Our last day in Santa Fe, June 28
We successfully sent my folks off on their return flight to Minneapolis and then decided to drive the Turquoise Trail one last time.
This is the road that I traveled daily during the Scottish Rite scenery evaluation during 2002. It passes through some lovey old mining towns that included Golden, Madrid and Cerrillos. The area is a popular place for film and television production with past shows including The Nine Lives of Effego Baca (1959); Bearcats (1971); Thomasine & Bushrod (1974); Convoy (1978); Outrageous Fortune (1987); Young Guns (1988); Sparks, The Price of Passion (1990); John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998); Hi Lo Country (1998); Three Wise Guys (2005); The Hitcher (2007); Beer for my Horses (2008); Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden (2012); 2 Guns (2012); We’re the Millers (2012) and Edge (2014).
The Cerrillos Mining Museum and Petting Zoo has always one of our favorite spots. During 2002-2005, this was one of our daughter’s favorite stops to feed alpacas, goats and chickens. Today, our son was able to experience it for the first time and loved it just as much as Isabelle.
The owner of the mine, Todd Brown, transforms three types of local turquoise into jewelry – white, blue and the popular Cerrillos green. We have always left with some lovely stone that has been transformed into a earrings, a necklace, or money clip. Brown is also a Scottish Rite Mason who happened to be in the store today and not working in the mine; it was nice to catch up as we first met each other during the scenery restoration. His museum also has some very interesting Masonic artifacts that belonged to James Patrick McNulty (1847-1933), mine supervisor of the American Turquoise Company, once located five miles north of Cerrillos.
McNulty supervised up to fifteen men, six days a week on Turquoise Hill. In the early boom years, McNulty and the American Turquoise Company supplied most of the gem quality turquoise on the American market. Another place that that we enjoy to see is the Opera House, once used as a Masonic Lodge.
After the Turquoise trail, we ventured east to Glorieta and Pecos.
It was at Glorieta Pass where a Civil War battle occurred 1862. Known as the “Gettysburg of the West,” Union forces stopped the Confederate strategy to seize the Southwest’s major supply base at Fort Union, with Colorado and California next in line if they were successful. The Texas vanguard captured Santa Fe on March 10, but after two days of battle at Glorieta Pass, US Troops and Colorado Volunteers burned poorly guarded Confederate supply wagons, causing the Rebels to retreat from New Mexico within two weeks. We knew about this scenic site as Andrew heard the story on his way to the reopening of Union Lodge near Wagon Mound. He was invited by Dan Irick last week. Irick is the President of the Santa Fe Scottish Rite Temple Building Foundation who handled many of the administrative duties for the book. He is also a Past Grand Master for the State of New Mexico and Dinky the Shrine clown. I believe that Dan’s retelling of the story may have been a bit more animated than my own account.
Sadly, the Pecos National Forest was also closed due to extreme fire warnings, limiting our ability to travel up into the mountains where the air was much cooler. Instead, we returned to Santa Fe, had a lovely dinner at a local New Mexican restaurant called Maria’s, and went to see a movie – “Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom.” Dinner was better than the movie. Returning to the Scottish Rite, I signed forty more books for the Valley and started packing.
Long, long, long day. We depart early and head to the Scottish Rite in Salina, Kansas – now the property of the Salina Innovation Foundation.
To be continued…
