The Silicon Valley of the Turn of the Last Century

When he learned I was breezing through southwest Ohio, my friend Steve suggested - strongly - that I check out the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton.  So I did.

Over the past several months I've become something of a museum maven, and you may have figured out that I've rarely encountered a museum I didn't like.  Okay, I've never encountered a museum that I didn't like at least a little.  Still, the USAF museum is completely over the top.  It is awesome.  Steve said I "could do it in an hour but you really want more time" and that is a major understatement.  I spent two hours there and that was with a partial eye on the clock because I had a six hour drive to Nashville ahead of me.

Where to begin?  Well, the museum begins with a history of human flight, but I won't go back that far here.  The earliest U.S. military application of lighter-than-air equipment was in the Civil War, where aeronauts, led by Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, used hydrogen balloons for reconnaissance under the auspices of the U.S. Army.  This ended in 1863 when Lowe quit because of some unspecified problems with the Army.  The Confederates tried but couldn't produce hydrogen in the field and by 1863 or so had other problems anyway.

The Wright Brothers (and others) developed heavier-than-air equipment, which was both harder and held more promise (more on that in a minute) and the military returned to paying attention to airplanes at the turn of the twentieth century.  On August 1, 1907, the Army Signal Corps created an Aeronautical Division tasked with matters of  "ballooning, air machines and kindred subjects."

You may recall when I was in New Mexico that I drove through Columbus, where Pancho Villa's attack in 1916 resulted in the Punitive Expedition by General Pershing.  What the historical marker in New Mexico failed to mention that this was the first tactical use of airplanes by the U.S. military.  Pershing's forces were supplemented by the First Aero Squadron from Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio which consisted of eleven officers, 84 enlisted men and one civilian mechanic flying eight Curtiss JN3 airplanes.  The planes didn't work too well - within a month only two of them were still in service, and their replacements weren't such great shakes either - and the whole undertaking was ultimately unsuccessful.  I was talking with a retired Air Force guy named John, a docent at the museum, who pointed out that these planes were extremely loud and very slow, so you could hear them coming far enough in advance that their reconnaissance value was limited.

Okay, dedicated reader, I am sorry to say that I have lost the rest of this blog post - which was, you'll have to take my word for it - very entertaining and informative and filled with pictures and links and all sorts of important things.  Seriously - since I delete my recorded notes after I enter them (AND SAVE THEM) into Blogger, I've lost a lot of the information and so will not be able to replicate what I've done AND THAT BLOGGER LOST.  Plus, to be honest, I'd really rather spend the morning with my aunt and uncle than recreating work I've already done.  And so, let me leave you with some pictures and the strict instructions to go to Dayton and see not only the USAF Museum but also the National Historic Sites for the Wright Brothers.

Vittles, the Berlin Airlift Dog, who never needed to use his parachute

The plane that dropped the "Fat Man" atomic bomb on Nagasaki

These missiles are about three stories high

So many planes, so little time

The USAF Museum also includes a very powerful Holocaust exhibit, along with an "on the lighter side" Bob Hope exhibit.  John said that they are raising money to build a new wing (my pun, please pardon) to house presidential aircraft.  There are some planes and a reconstructed control tower outdoors.

Huffman Prairie, where the Wright Brothers developed the first practical aircraft that could stay aloft for more than a few seconds and land without damage.  This was the world's first airport and became the basis for today's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center in downtown Dayton.  Paul Laurence Dunbar, a friend of the Wrights, was a poet/author and was the first African-American writer to become a national celebrity.  Julia, one of the park rangers, explained that they combined the Wrights and Dunbar to show how Dayton was "the Silicon Valley of the turn of the century" with both technological and artistic innovation.  The Wrights owned a print shop (upstairs from their bicycle shop, which is in the foreground of this picture) and printed a newspaper for Dunbar, a high school classmate of Wilbur's.

Dedicated reader, I apologize for the technical difficulties encountered in the writing of this post.  Just take my word for it - you will not be disappointed if you spend a day in Dayton immersed in aviation history.

The Earth is Flat

More than one person, when I mentioned that I planned to take I-70 from Indianapolis into Ohio, told me that it was a boring drive.  When I said that I was used to boring, since I was familiar with I-80 in Iowa, to a person my friends said, "yeah, but I-70 doesn't even have the hills they have in Iowa."  It was eerie, really, that so many people seemed to have memorized the same speech.  Kinda like how the cops in movies always figure out that co-conspirators are lying when they all say exactly the same thing.  But I digress.

