Yeah – lots of trains last night…
Our first stop was the New Mexico Mining Museum. The museum
was interesting, with the history of uranium mining in the area. Uranium was
mined there from 1950s to the mid-70s. When the 3 mile island nuclear accident
happened the bottom fell out of the market and mining stopped. Apparently
though only one of the mining companies pulled out and all the others are
sitting on their leases waiting for the market to recover enough to make it
worth restarting operations.
We saw the trains that hauled the ore along the tunnels, the various drilling rigs and loading buckets, the vertical shafts that provided the enormous amount of ventilation required to counteract the radiation, the lunch room and machinery shop. It was so interesting to see the mine, preserved as if the crews had simply gone off the job and could walk back in any minute and start work again.
We drove out of Grants along The Ancient Way, heading west
towards Arizona and our first stop was Bandera Volcano and Ice Cave. We did two
self-guided walks, one to the edge of the Bandera crater and the other to the
Ice Cave. The volcano is a cinder cone, and the eruptions in the area ceased
about 10,000 years ago. The lava flow is very evident as fields of tumbled
black pumice stone with very little vegetation and the cone itself is made
almost entirely of small pumice stones.
The track is well maintained, but we
still had to be careful to stay well clear of the edges as once you got sliding
on the slopes you wouldn’t stop! The crater was very steep and about 800 feet
down. It is gradually filling in with erosion and rock slides.
The Ice Cave was interesting too. It is in a collapsed lava
tube and the bottom of the cave is 20 feet thick with ice. The ice formed about
3400 years ago and the temperature in the cave is slightly below freezing all
year round, so the ice continues to build up. Up until the 1940’s the ice was
harvested, but is now naturally growing deeper again. We have seen an ice cave
before, also in a collapsed lava tube, but that one was formed by the action of
air being sucked through the cave and causing the freezing temperatures,
whereas this one the cave mouth is open to the outside air and it is just a
deep pocket of cold air that keeps the ice forming. The Pueblo people of the
area called it the Winter Lake. It looks pretty unappealing now because of algae
in the ice.
Our next stop on the trip was El Morro – the Headland. The
rocks jut out of the surrounding plains as a marker to the travellers over the
ages. At the base of El Morro is a naturally occurring pool of water, which is
the only water for 30 miles in every direction, so it was a natural campsite
for the many travellers. As they rested, they carved their names in to the
sandstone, so it became known as Inscription Rock. The earliest carvings are
from the native people – petroglyphs of the local animals.
In 1605, the first
Governor of New Mexico, Don Juan de Onate, left a dated inscription on the
rock, but it was not his first visit – he had passed their in 1598. The last
Spanish inscription is dated 1774.
In 1848 a treaty ceded vast parts of Mexico
to the United States, paving the way for the American travellers, who began to
add their inscriptions from then on. In the 1930s the decision was made to
erase any inscriptions dated after 1906, as they no longer represented the
enormous challenges of travelling to El Morro and were considered simply
graffiti.
Leaving El Morro, we continued west into Arizona, then
turned north for a long drive to Canyon de Chelly. We drove along a mesa top
for quite a distance with amazing valley views. We found out when we arrived
that the valley is called Beautiful Valley. We concur.
We arrived late and checked into the State Park for 2
nights.
