A taste of Golden, San Pedro
6/7/2009
"L.D. Sugar of Golden is in town and shows some beautiful gold quartz specimens running very high in value, reported The Santa Fe New Mexican on Aug. 26, 1903. "These specimens are taken from the mineral property owned by Mr. Sugar in the San Pedro mining district in the southern part of this county."
The tone of such a notice would likely have been a bit more frenzied if it had appeared 60 years earlier. Gold was discovered in the Old Placers area in the Ortiz Mountains in 1828 (the resulting rush predating the famous California gold rush by two decades) and in the New Placers area in the San Pedro mountains in 1939. According to Prince's History of New Mexico, between $60,000 and $80,000 in gold was taken out of the Ortiz mines annually between the years 1832 and 1835.
Of the New Placers finds, Fayette Jones gives this description in the 1904 book New Mexico Mines and Minerals: "In the vicinity of Golden, which is the newest part of the placer district, much activity is manifested, and considerable success attends the efforts of modern mining. The gravels in this section average from twenty-five cents to one dollar per yard of material handled. Scarcity of water, as at the Old Placers, is a serious obstacle in working this ground."
A short history put together by residents for the 2001 San Pedro Neighborhood Community Plan relates that in 1839, the Mexican government awarded the San Pedro Land Grant to families in the area. This was intended to provide a buffer protecting the main settlements along the Rio Grande from raids by Plains Indians. By this time, there were two mining camps in the area. One, the Real de San Francisco, officially became known as Golden in 1879.
The neighboring hills have produced manganese, silver, garnet, copper, and of course gold.
Bill Henderson, who has lived in this area all of his 85 years, never yielded to gold fever. "No," he said. "I watched people die here in these mountains from it. I watched 'em lose their teeth. I watched 'em lose their families. I watched 'em die because of that passion."
At his family's Golden General Store, Henderson's daughter, Desiri Pielhau, pointed to an old two-pan balance that her grandfather, Ernest Riccon, often used to measure gold in the old days. Ernest and Lucy Riccon, Italian immigrants, took up residence in Golden in 1918. Ernest, who came from a mining background in Italy, worked the Cerrillos mines until he was injured, then purchased the store.
Henderson and his wife, Vera (the Riccons' youngest daughter), bought the store in 1962. They ran it as a grocery store and a trading post, trading with people from Santo Domingo and other area pueblos. Then in the late 1970s and early 1980s they phased out the groceries. Today the business specializes in Southwestern Indian pottery, jewelry, and rugs.
The store hasn't suffered overly in the current recession because of the sensible business practice established a long time ago by the owners.
"Both Vera and I were Depression people," Henderson said. "We were raised when times were tough. My parents never invested in anything, because it took everything to keep the family alive. Vera and I were married 60 years and we never paid a cent of interest in our lives."
Henderson's maternal side is French. "They were the ones that came in this area. In Alsace-Lorraine, they'd work the coal mines in the winter and farm in the summer, and that's what they did here. My great grandmother, the one who helped raise me, was a water carrier in the mines in Alsace when she was 7 years old."
Henderson mined copper in the big San Pedro Mine in 1949 and 1950. "The last big copper strike there was in the 1930s. That was Rascob [Incorporated]. Rascob sold the San Pedro Mine for $25,000 to a mining engineer named Williams, who was owner when I was there."
Henderson is a veritable encyclopedia of information about the mining and railroading history of Golden and San Pedro. He well remembers the tunnels and stopes of the vast San Pedro Mine. "I could take you in that mine and walk you all day and you would cross our path, but you would never follow it. It's big," he said.
Golden enjoyed a commercial boom during the mining heyday, but by the 1920s it had essentially died down to ghost-town status. Most of what is now the San Pedro neighborhood was rural ranchland until the 1960s, according to the community plan. Following a period of severe drought in the 1950s, local ranchers began selling off property for housing. Growth was modest until the 1990s, when there was a more dramatic increase in residential development.
San Pedro was established as a "contemporary community" in Santa Fe County's 1999 General Plan. In 2000, there were approximately 100 homes in the planning area. The community-plan ordinance disallows commercial development. "Observations by community members suggest that many residents prefer to work where they live, earning what they can with small home businesses," the plan says. "Such home businesses are common and a number of retirees also make the area their home, while other residents work in Albuquerque or Santa Fe." Both cities are about 30 miles away.
"Mining was the historical use in San Pedro, and there are still some issues," Santa Fe County planning director Robert Griego said in a recent interview. "There are folks out there, residents of the area, who have an interest in doing that. The ordinance prohibits mining, but there is BLM land [in the northern third of the planning area] that has historically been mined and we have no jurisdiction there. This is the contentious issue."
In the mid-1990s, residents in the San Pedro neighborhood opposed the reopening of a garnet mine on 435 acres in the San Pedro Mountains near Golden. The New Mexico Supreme Court denied a request by the San Pedro Mining Corp. to overturn a Santa Fe County ruling that the company had to apply for a new permit after a 3-year lapse in mining activity.
And three years ago, San Pedro residents were protesting a county approval of an individual's plan to stockpile, on his San Pedro land, sand and gravel mined on BLM land.
Water supply is another issue for those in the San Pedro area. "Water availability is irregular," the plan says, "with wells ranging from less than 200 feet deep to 700-foot dry holes."
