Cocoposts

Silver City is good. It’s the kind of place that reminds you of other places you remember fondly, more for size and seeming out of another era than for a busy scene. As an early and current mining town, the proverbial Wheel of Fortune has rolled over this place again and again. The copper mines can be seen from space. The area’s history is intriguing and unique.

There are lots of books about The Black Range and The Gila, and the Apaches and earlier native groups like the Mimbres. People have been coming, going, displacing, absorbing, and dominating each other from prehistory to present.

Mountains are turned upside down for copper. Rebellion over cows and public lands. I needed to see more.

Things come around. Sometimes better. A flood in 1895 washed out Silver City’s Main Street leaving a 55 foot deep trench. So main street became the next street over and the trench is a linear park. 

Mimbres pottery is a beautiful reminder of prehistory. Western New Mexico University has a huge collection. I stumbled into a docent who gave me a tour and overview, including the history of the 1917 Arts and Crafts building where the museum is housed. 

The copper mines could be a set piece for “KAOS” with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus sitting in a giant excavator. Zoom in from space on one of the miles-wide pockmarks. They loom up and over the horizon as funny-color fake mountains. A friendly cowboy in the brew pub said when dust from blasting settles on cars it eats away the paint, “and that can’t be good.” He knows dust, being from Animas, Arizona, near where dust storms frequently close I-10.

I stayed at the Murray Hotel, a downtown classic. It is solid, simple, nice. 

I like to pretend I’m like the Hotel Inspector. That reality show follows famed hotelier  Alex Politizzi around Britain as she visits and critiques hotels and B and Bs. I don’t have her background, experience, heritage or chops, but I know good vibes and clean sheets when I feel and see them. 

I also see that cool Mondrian inspired mural on the back wall and smell the sweet little bakery downstairs around the corner.