Framedlight

  By the time we left Lake Valley the rain was coming down hard. We drove north to Hillsboro, a sister mining town to Lake Valley, which had managed to survive as Hillsboro had mined for gold as well as silver. But in the 1890's the population downturned until it reached 1200 people in 1907. There was a devastating flood in 1914 and then the town was hit really hard by Spanish Flu in 1918. The Great Depression in the 1930's saw the end of mining here. It is now a very small, quite arty community with a general store and a post office.  In 1884 Hillsboro became the county seat for Sierra County but lost this to the town of Hot Springs, now Truth and Consequences, in 1936. The people of Hillsboro were extremely upset and kept seizing records and documents from Hot Springs and bringing them back to Hillsboro. Eventually the citizens of Hot Springs got fed up and dismantled the Hillsboro courthouse brick by brick and used it to build their own. A shame because the Hillsboro courtho

  As we left Hatch the skies started to cloud over and the temperature dropped (maybe the lack of chilies). We drove east along Highway 26 and then turned north onto 27, a tiny road which led through to Hillsboro via an old mining ghost town, Lake Valley. As we turned by the habitation of Nutt there was a lake at the side of the road which had numerous sandhill cranes resting by the waters edge. In the autumn they migrate south for the winter. We passed wind farms and the remains of the old railroad, built to bring ore down from Lake Valley. The stormy light was absolutely stunning as we drove through fields of cattle and, strangely oryx which have naturalised in the neighbourhood, presumably escapees from a collection. They are a bit tiny in the picture. A little further and past some rugged hills we approached Lake Valley.