Anywho, they were right, to a point.

I received my first dose of "it's not satire if it's real" this morning as I drove by Mount Comfort, Indiana which is near Indianapolis.  I scanned the landscape thoroughly, but saw no mountain.  I didn't even see a slight rise in the earth.  I mean, Fort Wayne seems like Kentucky compared to Mount Comfort.  I wanted to tell the folks in Mount Comfort that if the first part of your name is a lie, then it causes everyone to doubt the second part as well.  It's a credibility thing.  But I didn't see anyone who looked interested in hearing that helpful bit of advice, so I drove on.

And it stayed flat a long time.  Pancake flat.  Fort Stockton flat.  The only thing that made it seem less flat than Texas is that there are trees to frame the horizon.

Fortunately for me, and for the reputation of this part of the midwest, I consulted the Roadfood book and saw that I could get a fried bologna sandwich in Waldo, Ohio.  This caused me to plan to get off I-70 about 50 miles west of Columbus.  I actually got off sooner because I misread a sign to some Wright Brothers attractions (they were from Dayton, just south of I-70) and went the wrong direction.  There's some irony in that, somehow.

Regardless, I quickly got over my disappointment when I realized that I was just about at Highway 40, the National Road.  The National Road was created by Congress in 1806 and was the first federally funded highway construction project.  That is really about the coolest thing I've heard in days.  Honestly.  Hey, this is my blog and we've already established that I am a highway nerd.

Plus on the way to Highway 40, I drove up Snyder Road which was a pretty impressive hill.  Take that, haters.

I drove through Springfield and then Urbana.  Urbana is in Champaign County which is slightly weird because there's a Champaign/Urbana in Illinois, too.  Somebody please investigate this and report back by posting a comment.  Urbana is a cute little town with a movie theater and some nice homes and an attractive bunch of old shops.

There's another little town called Milford Center which is near some pretty rivers, and has a park with an odd little building that turns out to be a replica of the original county courthouse.

The sign never really says whether this is a lifesize replica.  It looks quite a bit like a giant dollhouse, but there's no accounting for history.  After all, people were smaller back then.

I continued on to Marysville where I expected to see a Honda factory but saw a Nestle plant instead.  (I didn't stop to see whether they were giving out samples, a real blunder on my part).  There was also a sign along a road that said "Litter Awareness Area."  Awareness is the first step toward solving a problem, and given the amount of litter that was in the ditch along the road, I'm glad they've at least taken that first step.  The next step might be to send out some Boy Scouts or non-violent offenders or just a couple of people with big trash bags to start picking stuff up.  Only a suggestion, Marysville.  On the positive side, they do have a nice courthouse.

And a chicken.  Not a Hatch-sized chicken, but not too shabby for us understated midwesterners and it's next to a big rock.

It took a while - although it was a pretty drive, with occasional hills and all - but I finally found Where's Waldo.  Yeah, sorry, I just couldn't resist.

Waldo, Ohio, is home to 338 people and the world famous bologna sandwich at G&R Tavern.

This is not the kind of fried bologna sandwich you make at home with help from Oscar Mayer.  G&R slices their bologna uber thick (I've been wanting to say "uber" for a couple of days).  It's delicious, and their fried pickles are also yummy.

What I probably should have had for lunch was a salad with vinegar (no oil) dressing and an apple for dessert.  Instead I had this:

Ah well, when will I be in Waldo again?

Near Waldo is the Delaware Wilderness Area, which was the second lake I got to drive over today.  The first was Geist Reservoir outside of Noblesville.  You know, near Mount Comfort.  If you're going to have flat, you might as well have a lake.  And a fried bologna sandwich.

The Unpredictable Nature of Adventure

Sorry for the radio silence this past week, dedicated reader.  I've been in Fort Wayne.  The original purpose of the visit had been just a visit but when he found out I was going to be in town, the Chairman of the Allen County Democratic Party recruited me to be a "secret surprise roaster" for a roast of Mayor Henry that the UAW was holding to raise money for its scholarship fund.  That event was Friday so I tried - with moderate but not complete success - to fly under the radar in order to maintain some hint of a surprise.  Of course "moderate but not complete success" is probably as good as anything gets, isn't it?