Griego worries about the zoning established for the San Pedro planning area, which limits density to one dwelling unit per 160 acres, unless the proponent can prove adequate water supply to knock that down to one in 40 acres or even 2.5 acres.
"That could be a problem having 2.5-acre lots because we know from some of the residents that there are dry lots in the San Pedro area," Griego said.
The topic of water arose quickly in my conversation with Bill Henderson. Asked about Golden, he said, "The first thing we know about it is that the U.S. Cavalry came through here in 1823. They were panning for gold in the Arroyo Valverde right across the road — even in my lifetime there were seven live springs here. It's all brought up because of the Golden fault.
"Our water comes from Pennsylvania-age limestone at South Mountain, San Pedro Mountain, Big Tuerto and the Little Puerto. When I flew, I used to follow that fault clear to Canada."
He explained that he was a Navy carrier pilot during World War II, then served in the Reserves for some time afterward.
Henderson described a water-supply line, built by the railroad during the mining days, that extended from San Marcos Canyon to Cerrillos, Waldo, and on to Santo Domingo.
"They never did put a pipeline to Madrid, but we had four or five tank cars there and every day we had at least two trips made to Waldo to pick up coal cars and you brought that water up to Madrid," he said. "I used to fire the engine for my dad and we'd go down to Waldo. We'd take the empties there and they would fill them and we'd come back with the water for Madrid, for the buildings on main street."
Henderson remembers an old log cabin that used to stand on the Lone Mountain Cattle Ranch in Golden. The cabin's gone now, but the main house he says was brought from the World War II-era Japanese internment camp in Santa Fe. A previous owner of the ranch was Howell Gage, who was also the warden at the state penitentiary, and who often brought prisoners there to work.
Today, the Lone Mountain Cattle Company ranch is a breeding operation for Wagyu, a Japanese cattle breed "that look like Angus but are horned and lighter in the rump and legs," says a Lone Mountain brochure. Wagyu is extolled as "the world's most marbled, most tender and flavorful beef. The meat also has a higher percentage of mono-unsaturated (healthy) fat, and far lower cholesterol, than any other cattle breed."
The ranch raised Hereford, Angus, Charolais, Simmental and Brangus cattle during the 20-year ownership of Glen and Marion Lloyd. The current owners are Robert Estrin, a retired film editor (Badlands, A River Runs Through It), and Mary Lloyd Estrin, a photographer.
In 2004 the Estrins tasted their first American Kobe beef and a few months later enjoyed pure Wagyu at a Japanese restaurant in California. Until they experienced it for themselves, the $16/ounce price seemed preposterous. But by the end of 2005, they had purchased two fullblood Wagyu bulls and nine fullblood Wagyu cows for their 28,000-acre ranch in Golden.
A story in the February 2008 issue of Western Cowman says Bob Estrin studied the bloodlines of the great Japanese Wagyu sires and has applied "fancy" genetics — extensive use of artificial insemination and embryo transfer — to build the herd of fullblood Wagyu.
Ranch manager Stanley Hartman recalled, "We had about 80 cows when I came here in 2003." "Right now we have 47 Wagyu bulls and about 250 cows. We're trying to work back to the 300 cows we had before the drought."
Hartman grew up in the Texas panhandle, working cattle and farming corn, alfalfa, and wheat. He likes Wagyu. "If you ever eat it, you won't want anything else. It melts in your mouth and it's good for you, like eating salmon."
He also understands the financial advantage of this healthier beef. As word gets out, the demand for their stock promises to give them an edge in today's market, where the high costs of fuel, labor, insurance, and supplies have caused the demise of many traditional ranches.
Asked about sustainability, Hartman answered two ways: from the environmental and business perspectives. "We try to take care of the country because that's our livelihood. We're trying to get back to the cattle taking care of the ranch. Wagyu brings in more money. In Japan, you get a 16-ounce ribeye for about $165. Lone Mountain Cattle held its second production sale on April 18. Prices were down from a year ago, but they still sold 30 Wagyu bulls at an average price of $4,000 and 16 females at twice that.
Down the road a piece from the ranch is the oft-photographed San Francisco Church, which may date to the early 1800s. Mass is said on St. Francis' feast day, Oct. 4. There's a county fire station further toward Edgewood and on the way you pass the entrance to Camp Oro Quay, a division of Singing Hills Ministries, and a member of the Christian Camp & Conference Association. The camp opened as Singing Hills in the mid-1960s. With the most recent ownership shift in 2001, the property was named after a peak to the north: Oro Quay, Spanish for "fine gold."
To reach San Pedro, you head south from Golden on N.M. 14, then turn east on N.M. 344. That road winds up a steep hill nicknamed Heartbreak Hill (possibly by bicyclists). It's also an ancient transportation corridor, according to the 2007 report Cultural Resources in the San Pedro Mountains and Vicinity: A Summary by J. J. Brody, retired University of New Mexico professor of anthropology and art history.
Bill Henderson told me there are remnants of an ages-old Native American copper-smelting industry in the Cañon del Agua. And in his report Brody tells of "evidence of at least 10,000 years of more-or-less continuous human use of the area."
One of the photographs in the report shows a large stone kiln, once used to produce the charcoal needed in ore-smelting operations, that was found in the vicinity of the ruins of the abandoned 19th-century mining town of San Pedro. Another photo shows a Paleo-Indian spear point or knife thought to be 13,000 years old.