Dry Cimarron Scenic Byway-Page 2

Dry Cimarron Scenic Byway

Sugarite

To continue your adventure to Sugarite Canyon State Park, take NM 72 in Raton, east across 1-25 for about 5 miles until you reach a junction and turn left on NM Highway 526 traveling north 1.7 miles to Sugarite Park. At the park entrance are the remains of the Sugarite Coal Camp, including several old buildings and rock foundations.

Settled in 1909, the coal-mining town boasted up to 1,000 residents, a school, a theater, the Blossburg Mercantile Company, the Bell Telephone Company, an opera house, a physician, a justice of the peace and a music teacher. Miners relied on mules to pull carts laden with coal out from the depths of the Sugarite Mines. In 1941, it was announced the mines would be closed and the population scattered, homes were moved to Raton and Sugarite was left virtually deserted. In 1944, the post office closed its doors forever.

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Old Building tumbling down high on a mountain in Sugarite Canyon State Park, July, 2003, Kathy Weiser

A glimpse at the life of the miners can be scene if you take a scenic hike through the ruins. Continue into Sugarite Canyon State Park to Lake Maloya and Lake Alice to explore more ruins of abandoned coal camps, fishing, or hike the park's numerous trails where you can enjoy the wildlife.

Yankee

Return to NM Highway 72 and continue east about five miles to the Yankee area. When settlers first moved west along the trails to this area, the grass was so tall and thick that at times it was necessary to navigate with a compass. On a knoll to the south there used to be a mansion built by Yankee entrepreneur A.D. Ensight after the turn of the century. Before the settlement of Yankee was formed, farmers from nearby Johnson Mesa dug coal on the slopes of the mesa for their own personal use. In 1904, the Chicorica Coal Company, backed by a Wall Street brokerage firm and the Santa Fe Railroad, promoted by the entrepreneur A. D. Ensign, developed the coal beds on Johnson and Barela mesas. As the Yankee mines continued to develop, frame houses were built and the population grew to several thousand residents by 1907 featuring a school and numerous businesses. The mansion that ensign built was a beautiful two story home that featured solid mahogany, velvet furniture, oriental rugs, and marble statues. But the Ensign estate changed hands several times and by 1923 its treasures had been sold and the mansion fell into a state of disrepair. All traces of Yankee have vanished and the site is now occupied by a cattle ranch.

Johnson Mesa

Highway 72 twists and turns as the road climbs Johnson Mesa. Along the 8 mile drive you can often see deer, turkey, and bear on this climb. Suddenly the road turns and you will find yourself on an enormous plain. On top of this high, grassy plateau, once sat the small community of Bell, a progressive farming settlement, whose residents established the first telephone connections in New Mexico. Bell, built two thousand feet above the valley floor, looked out upon the vast valley below.

In the early 1880s, Marion Bell, a railroad construction worker, led a group of fellow workers and miners to the mesa top, trying to find a safer and more predictable occupation. Several families tried their hand at farming, some miners trying to juggle both occupations. For those ambitious fellows working at both farming and mining, carrier pigeons were dispatched from Blossburg to fly up to the mesa to notify the miners that they were needed down in the Raton Valley.

At one time there was a family living on every 160 acres of land and the mesa boasted five schools, a church and many recreational facilities for family life. Times were often hard for the mesa people where winters were often severe and the entire mesa was snowbound. After World War I, people began leaving the mesa for better opportunities and in 1933 Bell closed its post office.

Today a few families make their home on the mesa during the summer but no one lives there during the winter. Still standing is about a dozen deserted farm buildings, the St. John Methodist Episcopal Church and the cemetery.

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Johnson Mesa, New Mexico, Kathy Weiser,

July, 2003

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