in Fiero that we could see, but there were quite a few buildings in various states of disrepair, so we got out and walked around a bit.  There is still active mining going on in the area and you could see it on the hillsides.  There were huge piles of tailings and even an elevated (not public) road that looked like it was made of tailings that went to different mine sites.  From what we could tell from the name of the mining company they are mining magnetite that is a type of iron ore that is used in a number of different things.

We drove north out of Fierro and found a Catholic Church set back on a dirt road that looked like it was still in use but was deserted even though it was Sunday.  We drove back to the pavement and on to where the pavement ended near the bottom of the huge, elevated road and saw that there was a tunnel we could drive through.  We were curious as to what was on the other side, so we drove it on a rough dirt road.  It turns out there was the same thing on the other side of the road, the elevated road just cut a path through the terrain kind of like a freeway does when it is put in.

The end of the pavement.

The only way to get past the mine road.

We turned back and drove some old dirt roads back into the townsite and found a cemetery that also looked like it was still in use, but as with the church, there was no one around.  We continued on a loop road and saw a couple of other old buildings, but nothing too interesting and finally got back on the pavement and headed back the way we had come.

Exploring more of Fierro.

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The entrance to one of the mines in the area.

We drove back through Hanover, but instead of heading back towards Silver City, we drove south through the town of Bayard.  Bayard was pretty good sized and had all the services an active town would have.  One of the hotel staff had recommended a Mexican Restaurant there that was supposed to be good, but it looked pretty crowded when we drove by, so we decided to go wait until we got back to Silver City and go to another Mexican Restaurant that someone else had recommended.

Heading towards Bayard.

Entering Bayard.  It doesn't look like much here, but it was a fair sized town with all services available.

After leaving Bayard we drove back to the main highway, but instead of taking it into Silver City we drove north to the Fort Bayard National Historic Landmark.  From the Historic Fort Banyon website here is a brief description: “Founded in 1866, Fort Bayard at first provided security (mainly by African-American “Buffalo Soldiers”) against Native American attacks on settlers during the settlement of the region in the 19th century. It was then converted into the army’s first tuberculosis sanitarium, and later became a VA hospital. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 2004.”.

It was an interesting place as we drove around the nearly deserted grounds.  We didn’t go deep into the history, but there were many large residence buildings that looked like they were built in the early 1900’s.  You can get an idea of the place from the pictures below, but we cut our stay short as the clouds were getting pretty heavy and it looked like rain.

Fort Bayard

After leaving Fort Bayard we got back on to Highway 180 and drove into Silver City and to the La Cosina Mexican Restaurant, the restaurant that was recommended to us by the hotel staff.  There were a lot of cars parked outside, but when we went in there were only a few people.  It was a very plain, simple restaurant, but the food was great, and Val and I very much enjoyed our lunch.

I have to say my opinion of Silver City has improved since we first drove into it.  It wasn’t what I expected when we arrived and there was a bit of traffic, so compared with most of the other places we had stayed during this trip, it was a disappointment.  That said, it is a pretty nice town and home to Southern New Mexico College which adds some youthfulness to the area that is always good thing so it won’t be my favorite spot we have stayed, but it is pretty nice.  It is also nice to have all the services like plenty of gas stations, restaurants, and even full-service grocery stores.  Also, the area around the town is beautiful and all of the drives we have taken have been wonderful, so we have been very happy with choosing this town as the headquarters for this part of New Mexico.

It started to rain lightly on our way back to the hotel, so we were getting back just in time.  We were back around three and checked with the front desk about the availability of the washers and dryers and found they were already available to use, so we spent the rest of the afternoon doing the rest of our laundry.  Because we didn’t eat lunch again until after two and it was a full dinner, we knew we wouldn’t be going out, so we just had snacks when we got hungry.

We did have one really heavy downpour as we sat warm and dry inside, but the brunt of the storm wouldn’t arrive until later this evening.  We relaxed for the rest of the evening and did a little packing as we’ll be leaving Silver City in the morning.  I did take some time to get our photos and videos organized and got everything backed up but other than that, it was a very relaxing evening.  We didn’t drive any of our scenic byways today, but it was an interesting day today and we drove through some beautiful areas.

Tomorrow, we head for Grants, New Mexico.  Grants is a town on I-40 so besides our last stop of our scenic drive quest, it is also the first stop on our way home.  We will be taking two of our remaining drives on our way to Grants and we’ll spend an extra day there to do one last one.  That may be in question as we travel to a higher elevation and they are predicting snow in Grants tonight so I don’t know how that will affect the drive, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Scenic Drives Completed: 28 of 35

Scenic Drives Missed: 3

The overview map of our trip after completing three more scenic drives in the Silver City area.