The event went well and I showed everyone a picture of the Hatch Municipal Building which seemed to impress them greatly.

No doubt that Fort Wayne, like every city, would be a better place if it had a three-story statue of Uncle Sam in front of its municipal building - preferably holding its major product in his giant white-gloved hand.  In Fort Wayne I think Sam would be holding an auto part or a military radio.  Hopefully the Mayor will assign some sort of task force to begin this important project.

Anyway, it's been a great visit.  This morning I am going to church and then headed south to Noblesville to see my sister and her family.

And next?  Well, the Driveabout has taken an unexpected turn:  I have a job interview in Ohio next week.  A colleague there called me about a month ago and although I'm not yet looking for a job this would be a great opportunity.  There are only a few gigs I would consider ending the Driveabout early for, and this is one of them.  Of course, this wouldn't end the Larger Adventure which is how I've started seeing the rest of my life.  It just would be a new chapter.

So please wish me luck and if it works out I'll give you details later.

Banking is Happy and Goodwell is, Well, Not as Good

The Oklahoma panhandle is only 34 miles from north to south, and yet it's the most expensive state I've visited.

You undoubtedly see where this is going.  Let me give you another hint:  I have made a new friend on the trip, an Officer Ramirez who has a car with a lot of lights on the top.

But first, north Texas.

Did you know that there is a bank in Amarillo called the Happy State Bank? (If the name wasn't homey enough, their website features a Recipe of the Month.  January's is Sweet Potato Casserole which looks delicious.  Check it out today before they change to February's.  I may e-mail PNC and suggest that they start such a feature.)

And did you know that the largest known gas field in the world is one mile east of Highway 87 north of Amarillo?  It transmits gas to Denver and Chicago and all sorts of places in between.  That's enough to make a person happy, isn't it?

We saw a cowboy riding along north of Amarillo, too - he had chaps and everything, riding his horse through a field.  I couldn't tell whether he was happy.

One thing that wouldn't make a person happy is the desert sandstorm which we drove through for about eight miles.  But it wasn't too bad for us:  it's like driving through fog, and we were in a car with the windows rolled up.  Probably didn't make my cowboy friend very happy, although I guess cowboys would just view such things stoically.  At least, that's how they view them in the movies.

You drive through several little towns on the road from Amarillo to Liberal, Kansas, which is Highway 54 in Oklahoma.  One of them is Guymon, home of Marla's restaurant where the advertised special is Green Chili Chicken Fried Steak.  Perhaps Marla is from Hatch.  We didn't stop.

Just north of Guymon there's a wide spot in the road that consists of a convenience store and only one other thing.  Unfortunately for me, that thing is a police car equipped with radar and occupied by one Officer Ramirez.

The speeding ticket would have been less frustrating if I hadn't spent the last two months truly being conscious of my speed and either following the speed limit or only exceeding it slightly.  Unfortunately, Aunt Susie and I were chatting and listening to various news programs on satellite radio (topic of the day:  immigration reform) and I just stopped paying attention for a few minutes.  The convenience store apparently constitutes a town with a speed limit of 40 m.p.h.  I was going, um, somewhat north of that.  Officer Ramirez was very polite and kindly wrote it for a number in between 40 and what might have been my actual speed which meant my debt to the Great State of Oklahoma, Town of Goodwell, is only $144.  (I was going to pay it online this morning but there's no way I'm paying a "convenience fee" of $9.95.  They can wait on my finding a stamp.)

Lesson learned, and the rest of the day I used my cruise control a lot more.

When the day began, I had thought that the highlight of the day would be Dorothy's House and the Land of Oz in Liberal, Kansas.  It wasn't.

 

That's it, and I don't think that I need to go into great detail why I was slightly disappointed.

In fact, the Sinclair station a couple of blocks away was more interesting, featuring as it did a Work of Art.

(I am mostly including that picture for my friend Ken who was fascinated to learn that Sinclair stations still exist.  And Ken, somehow it may seem appropriate to you that this dinosaur is located in a town called Liberal.)

