Kellie and I were awake early as usual and were ready to go hiking by the time the sun was up, so we jumped in the trusty KIA and headed out for Cerillos Hills State Park, which had been our destination on our first day in New Mexico, but, as you know already, it rained the first two days we were in the state.
Well, luck was with us on Monday. The weather forecast was for partly cloudy skies, windy, and cold with highs in the mid-40s. All right, not perfect hiking weather, but good enough for a couple bound and determined to get in some hiking in the mountains.
The park ranger arrived at Cerillos Hills the same time that we did, and we chatted with him for a moment. As we were chatting, I realized that my phone was not in my pocket. I looked in the car. Nope! It didn't take long to realize that I had left my phone sitting by the bathroom sink in the VRBO. All of these Monday morning pictures were taken by Kellie with her phone.
Cerrilos Hills State Park is 5.5 miles of interconnected trails that circle around in the mountains to various mines. The first trail we took was a .25 mile dead end trail that looks over the village of Los Cerillos. The mountain in the background is Placer Mountain. Looking at Los Cerillos, I was reminded of a line from the movie Little Big Man, which I will paraphrase, "I see the trash dump. Where's the village?" It really wasn't a dump, but the village was not much to look at.
I don't remember the names of the trails, but we took the 1.5 mile trail first because, according to the map that we had, the most mines were on this trails. Here is one of those mines from a distance. When you get close, it just looks like a hole in the ground--a big hole in the ground no doubt, but just a hole in the ground. Apparently, some of these holes made people rich by selling them to other people, but nobody ever made money from what they found in these holes.
Going up this hill, gaining nearly 1500 of elevation, we went around and around and around in circle and half-circles. As Kellie took this picture, the trail seemed to start heading back down, but, nope, we ended up going all the way to that peak up at the top after a couple more broad and sweeping loops.
There we are standing on the peak (above). Only Placer Mountain in the distance is higher than we are. We probably walked close to a mile getting to this point. The trail down was much steeper and didn't take us very long to finish. We had looked at five or six mines on the way up. I don't recall that we saw a single hole on the way back down. Maybe we did see one.
After walking back to the car and moving to a different parking area, we embarked on another trail. This trail did mess around with circling around and around the hill. We climbed this 1400 to 1500 feet of elevation on some rock steps and only a few switchbacks. It was a bit harder, but it was well worth it because here we actually got to see what I envision as mines. These were shafts cut through rock that were braced with timbers. The one above went only about 40 feet into the ground, but, according to a sign, the one below went nearly a half mile into the ground. No picture could really do it justice.
What was mined, you may ask? Kellie and I assumed that it was turquoise because Los Cerrillos is at the beginning of the Turquoise Trail. As it turns out, turquoise is mostly found on top of the ground after rains, snow melt, and other such erosion. The mines on Cerrillos Hill mostly produced galena and manganese, used in the smelting of iron. Some silver was found but not much, and very little turquoise was ever mined in these hills. Again, it was mostly found on top of the ground. Of course, we didn't see any, but I did pick up a few rocks just to make sure they weren't turquoise in disguise.
In the little town of Madrid that we went to after our hiking, we found out that only the local tribe (pueblo) is allowed to mine turquois anymore. I don't recall that anyone said the tribal mine was productive, but the local turquoise in the shop that we stopped at was very expensive.
Anyhow, on our third--and last day--we finally spent a whole morning hiking as we had planned to do every day all along. In the next day or two, I will finish this travelogue with a ton of pictures from one of the weirdest, most awesome, museums I have seen in my life. the MeowWolf Museum. Later!