Stepping back in time in Mogollon

Ivan Summers

I was running about six months late for my biannual trek to our

little ghost camp retreat in Mogollon, in the mountains of southwest

New Mexico. Maybe I was lucky to be running at all.

I’d opted to go the long way, from our house in Corona del Mar via

Northern Arizona, through a blank place on my American Automobile

Assn. road map called the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument.

I’d never heard of it, either. It’s about as remote as things get in

the lower 48.

A network of dirt tracks, steep rock-strewn trails that appear on

a map as roads, are a challenge to a decent 4x4. It had to be a

cartographer’s nightmare. We hadn’t seen a living human in

two-and-a-half days, the cellphone had revolted, and our coolers were

perilously low on life’s real essentials.

A journey to Chiapas, Mexico, hip replacement No. 3, a lengthy

rehab and other obligations that must have had priority had conspired

to keep me out of Catron County and Mogollon for nearly 13 months.

Our ghost town sits at 6,900 feet. The snow flies in winter. The

sun is absent for months on our side of the canyon. Snowdrifts

remain. Rock foundations settle, doors sag, pipes freeze, paint

peels, athletic deer leap the gate and munch our roses. Enough

reasons to be there? Well, my wife, who’s ambivalent about the place,

buys into it every time.

I was approaching Catron County from the north. I usually take the

fast way: Phoenix, Globe, Safford and the mountain adventure to Mule

Creek. Normally a nonstop mini-marathon of 640 miles.

You might need my kind of mind-set to want to go to Catron at all.

Some of my urban friends question if there is a there there.

Catron butts up to the Arizona line -- 6,850 square miles -- equal

to five Rhode Islands and to greater Los Angeles.

Fifty miles east on highway 60, past the village of Pie Town, over

a 7,800-foot forested summit and just beyond the collection of

buildings called Datil is an area known as the Plains of San

Augustin. It’s sage-covered and billiard-table flat. At the northeast

end of this expanse sits the Very Large Array. The array is a

collection of huge radio telescopes -- great, tilted ears pointed

heavenward, hoping to catch transmissions from other worlds. It

appears occult and expensive. Take a self-guided tour and some

pictures. Nobody will believe you if you don’t have some.

Cabins replace tents, and rock foundations still dot the

mountainsides. Stone and adobe structures appear in the canyon,

housing hotels, mercantile and a bank -- all signs of permanence.

Fruit trees put down in the 1890s are still bearing. The deer that

make a regular diet of our roses also have a high regard for fallen

fruit.

More than 100 years ago, saloon and bawdy house proprietors, of

course, found their way to Mogollon. The Nefarious Bloated Goat

Saloon was an infamous distraction for thirsty miners.

The mines were disgorging huge sums. A school opened. Mercantile

prospered. In 1909, telephones appeared. Saloons throbbed with

revelry. Boot Hill already had more than a few residents.

Into this wealth-driven frenzy stepped J.P. Holland in the summer

of 1914. A barber from Philadelphia with an eye and a flair for

business and opportunity, he acquired the 5,000-square-foot adobe

that had been known as the Mogollon House, built around 1885. He sold

everything imaginable in this bustling and oftentimes raucous town.

In the 1970s, tourists began to discover this old charmer of a

ghost camp -- Americans, Europeans, Japanese, even Australians with

enough discretionary cash to discover and explore the American West.

In the summer of 1980, another guy with verve, some imagination and

staying power rolled up to these now-decrepit surroundings.

Stan King of Seattle was an electrical engineer, a seafarer and a

master of several trades, an adventurer looking for new digs and a

new lifestyle. After some finagling, he bought the old Holland

building, replete with decaying walls, nonexistent plumbing, shot

roof and tales of ghostly happenings.

Stan told me 20 years ago that he thought an inn or bed and

breakfast would work here.

“Yeah, right, but who’s gonna fix that wreck of a building to make

it happen?” I said.

Poor judgment on my part. He was a one-man corps of engineers.

I was there a few months ago. It took 21 years, but he’s open for

business. It’s now the Silver Creek Inn, although out of sentiment,

the building is still called the J.P. Holland General Store.

A reclaimed Wolf range is the centerpiece of a kitchen any

innkeeper would die for. Spanish tourmaline graces the bathroom walls

and countertops. The upstairs great room has a splendid piano and a

modest library. I took the tour. Asked to use the bathroom. He has

flush toilets! In Mogollon, this is a supreme engineering feat. The

commode seat, I was told, was carved right here, probably rosewood,

and is a memorable sit-down.

The piano is elegant. The beds are as good as beds get, and the

covers are period quilts. The rooms? Ghost town splendor with a

splash of late Victorian, and it’s the only game in town.

Our two houses are about a nine-iron up the road from the Holland

General Store, now the Silver Creek Inn. In 1966, my dad and mom,

tooling through this part of the West, stumbled in here and bought a

cabin for back taxes, $1,400. Two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and

outhouse. We later acquired the one next door. We’ve retained period

stuff: oil lamps in case electricity fails, original 1905 doors and

latches and a dresser set and matching bed from 1900, the year my dad

was born.

Change of any kind, if at all, occurs slowly in Catron County. For

us, perhaps a strong reason for being there. There are 2,800 people,

up 300 from 1880. Fashion, architecture and attitudes seem rooted in

the 1890s.

Well, maybe not totally. A few semesters ago, a new guy arrived on

the scene. A medical man of some sort who keeps buying up property.

The old store-gallery across the road from my house changed hands for

$250,000. That kind of change I can handle.

I might get there for a week or so this winter -- if the outhouse

heater is working. You’re supposed to twist your clock up an hour for

these parts. I like to turn mine back -- about 100 years.

* IVAN SUMMERS is a resident of Corona del Mar.