NM’s Steins Ghost Town Re-Opens in May!

Steins Ghost Town, Hidalgo County, NM, Aug 19, 2006 — This stone cottage can be found right off I-10 at Steins Ghost Town, in Doubtful Canyon, Hidalgo County NM.

The last time I checked the buildings were closed due to theft, but it is slated to re-open in May 2012. This is after the former owner of the property, Larry Link, was murdered there June 7th.

The town is different than most in these parts in that instead of being a mining town it was a railroad town. It faced dangers of indians and train robbers. The most recent murder may have been from illegal immigrant activity in the area.

This is so interesting considering its colorful history. In frontier days, if the train was robbed it was then a race to the border. The outlaws would try to reach Mexico to escape prosecution from the authorities.

The town closed in 1944 when the train was no longer wanting to maintain the towns supply of water.

The town was a stop of the Butterfield Overland Stage. This 2,500 pound stagecoach would travel between St Louis and San Fransisco the southern route to avoid the winter snows. The 2,800 mile trip was made in 25 days, and sometimes less. The first priority was the mail, but passengers could sometimes make the trip for $200 and was allowed 25 lbs of luggage. Mark Twain wrote about travel on this stage in his book, “Roughing It.”

The route was at breakneck speed and they stopped only to change horses. The stage operated from 1858 to 1861. The route was abandoned at the outbreak of the Civil War. It was argued that this would be the deathblow to Arizona, but thankfully we survived. During the War, armies from both sides used the route and the Arizona territory was virtually cut off from outside communication. It wasn’t until the coming of the railroads in the 1870s and 1880s that regular communication was restored.

The 1800s weren’t exempt from robberies. A stage in 1861 was robbed of $28,000 of gold which is reportedly buried in the mountains in the area. On February 22, 1888 a group robbed a passenger train and high-tailed it to Mexico but were killed by Bob Paul in Mexico. One famous train robbery took place near the Stein’s Pass. There was a large shipment of gold on board, the train was stopped by a huge bon-fire placed on the tracks. When the train stopped they discovered they were looking into the barrels of guns. On February 26, 1895 bandits were able to stop the train, but disconnected the mail car instead of the express car so they went without the spoils. Another took place on December 9, 1897 when Will Carver, Black Jack and Sam Ketchum along with some others were able to stop the train, but were foiled in the robbery attempt after a gun battle.

Calendar for Tucson Area Photographers

— 030 —
____________________

I imported and tagged the photo with Photo Mechanic. I used Adobe Lightroom for adding color profiles, basic adjustments, and creating JPGs. I used Photomatix to tone-map the five images into an HDR image. I spruced-up the image using the Topaz plug-ins: Denoise, Detail, and Adjust, then touched-up the image using Adobe Photoshop.

PENTAX *ist DL
smc PENTAX-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL
ISO 400, ƒ8, 1/350