There are many ways to get where you want to go in life. Sometimes that statement is metaphorical, perhaps alluding to life's journey between childhood and adulthood and happiness and whatever else there is in life. Sometimes it is literal, meaning there are actually multiple ways to get from point A to point B on our planet. This post deals with the latter, although I'm sure it touches a little bit on the former.
The most direct drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe in New Mexico takes about an hour, depending on how fast you think you can drive and not get pulled over on I-40. Seriously. It's a bit more than 60 miles and it really is a very quick trip on the interstate. It's efficient, it's effective, it's everything our country's interstate system was designed to be. But if you have an extra half hour to spare, there's a more scenic route which takes you over and around some of New Mexico's mountains, down old Route 66 and through some towns that time had once forgotten (literally). Sometimes you gotta take the scenic route in life. Sometimes it's worth it.
OK, maybe if you want to do it right, it's a quite a bit more than 30 minutes longer.
I am sure there are innumerable ways to get from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. But if you want to go fairly directly and definitely not on I-40, I'd suggest you take the way through the towns of Cedar Crest, Sandia Park, Golden, Madrid and Cerrillos. Otherwise known as the Turquoise Trail. And yes, and perhaps completely obviously, turquoise was once mined in the part of our country traversed by the road.
We had a plan (we ALWAYS have a plan) for the Turquoise Trail. An early start from Albuquerque, a couple of stops in Cedar Crest, Sandia Park and Golden and then onto what we believed would be the stars of this drive: Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid) and Cerrillos. I love a good plan.
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| The scenic route between ABQ and Santa Fe (top) and yes, there was mining happening. Maybe turquoise, maybe gold. |
So first of all here, let me say that COVID sucks. I know, we all know that. For whatever reason (and it's not always the same reason) most people on Earth probably believe that. But I'll also say that (and I'm completely assigning blame here without really researching who's responsible for my anger on this issue) the New Mexico Department of Transportation also sucks. And both of those things or agencies messed up our scenic trip from Albuquerque to Santa Fe.
The key to our timing everything just perfectly on the Turquoise Trail was spending a little time at the Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Site near Cedar Crest and then stopping at the legendary Henderson Store in Golden browsing and possibly buying some native American jewelry. That would get us late enough in the morning that everything in Madrid and Cerrillos that we wanted to see would be open when we got there. But the Archaeological Site was closed (it's on pueblo land; I assumed because Tijeras isn't one of the 19 New Mexican pueblos that the site would not be and I was wrong) because, well, you know...COVID. That messed all our timing up.
Before we got to the Tijeras Pueblo site, we had another stop to make: a rumble strip along the right side of the eastbound old Route 66 which, if driven over at precisely 45 miles per hour, would play "American The Beautiful" on our car's tires (or something like that). I have long had a drive all the way down Route 66 (or a reasonable facsimile of the Mother Road, anyway) on my wish list and have a number of sites like this to hit if I ever make the trip. Since we were going to be on the actual road anyway, this seemed like a can't miss opportunity.
However, it's not there anymore. Not really. Somebody or some thing (and here's where I blame NMDOT without really knowing if they are to blame) has paved over the musical rumble strip. Sure, I can see it being a dangerous situation with people like me driving down and then turning around and driving down a stretch of road in search of some small thrill but where's the whimsey in this world if people keep taking away this stuff?
I believe we did find the rumble strip and we did get a bit of a tune, but if it was more than 10 seconds long then my memory is severely faulty. Maybe they (I'm looking at you, NMDOT) left a little bit to give folks like me some sense of accomplishment.
Now, despite all those bumps in the road, our time on the Turquoise Trail was awesome. And it was all about Madrid and Cerrillos.
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| Llama, Cerrillos (top). Art galleries, Madrid (bottom). |
There are many, many old mining towns in the American southwest that are long since abandoned, victims of rapid boomtown growth and equally rapid abandonment when the seams disappeared, whatever those seams happened to be holding that men felt like they had to extract at all costs. New Mexico is littered with these sorts of places. Most of them are now ghost towns in various states of decay or restoration or somewhere in between. Madrid was one of those ghost towns about eighty-some years ago. Now it is not.
Madrid was established in 1869. A few decades earlier, coal had been found in the area in addition to some small gold deposits. The town didn't attract much attention until the 1880s when the Santa Fe Railroad got close enough to the town to make all sorts of get rich quick schemers decide to try their hand at coal and gold mining. Eventually, business became big enough for the Albuquerque and Cerrillos Coal Company to move in and take over. That lasted until about the 1950s when the whole thing collapsed and the town should have died and faded to nothingness.
Only it didn't. In the 1970s, artists started moving into the old buildings left behind in the town's heyday and things just kept building from there. 50 years on, Madrid is a major art center in New Mexico alongside enough other curiosities to keep most anyone interested.
I love neighborhoods with a significant mass of art galleries. It's like having a series of almost world-class art museums with no admission charge where you can actually take the things home if you like what's hanging on the wall enough. That is if you can fork over the money to make whatever you have fallen in love with yours. And it's even better when the what you fall in love with is actually affordable.
We didn't buy anything in Madrid, although we could have quite easily. But we did enjoy looking at what was on the walls of two or three of the galleries in town. We also enjoyed making our own kind of artwork at Connie's Photo Park, a series of plywood painted pictures with cutouts to accommodate your face (or more...like the cover picture of this post) in a variety of outrageous but totally New Mexico situations. The old Madrid jail, a cowboy riding a bison, an angry miner or just driving a classic car down old Route 66.
