Silver City
Event: The yearly Blues Festival features three days of music in the grassy Gough Park every Memorial Day Weekend. For more information, check out http://www.mimbresarts.org/bluesfestival.html
Grant County CourthouseWPA in Silver City
The art deco-style Grant County Courthouse, at the top of Broadway, is a WPA building and it also houses two WPA murals: “Chino Mines” and “The Round Up,” both painted by Theodore Van Soelen. Graham Gymnasium at Western New Mexico University is also a WPA building and the rock walls and walkway around the “Big Ditch” were also constructed with WPA funds (see history section below).
Courthouse frontHistory
Cliff dwellers, Apache warriors, mountain men, Hispanic miners, Buffalo Soldiers, outlaws and lawmen, Chinese farmers, Jewish merchants, ranchers and health seekers have all been drawn to this part of New Mexico and called Silver City home. In modern times Silver City has predominantly been a mining town, beginning with silver mining in the 1800s. The nation’s silver industry crashed in 1893 and the region became a draw for tuberculosis sufferers. Large-scale copper mining began in 1910 and remains a foundation of the local economy. Recovery has evolved from hand picking native copper to the solvent extract and electrolytic processing of low-grade ores. The town has survived a series of floods which transformed its Main Street into the “Big Ditch” pictured at right.
Big ditchThe Silver City Museum has a wonderful collection of artifacts and furnishings covering all the periods of the area’s history. And a great gift shop.
The Mimbres Valley is a historic farming area dating to the time of the ancient Mimbres Culture, from 1000 C. E. The Mimbreños are generally recognized as a subdivision of a larger group of Southwestern agricultural people whom archaeologists call “Mogollon.” They lived in villages from the area that is now Deming, north to the Mimbres Mountains and the Black Range. They are probably best known for creating the very distinctive Mimbres painted pottery. The Western New Mexico University Museum houses the largest permanent display of Mimbres pottery and culture in the world. For more information: www.wnmu.edu/univ/museum or 505.538.6386.
For more history take a little side trip (six miles) over the Continental Divide to the village of Pinos Altos (see The Buckhorn on the Shopping & Dining page). The Pinos Altos Museum is housed in an 1860s log cabin that once served as the first school house in Grant County. It houses a great collection of mining artifacts and historic memorabilia.
Contact:
Frank Milan, Manager
Silver City MainStreet Project
PO Box 4068
Silver City, New Mexico 88062
Phone: 575.534.1700
