Most of the land in this 1.3 square mile view is controlled by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, Bureau of Land Management, and with an agreement for joint-use
will be accessible from the Cerrillos Hills Historic Park, which is to the south.
Grand Central Mountain, also known as Cerro del Oso, fills most of this view. The
three-peak summit ranges from the east-southeast to the west-northwest, with the
westernmost summit the highest at 6,976 feet. [Cerro Bonanza tops out at 7,088
feet and is the loftiest of the Cerrillos Hills.]
To take advantage of a provision of the May 1872 Mining Law, by which the owners
of a tunnel beneath surface claims acquired half-interest in those same surface
claims, Henry M. Atkinson, on May 3, 1879, filed the Grand Central Tunnel mining
claim for himself and his partners, P.F.Warner & Mr.Beckroy.
Henry Atkinson was appointed the Surveyor General of New Mexico by President
Ulysses S. Grant, and served from March 1876 to July 1883, an era that included
the administration of Governor Samuel B. Axtell (also appointed by Grant), when
New Mexico famously reached its nadir of "corruption, fraud, mismanagement,
plots & murder". Atkinson and Warner were major participants in the Cerrillos
mines at the beginning of the boom, in 1879. In the 1880s, Henry M. Atkinson was
very active in several land and livestock companies, and managed to amass a
considerable, if not very respectable, fortune.
The entrance to the Grand Central Tunnel is at the east-central base of the
mountain, and nearly transects it in a northwesterly direction (at a right angle
to the surface lodes, which normally run southwest-to-northeast). Today, courtesy
of a sturdy bat grate provided by the New Mexico Mining & Minerals Division's
Abandoned Mine Land Bureau, the tunnel is accessible only to bats and other very
small critters.
The area of pale, disturbed land immediately north of the mountain is the site of
some minor turquoise mining done mostly before the turn of the twentieth century.
This website is maintained by the Cerrillos
Hills Park Coalition
and is dedicated to the creation, enhancement and stewardship
of an historical, recreational, and cultural open space in
the
Cerrillos Hills, Santa Fe County, New Mexico, USA