We had originally planned to stop in Wichita Tuesday night but called an audible and decided to have dinner with Aunt Carlene who lives south of Topeka in a little town called Overbrook.  That meant that we had a full day of driving so we didn't stop in Meade, Kansas, home of the Dalton Gang Hideout, a fairly large local history museum, and a gun shop.  Looking at the website post-facto, there is apparently a long tunnel which would have been cool to see.  Perhaps I'll go back for Dalton Days sometime.

Although it was disappointing to miss the Dalton Hideout, I'm glad we made the choice we did and saw Aunt Carlene.  She is my grandmother's sister, the lone survivor of that generation of Swartzes (my mom's mom's side of the family), and is an incredibly spry 92.  Really sharp and nice lady, and makes the best brownies I've ever had.  Her daughter, Eualee, joined us for dinner at a bar which is the only eating establishment in Overbrook, but that serves really good food (isn't that often the case?).  Eualee and Aunt Susie are first cousins and we got to hear some funny stories about them as girls.  Discretion prevents me from sharing them here.

Although Overbrook is only about 20 minutes from Topeka, and Topeka only three hours from Omaha, we decided to stay in Topeka Tuesday night because it was drizzling - with the likelihood of freezing, and we were in no great rush.

And yes, it froze.

Wednesday we drove the only unpleasant leg of the trip, through snow and ice-covered roads, along with some rude and reckless drivers (most of whom were in semi's), but we made it safe and sound to Omaha.  My brother's basement was waiting for me, and it felt like home.

NOTE TO MY BROTHER AND HIS WIFE:  I know it's YOUR home, not mine.  Your hospitality has been gracious and overwhelming but don't worry.  I'll be leaving Monday!

Seems Like There's Always Something to Blog About

Today Cousin Sherry and I made an on-time departure from Silver City for the 90-minute drive to Hatch, New Mexico, Chile Capital of the World.  How do I know that this is the Chile Capital of the World?  Because their street sweeping machine said so on its door:

So now you know.

On the way to Hatch we saw a small windfarm, which is hardly notable anymore, but also a solar farm, which was cool.

Hatch has numerous stores dedicated to chiles - both red and green, although I didn't see any wreaths made from green chiles.

We met my aunt and uncle in Hatch because it's on I-25, north of Las Cruces which saves some travel time.  Plus it's home to Sparky's Barbecue which has great barbecue and the regional favorite, green chile cheeseburgers.  And fun decorations.

Aunt Susie and Uncle Terry said that Sparky's used to have a gigantic statue of a pig but that public outcry forced them to move the pig to the outskirts of town.  This is difficult to understand, but I guess the pig crossed the line and violated community standards.

 

Here I am, a bit fuzzy with Colonel Sanders, although I didn't see fried chicken on the menu.

 

And then we were off to Omaha.  I-25 goes north and follows, more or less, the path of the old Camino Real.  At Albuquerque, we turned east onto I-40 which follows, more or less, the path of the old Route 66.

 

One detour we did not take was to the Very Large Array, which is about an hour west of I-25.  You can't do it all.

 

We stopped in Tucumcari for dinner.  This is an old Route 66 town.  When I said something on Facebook about planning to stop there, a friend commented that she'd been through last year and that the town was "abandoned."  That's the right word, although it is not entirely empty.  When we stopped for gas Sherry asked a lady where we could get a bite and she directed us to Del's, which had a great soup and salad bar.  Plus a steer on its sign.

 

There's something about small towns in New Mexico that seems to encourage restaurateurs to put large animal and human figures on their properties (as long as they aren't pigs, of course).  Across the street from Del's was a cute little building that didn't have any large figures on it.

 

 

Then we headed east to Amarillo.  On the way I saw a remarkable salute to multi-culturalism:  a billboard for Dhillon's Truck Stop near San Jon, where the restaurant is called Taste of India.  No large cow figures here.

 

The other notable thing about northeast New Mexico and the Texas panhandle is that the scenery is 100% Old Western Movie Set.  I expected John Wayne to ride up over the horizon, although Sherry said that she hoped he wouldn't.

 

Tonight Aunt Susie, Sherry and I entertained ourselves in Amarillo by watching MSNBC and checking the weather.  Oh, and blogging.

 

Tomorrow we're aiming for Wichita.  See you then.

Wherein It Rains In New Mexico

One quickly acclimates, and I certainly have to the extent that when it rained in Silver City on Saturday I found it to be both odd and refreshing.

