More on The Ruins

While rummaging through my collection of National Geographics after writing the previous post on "Ruins", I came across the September 1925 issue which featured  reporting on the NatGeo's archeological dig at Pueblo Bonito, and there was a rather startling color photo of the ruins as they were during the 1923 season, after quite a bit of archeology had gone on but before there had been much or any restoration.

This is a picture taken around 1940 (or as late as 1960; the caption wasn't clear) taken from approximately the same viewpoint. The picture below it was taken recently:

Ruins

House in "La Tijera" c. 1937 -- probably similar to our own place before it was remodeled in the 1950's

Every now and then, I post something about the ruins that are found all over New Mexico, dating back to the legendary Anasazi period and right up to today. Buildings and ranches are being abandoned all the time. Some of them will eventually be reclaimed, but most will melt back into the ground, only to be dug up again one day -- perhaps -- to be studied by scholars of the future, puzzled by whatever this or that ruin used to be.

Our house here in New Mexico, of course, was an abandoned ruin when we found it and made it our own. It may well have repeatedly fallen into ruin, been abandoned, and then restored. Houses all along our street and others nearby have been abandoned, some for years, before somebody comes along and puts them back in shape for rental or resale or tears them down and leaves the land bare for the next generation to come along and build something else. Or not. As the case may be.

The Abandoned Cement Plant on Hwy 41

The most massive abandoned structure around here is the cement plant that looms huge and seemingly whole along what once was the rail line (that itself was abandoned half a century ago or more). While the cement plant looks operative, it has actually been abandoned for decades. There are abandoned diners, trading posts, motels and motor courts, gas stations and so on, all along the remnant portion of Route 66 that we travel frequently into Albuquerque.  On the way to Santa Fe, practically the whole town of Stanley is abandoned and melting back into the earth. The former town of Otto is gone; there is a lone Ionosphere Communications Experiment Station -- yes, ICE Station Otto (it may be abandoned, too, but we're not entirely sure) -- to mark where it was. Some of these abandoned places will probably be allowed to weather away to nothing, whereas others are being reclaimed for re-use or as in the case of the Red Top diner in Edgewood (that used to be in Magdalena), some are now being used solely as "attractions," decorative elements for some other enterprise (in the case of Edgewood, the Red Top is now fronting for an RV Park.)