Ellen's Trip to New Mexico: 8/26/18 Silver City, New Mexico

About 15 miles east of Silver City you can't miss the enormous open pit copper mine. It's the 'mountains' you see in the distance without any vegetation.

The mine was started in 1909 and is still in operation today although it has had many different owners over time.

At one time zinc was mined and smelted here. In 1951 - 1952, Mexican-American workers struck for wage and benefit equality and women became instrumental in the struggle.

The documentary film, 'Salt of the Earth' was based on these events.

A huge tunnel crosses the road near the mine.

Tall barbed wire fences and No Trespassing signs surround the mine, but if you're interested in learning more about the mine, check out the videos on Google.

The sides of the mine are laced with terraces and rock slides. I didn't see any vegetation growing there.

It's hard to get a good idea of the size of the mine, but the road, trees and the car on the road, help get a sense of perspective.

See that brown water that's being contained by those concrete walls? That was once a clean stream running through what was once pristine landscape!

Can you see the really well camouflaged lizard on the tree trunk? It was really cool to watch him scurry up and down the trunk. He was about four inches long.

I didn't know that cicadas live here. This one was about 3 inches long. Its markings look different than "Illinois" cicadas I'm used to seeing, but the noise they make is the same!

Even though the population of Silver City is a little over 10,000, it has a very small town feel to it because downtown there were signs like this.

When I was driving from Bandelier National Monument to Silver City yesterday, I started to understand for the first time what the supervisor of the volunteers meant when she said Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is very remote. She meant that in order to get there, I would have to drive over 2,100 miles, the last of which are curvey, tortuous, lacking a center line and guard rail, two-lane road with bridges that are only one-lane!
Today I drove into downtown Silver City and walked around. What greeted me were colorful historic buildings like these and then I didn't feel quite so remote!

This sign graced many of the store front windows in downtown Silver City. As an artist, I value and understand its sentiment.

Since today is Sunday, hardly any locally-owned stores and restaurants were OPEN! Imagine that! I'm going to be driving to Gila Cliff Dwellings tomorrow, but I'm looking forward to returning to Silver City on my days off, so I can actually go into the shops.

An outdoor mural in downtown Silver City.

An outdoor fountain in downtown Silver City.

The entire side of this building was covered with photographs of the children who live in Silver City. The title of the mural was "The People's Art."

Look at this cool bicycle, or is it a bicycle? It had two wheels, a seat, 'handlebars, pedals and a chain. It was outside a locally owned bike shop.

The sun starts to set over Silver City.

More sunset.

If you look very carefully a little bit down and left of center, you can see a hummingbird watching the sunset too! I saw at least 6 hummingbirds while I was watching the sunset!