Golden, Madrid, Cerrillos NM

Sunday we rested, did laundry, and were mostly lazy. We have to do that once in a while. It's easy to get up every day and take a drive or visit museums, but after a few days of that we get cranky and need to wind down.

Monday we took a side trip south on SR-14, also called the Turquoise Trail. From Santa Fe to I-40 is about 40 miles; the plan was to go as far as I-40 and turn around and come back. We did that, passing through all the small towns along the way. Coming back, though, we stopped in Madrid and visited most of the gift shops on the main drag, which is almost all there is anyway.

In 2000 we were in Albuquerque for the balloon fiesta. It rained most of the time, and on one of those rainy days we decided to go to Santa Fe. Rather than take the freeway, we went up SR-14. We didn't stop in Madrid, partly because of the rain, but it really looked like a hang out for hippies and other assorted quirky people so, in those days, we weren't tempted to investigate. Of course we were wrong. Monday we stopped for about an hour and discovered that the hippies are mostly normal people and no one seems quirkier than any where else. Some are very good artists and a couple of the galleries display art as good or better than shops in Santa Fe. The art is collected from all over the area so it isn't entirely local. But, much to my surprise, the level of artistic quality is quite high, in line with what I consider good art of course .  And the residents really don't seem to be hippies or refugees from normal society.

Main drag in Madrid

A typical store front.

More store fronts.

This is an old house on the main street, SR-14; it seems to be inhabited.

No longer seems to be in business.

Let me backtrack a bit. Before you get to Madrid,  traveling north, is the semi ghost town of Golden. The area was inhabited by Native Americans and Spaniards many years before American settlers arrived. And really boomed when gold was discovered in 1825; Golden was the first gold rush west of the Mississippi river.

I stopped because of the old church just off the highway. It's the San Francisco Catholic Church, built around 1830.

One of most photographed churches in New Mexico.

For more information on Golden go to : http://www.legendsofamerica.com/NM-Golden.html

Lets see, where was I. We went through Golden, took a few pics of the old church, stopped in Madrid, moved on and made our last stop in Cerrillos.

Cerrillos means little hills and was established in 1870's. It was known as a wild and wooly mining town and still has some of the original buildings, old western storefronts and adobe buildings. There are hitching posts, an old grocery, western bar, old church, ancient cottonwood trees, dirt streets, and railroad tracks; the railroad tracks are modern.

I've lifted the following from: http://www.turquoisetrail.org/cerrillos.htm

The area turquoise and lead deposits were critical to the jewelry and pottery making of the prehistoric Indians and these mines influenced Spanish settlement. The Cerrillos mining district is one of the oldest and most marked of the Old Spanish Mineral Developments in the Southwest. In fact, turquoise mined here found its way to the crown jewels of Spain. Cerrillos was full of hearty miners who extracted gold, silver, lead, zinc and turquoise from area mines at its peak in the 1880’s. The miners supported the town’s 21 saloons and four hotels. While it was once seriously considered as the capitol of New Mexico, today Cerrillos, with its dirt streets, is a picturesque reminder of the Old West. There are shops, a Turquoise mining museum, a petting zoo, hiking and biking trails. The town has been the setting for several motion pictures. Saint Joseph’s church and shrine is the only location for mass between San Antonito and Santa Fe.

We stopped  in Cerrillos because of the old church, Saint Joseph's, which was built in 1922.

St Joeph's.

Old store fronts in Cerrillos.

The movie, Young Guns was filmed here.

The owner of Santa Fe skies  RV park  told me that some 21 movies have been made in New Mexico this year alone, and perhaps as many as 7 in Cerrillos. I can see why. Making a western in Cerrillos would be relatively easy, not too many sets to build and it really hasn't changed much since the olden days.

After the stop in Cerrillos, we headed home to the RV park. Another fine day of wandering around the countryside.