Friday was a gorgeous sunny day and I spent most of it in my cousin's courtyard reading Caro's "The Passage of Power."  The first 200 pages, about LBJ's abortive run for the Presidency in 1960 and his Vice Presidency, were painfully slow (as I think they were in real life) and took me about two weeks to get through.  The next section, about Kennedy's assassination and Johnson's first two weeks as President, was 300 pages and I didn't want to put it down.  It is fun to see pictures of LBJ's living room at the ranch when I was just there a couple of weeks ago.  (Caro doesn't have any pictures of his bathroom - but I do.)

Saturday Cousin Sherry and I drove into the Gila National Forest to see the Gila Cliff Dwellings.  It was raining in Silver City and up through the mountains, so the scenery was softened by fog and it was very beautiful.  These pictures don't do it justice.

The National Monument (the cliff dwellings themselves) was established by Teddy Roosevelt in 1907.  They had been documented by an archeologist named Adolph Bandelier in the 1880's and when he arrived had already been looted which makes determining the history even more difficult.  In the early 20th century, an ecologist/forester in the region, Aldo Leopold, encouraged the Forest Service to designated the Gila Wilderness in 1924 - the first designated wilderness area in the U.S.

Running through the forest is the Gila River.  This is the longest undammed stretch of river in the continental U.S.  Having seen the sand box which comprises the Rio Grande, it was nice to see actual running water.  The Gila River itself is quite impressive but I don't have a picture.  Here is a picture of the much smaller West Fork of the Gila, which you walk over to get to the cliff dwellings.

The rain that had been falling for the previous twelve hours contributed to the stream; normally my cousin says there is not as much water in this branch.

The cliff dwellings themselves are something of a mystery.  They are natural caves that were then modified and used by the Mogollon people from about 550 to 1300.  At that point, they were abandoned and no one seems to be quite sure why.  After a hundred years or so, the Apaches moved into the region but didn't appear to live in the cliffs.

It's a fascinating place to walk through - and conveniently enough, the rain let up while we were there.  The holes in the cliffs that look like eyes are a couple of the cliff dwellings, as seen from the path that you walk to reach them.

Here are what some of the caverns looked like.  You can see that there was considerable adobe work to build walls in some of the larger caverns.

 

 



The corncobs in this last picture apparently date back hundreds of years.

The National Park Service has some good pictures here.  It's hard to get good shots in some of the caverns with a camera phone so if you're interested in seeing more that's a good resource.  (Of course, a better plan is for you to visit here yourself - I highly recommend it.)

We went to a fun place for dinner Saturday night in Pinos Altos, a few minutes north of Silver City:  the Buckhorn Saloon and Opera House.  To call the outside of the building "nondescript" is to overstate its grandeur.  The inside, though, is really impressive.  Quite large and very Old West.  And the food was great, too.

The top picture is one of the rooms in the restaurant.  The bottom picture is of the Opera House (which is right next door); they were having a fundraiser for the Aldo Leopold School - sort of funny since I had just seen his name that morning in the Gila Forest.

Monday my aunt, cousin and I are headed northeast to Omaha.  On the way we plan to stop in Tucumcari, NM, which is apparently an old Route 66 stop with some interesting things to see.  It's a long way from here to Omaha (about 17 hours from the town north of Las Cruces where we'll pick up Aunt Susie) and we're planning to break it into three days so we can be a bit more leisurely.  Please think good thoughts about weather for us!

Town of Enchantment

Not to mix metaphors, but Silver City is a diamond in the rough - which from a traveller's perspective makes it even better than one in a polished setting, right?

Silver City sits, more or less, at the very southern end of the Rocky Mountains, and a little higher than Denver.  A cloudy day here consists of more sun than clouds, and there don't seem to be a lot of those kind of days although today is one.  The downtown is charming, the scenery beautiful, and the people are very friendly.

So, where to begin?  How about Boston Hill, where Cousin Sherry (pictured - and yes, I know we look a lot alike - it's called "genetics") and I walked around a little bit Wednesday morning.  Silver City is a mining town - both historically, and depending on copper prices, currently - and Boston Hill is an area where prospectors could dig their own mines years ago.  The result is a very rocky hill with a great view and a bunch of paths for walkers and runners.  It's very pretty, if not entirely pristine.

