CERRILLOS HILLS STATE PARK

(the following text is on the reverse)

Los Cerrillos is the name of a group of hills about twenty miles south-west of Santa Fe, that has recently become popular as a mining camp, and interesting historically, on account of old mines. (The name is from the Spanish, meaning eminences, and seems appropriately given, for in a view that includes also the Placer and Sandia Mountains they appear best ordinary hills. However, the comparison of their heights, which is from two hundred to one thousand feet above adjacent plains and valleys, they are of sufficient altitude from which to obtain long views of a surrounding country and a person will be well rewarded for the trouble of ascending any of Los Cerrillos, in a sight of varied New Mexico landscape.) The area of the group, including ridged and gulched foothills, is 25 or 30 square miles. The region is important from the fact of a surface showing of a mineral belt of veins or lodes of valuable ores; and it is an interesting tract because of ruined and filled up old Indian and Spanish mines, that are being reopened by prospectors and miners that have crowded into the district within a year. There are old mines of "Chalchihuitl", and silver. The former are said to have been worked by Indians before the discovery of America, and the latter were worked under Spanish authority about two hundred years ago. The reopenings disclose old passages, and the ancient tools, pottery, and rude implements with which the Aztec, Pueblo, or Spaniard delved for "underground treasure" long ago.

"Chalchihuitl", the Indian name for turquoise, is a mineral much prized by the Indians. There is no historical date of commencement to mine for it here in Los Cerrillos, though probably it was hunted for upon the surface long before the Spanish conquered and forced the natives to work it out of the rocks for the nobility of Europe to wear.

There are many filled and partly filled up old mines or workings for metal and the pretty colored stone, turquoise.

History accounts a revolt among the Indians, who, in the year 1680, threw off the yoke of Spanish authority, drove their old task-masters out of the courntry, and filled up the old mines that they had been compelled to work. Several years later the Indians were reconquered, and though their conquerors were complete masters of the country, otherwise there is no account of the natives being enslaved to work these mines again. Voluntarily the Indians come to the old dumps of the turquoise mines and work over the ground in a rude way to get bits of the mineral that may have escaped the notice of the miners in the past.

The old turquoise mine, now being opened by an enterprising person, is an immense work; especially so when a consideration is had of the rude facilities in use in the "booming times" of two hundred years ago. It is known that the Indians regard this mine, and the pretty blue pieces found there, with a kind of sacredness. And well they might if traditons are will founded -- and some things lately mined are corroborative -- of the 25 natives that were buried alive years ago in a slide of rocks upon them in the great shaft of turquoise hill. These turquoise mines are said to be the only known ones in America. Some of the most valuable samples now in the crown jewels of Spain, it is said, were taken from these old mines. Only one or two out of many in this district are being worked just now, other than such as the Indians yet do of scratching with hands or sticks amongst old dumps for bits of a bright color, which they prize as highly as their forefathers did.

There are several other shafts and "open cuts" mined evidently for gold, silver, and lead, probably by Spaniards, Mexicans, and later by Americans. These workings are curiously made, deep shafts showing no marks of drills or powder, yet in rocks hard enough for the modern miners to employ such aids. Stone hammers found in several old workings attest the rude ways in which work of mining was done long ago. Poles notched for steps, reaching from one rock stage to another in these unshapely shafts, were the ladder ways, and likely enough we see today in those old worn notches footprints of an enslaved Pueblo or peoned Mexican, who carried the ores out of these shafts up those ways with the burden upon their heads.

One year ago a new life started, Phoenixlike, from the ashes of the mineralogical and historical past of this region. To be sure there has been some mining and prospecting done here since the American occupation of the territory, yet, today the hundreds of valuable mining claims, and the numerous camps of organized mining district probably outnumber anything of a like enterprize in times gone by.

In 1680 a visitor to Los Cerrillos might have seen drudgery and servitude of mining for poor pay among those who broke the rocks with unwieldy stone hammers, wooden wedges, and levers. In 1880 he can see numerous new mines upon the sites of old ones, and elsewhere hear the pick blows, the scrape and ring of shovelful, the clinking hammer strokes on drills, and the booming of blasts deep in the fissured hills where work in hopeful earnestness is carried on. The prospectors and miners of this district are generally well pleased and reasonably expectant of rich returns for their outlays upon claims, as no silver district heretofore discovered discloses such a great number of true fissure veins in so limited an area of country. The ores of this district run from 15 to 1500 ounces of silver to the ton, with occasionally gold, from a trace to 6 or 8 ounces to the ton; and this from only what might properly be called surface workings, so that according to all experience heretofore in silver mining, with a sufficient depth, the mines of this district may reasonably be expected to surpass in richness anything ever before discovered.

(front) Among the Ancient and Interesting Scenery of New Mexico. Photographed and published at Santa Fe, N.M. by Bennett & Brown [1]