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| Madrid, NM. |
And then there's Cerrillos.
We made one stop in Cerrillos. At the Casa Grande Trading Post which also houses the Cerrillos Turquoise Mining Museum and the Cerrillos Petting Zoo. Hence the llama in the picture above. We did not feed the llama.
I'm not sure how exactly to put into words how amateur, cheesy, special and glorious the Casa Grande Trading Post (etc.) actually is. As the name suggests, it is part store ("Trading Post"), part museum (barely but sometimes yes, completely) and part zoo. I'm going to stop short of the "petting zoo" moniker because I'm not sure I want to pet llamas and all the birds are behind fencing with bars a small enough distance apart to preclude interaction between fowl and human almost completely. I guess if you have small enough fingers, but then again I might be worried about those being perceived as food.
They do have some of the most incredible looking chickens, though. Seriously. These are some gorgeous birds.
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Inside the Trading Post, you will find just about anything and everything you could possibly hope to find to make life easier in the late 1800s or early 1900s. I'm not entirely joking. OK, so maybe there are some pieces of jewelry that you might actually want to wear today (there are...for real) next to the hunks of turquoise, antique foreign money and other curiosities. And yes, you can take all this home from the Trading Post although good luck trading anything but 21st century American cash for whatever you've picked out.
Walk to the back of the Trading Post (after paying your $5 admission) and you'll find the Cerrillos Turquoise Mining Museum. Honestly, there's not a lot of difference between what's in the Trading Post vs. what's in the Museum, although I guess really nothing is for sale in the Museum. There are some objects in the Museum that seem to have nothing to do with turquoise mining (the gold panner exhibit shown above comes to mind here) or even in some cases even mining of any sort (Big Mouth Billy Bass or map of the world with stamps on it, anyone?).
The best thing about the Casa Grande Trading Post (etc.) is that in walking around the place, there are some absolute gems. I don't mean precious rocks. I mean relics of history that those of us in 2021 or 2022 cannot maybe even conceive of them even existing in the first place. The building is peppered with these items and the opportunity to discover them is worth spending 20 or 30 minutes walking around the place and yes, even plunking down a five spot to make it all the way into the museum in the back.
What am I talking about here? How about multiple displays detailing the history and variants of barbed wire. Didn't know there was more than one kind? There are definitely more than 30 or 40 different types in both the Trading Post and the Museum. Not into barbed wire? Maybe you'll find the mining company tokens worth a look. These were issued as currency as part of the miners' wages for payment at the company store, where I'm sure the companies indentured their workers through overpriced merchandise as effectively as former plantation owners did with freed slaves as sharecroppers following the Civil War.
No takers there? I am confident there is something for everyone to marvel at in this store. And really...when do we really do a lot of marveling these days? Any place that offers that has to be worth a few minutes of time. One of my favorite items in the store for sale was the railroad date nails which were used to install railroad ties. The nails were stamped with the last two digits of the year they were hammered into place. I guess so you can keep track of how old your nails are. I thought about bringing back a "68" nail (I was born in 1968) but then thought better of it. I mean, what would I really do with it?
I'm not being the least bit facetious in my words about the Casa Grande Trading Post. I really mean that it's both full of junk AND has some of the most amazing artifacts I've seen in years. I am confident that most reasonably curious people will wander into the place and find something completely fascinating. These places don't exist in too many spots in the United States. They are worth stopping at when the opportunity is there. But...only if you take the scenic route when you are traveling between Albuquerque and Santa Fe
I loved our time on the Turquoise Trail but I also feel we have unfinished business there. We missed the Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Trail and Henderson Store completely and we didn't buy any art in Madrid (probably because we bought enough in Albuquerque and Santa Fe before we got to the Trail). We did find the best green chile cheeseburger of the trip (an essential New Mexico meal) at the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid and we'd definitely I think go back there on a return trip down the Turquoise Trail.
And who's kidding whom...it would be difficult to not stop at the Casa Grande. It has to be different every time out.
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| Mine Shaft Tavern, Madrid. Best green chile cheeseburger of the trip. |
How We Did It
Under normal (non-COVID) circumstances, the Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Site is open dawn to dusk. There's apparently a museum on site which is allegedly open on weekends, but probably not until this pandemic goes away.
The truly excellent Casa Grande Trading Post / Cerrillos Turquoise Mining Museum / Cerrillos Petting Zoo is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. "most days and weekends" according to their website. We got there on a weekday right at 10 in the morning and found the place closed. But hanging around for five minutes or so was enough time to wait for the place to open up. And it's soooo worth it.
Connie's Photo Park in Madrid is open 24 hours a day, although I imagine it's way more fun in the light than in the dark. There's a collection box to the right of the entrance to the Park. Why wouldn't you chip in a couple of bucks or maybe a little bit more for the memories you'll walk away from this place with.
The Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid is open daily at 11:30 a.m. Most days they close up at 8 p.m. but on Fridays and Saturdays they cut loose and add another hour to closing time. There's a stage in the place that I'm sure hasn't been used regularly for a couple of years. I'd go back here any time. Their food was awesome and they had a great tap list (I highly recommend Second Street Brewery's Porter if they have it). The graffiti in the bathroom made me feel at home also. No more to be said on that last point but it's comforting to find a place that clearly leans the way I do. Maybe one day we can see some music here on a future trip. And there will be future trips if I have any say in it.
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