Then it's a five-minute drive downtown.  (Cousin Sherry maintains that nowhere in Silver City is more than seven minutes from anywhere else.)  Downtown consists of several blocks of older buildings - most are fixed up and occupied, but there are enough unrenovated that it doesn't feel like a theme park.  Lots of fun art galleries (painters, sculptors, jewelers, fabric) and good restaurants, along with some other boutiques and a biker bar.  There's an interesting mix of artist-hippy types and miner-rancher types in Silver City, along with the campus of Western New Mexico University which apparently has a new president who is working to build the school.

It was downtown that we wandered into Wild West Weaving and met Hosana.  She had been in the back of the shop working and offered to show us what she was doing.

A native New Mexican, Hosana learned weaving from Irvin Trujillo, a seventh generation weaver in Chimayo (north of Santa Fe).  Trujillo has work in the Smithsonian, and Hosana showed us the book to prove it.

She uses a lot of natural dyes, and showed us examples of onion skin (golden yellow), logwood (purple), matter root (orange), black walnut (tan) and a beetle called cochineal (red).  Then Hosana showed us a block of indigo dye and explained how the dye itself looks yellow-green but when you pull the yarn out of the liquid the air turns it blue.  "It's magical," she said, and I remembered that New Mexico is called, correctly, the Land of Enchantment. 

I've always been fascinated by spinning and weaving.  Meeting Hosana made me decide that wherever I end up, I'll have to find somebody who can teach me the craft.  I want to learn how to do this:

One thing about Silver City is that store hours are generally more like guidelines.  A couple of places were temporarily closed for one reason or another, and a couple weren't open yet although a less laidback person might have pointed out that it was, in fact, after 10 a.m.  But that's part of the charm, really.

And speaking of Wild West, that history is not in the distant past.  Seems that there was a brothel openly operating into the late 1960's by a woman who moved to Silver City to take care of her sister who had tuberculosis.  The Grant County Chamber of Commerce features a story about Madam Millie on its website and there's a residential facility for senior citizens named Millie's Assisted Living Center in her honor.  Truly.  Toto, we're not in Indiana anymore.

Here's the biker bar, by the way:

The "no club colors" sign is on the front door but I couldn't get that with the rest of the signage in the picture.  Perhaps appropriately, it's next to the old town hall.

There are a couple of good museums here, and you know how I'm a sucker for museums.

The WNMU Museum has an impressive collection of Mimbres pottery.  Located in Fleming Hall, one of the older buildings on campus (in the basement they've restored an old lecture hall), they prohibit photography which is unfortunate.  So you'll have to settle for a picture of the building itself.

The Mimbres people, a branch of the Mogollons, lived in southwestern New Mexico from 200 - 1140 A.D.  Their pottery typically features images of people and nature (rather than simply geometric patterns).  In 1978 excavation began on a ranch in Grant County (where Silver City is located), and the museum houses a number of artifacts from that collection.  (Some of these pieces are part of the Ike Smalley Collection.  Remember him?)  Sorry that you'll have to look at the museum website to see any pictures.  I am pretty unschooled about ancient southwestern pottery but there was one thing that interested me a bit:  a very simple red clay pot, originally filled with 412 tiny amethyst quartz crystals which were displayed next to the pot.

The WNMU Museum also covers more modern Grant County history including mining and early 20th century area artifacts such as dictaphones from the early 1900's and a 1936 Zenith radio.  There were a couple of interesting things.  First was a small exhibit in honor of Rosina Patterson, an area woman who died just shy of her 100th birthday in 1992 and who left a trust for WNMU.  They have a transcript of Rosina's diaries from 1905-1907 which includes some short reports on topics ranging from Longfellow to bees, and daily entries.  A couple of the shorter entries are "Allie, May and I went for a long walk" (July 16, year unspecified) and "Nothing doing (forgot)" (July 14).  There is remarkably little biographical information about Mrs. Patterson, but it's fun to page through her diary.

The second interesting exhibit - and by "interesting" I mean "curious" - is a miniature model of the Margarita passenger ship which is in a large glass case - it's about six feet long.  The Margarita (full sized version) was built in 1900.  I have no idea why this is in a museum which is several hundred miles from the nearest port.  While the Mimbres exhibit is documented within an inch of its life, they probably could find a couple of history students to do a bit more work on the rest of their collection.  Still, a good museum, particularly if you want to learn about southwestern pottery.

Then I headed back downtown to the Silver City Museum, which is in a beautiful old home.

A couple of doors down is the Museum Annex, which is where their research documents are located.  It's a beautiful building as well.

(Hey, I just learned how to edit photos on Google Plus!  This is enormous progress.)

I really enjoyed the Silver City Museum (see how I underlined "really enjoyed" for emphasis - just wanted to make sure you understood how much I liked it.)  The museum features some art exhibits (one of panoramic photography of the Gila River Valley and one from a Works Progress Administration painter about adobe) but you will not be surprised to learn what I liked the most was the history.  Unfortunately, they have the same "no photography" rule so you'll just have to use your imagination or look at their website for a couple of pictures.

One room is a discussion of how New Mexico became a state.  (Their centennial was last year.)  Apparently statehood was somewhat controversial which is why it took from 1848 (when the Mexican-American War ended) to 1912 for it to happen.  On the one hand, it wasn't completely evident to the folks back east that there was anything to commend the region.  You had people like General William Sherman who said, a few years after the Civil War, "The United States ought to declare war on Mexico and make it take back New Mexico."  (This is the same General Sherman who had turned his obvious tact and charm on the Confederate state of Georgia in 1864.)  On the other hand, within New Mexico there was disagreement as to the benefits of statehood.  At the time this discussion was occurring, the majority of New Mexicans were of Mexican and/or Spanish descent.  The Anglo minority generally favored being a territory, since that meant the U.S. government would appoint the territorial governor - who would presumably be a white guy.  The Hispanic majority generally supported statehood, since then there'd be democratically elected government and as a majority they would presumably be able to elect a native New Mexican.  (In the late 19th century, "native New Mexican" meant someone who was originally Mexican and most likely Hispanic.  The Indians weren't exactly a political force.)  The borders of the New Mexico Territory were established in the Compromise of 1850 (although the territory shrunk when the Colorado Territory was created in 1861); the State of New Mexico was authorized in 1910 and after a public election it became the 47th state on January 6, 1912.

The towns, as you know, predate all of this bickering.  An 1879 map shows Silver City at the end of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe rail line.

Not too far from Silver City, apparently, is a mine that used to be the town of Tyrone.  It was built in 1912 by Phelps Dodge as an elaborate company town.  When copper prices plunged a few years later, the city was abandoned and was later destroyed by Phelps Dodge when they decided it was more valuable as a strip mine than a ghost town.

In a room that is largely about the history of mining in the region, there's a mini-exhibit which is a strong argument for effective government safety regulation.  Seems that in the 1920's Albert and Frances Leach discovered torbernite southwest of Silver City.  Torbernite is an ore of radium, and the Leaches (the puns here are multiple but coincidental) developed a line of radioactive "health" products.  They sold beauty clay, toothpaste, and a product you could put in water for all sorts of medicinal purposes.  The business finally closed down during World War II.

Last but not least, they had an exhibit on a topic which made me feel right at home:  flooding. 

There used to be a Main Street in Silver City.  It is now called the Big Ditch and looks like this:

Yes, you're right:  there's more water in what used to be a street than there is in the Rio Grande.

Main Street was developed in the 1870's in an understandable if ill-fated desire to create a grid street pattern.  Unfortunately for a number of people, Main Street happened to be the natural drainage route for the area - a problem exacerbated by clearing natural vegetation and generally doing all sorts of things that increased erosion.  Although Silver City residents grew accustomed to terrible flooding in the 1870's and 1880's, they were not prepared for the massive floods of 1895 and 1902, during which time Mother Nature reclaimed her own and the street completely collapsed.  In places the ditch is 60 feet deep, and it is now shown as a waterway on Google Maps.

(Hey, now I've learned how to put an arrow on something!  This has been an incredibly enlightening afternoon.  Glad you could join me.)

Of course, there's a lot of nature around here and we'll be exploring that over the weekend.  As always, you can expect a full report but given my new skills you may also start to see cropped pictures with arrows.  I know:  it's exciting.  I can hardly wait.

In the meantime, put Silver City on your vacation "to go" list.  You won't be sorry.