May 23, 2001
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Site Highlights:
Near I-25
2 decrepit towns
Easily accessible
Inhabited
Some restored
Many abandoned
Most on private land
Interesting history
| Go to first part of trip - Turquoise Trail Go to second part of trip - City of Santa Fe (State capital of NM) Go to third part of trip - The Old Town of Albuquerque |
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Trip route to Santa Fe
Route To San Antonio and San Pedro
San Antonio
Site Gallery - San Antonio
San Pedro
Site Gallery - San Pedro
For more information |
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| San Antonio, NM |
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San Antonio is a community that has literally changed with the times, having moved twice from its first location. The site was originally a mission founded in 1629. Eventually a small settlement grew up near the church. When the Santa Fe Railroad came through and sent a branch line off to the Carthage-Tokay coal mines, the town moved south a bit and clustered around the station. | |
| The tracks were torn up in the 1890s. Today the town's gravity has shifted toward U.S. 380 and I-25 with a post office, gas station, grocery store, and a bar-restaurant as the main buildings.
The buildings of the middle era are the ones ghost town enthusiasts will seek. South of present day San Antonio (0.7 miles) are approximately ten buildings and foundations, including the Crystal Palace with its excellent false front, the old post office (the storefront building with the peaked roof), and the San Antonio railroad station, standing on blocks off of the right-of-way. The post office faces a mere trace of a foundation that contains the makings of an American legend. It was at this location that A. H. Hilton, who came to San Antonio in the 1880s, opened a successful mercantile store, bank, and hotel. On Christmas Day, 1887, his son Conrad was born. Thirty-two years later Conrad Hilton, who started in San Antonio as a baggage carrier for his father's guests, bought his first hotel. A fire destroyed the A. H. Hilton Mercantile Store in the early 1940s, but the beautifully crafted wooden bar was saved and installed in the Owl Bar and Restaurant in 1945. The bar, a "registered cultural property" of the state of New Mexico (a plaque in the Owl testifies to the fact), was made by Brunswick Balke Collender Company, which was later to become more famous for making bowling balls. Incidentally, the Owl claims to have the best hamburgers in the world (almost true!). |
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| Site Gallery - San Antonio |
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| San Pedro, NM |
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San Pedro consists of over a dozen buildings including a two-room school, a long adobe residence, and an attractive adobe and wood church with steeple. San Pedro, settled principally by the Tefoya and Montoya families, was an old Spanish agricultural community along the Rio Grande, but the riverbed is dry now because canals have altered the natural course of the water. | |
| Grapes were a specialty of the area with wine "sent all the way to Kansas," according to a resident. Eventually some of the citizens became miners, commuting to the nearby coal towns of Tokay and Carthage.
The schoolhouse was W.P.A. - built in 1936. Ironically, it closed shortly thereafter. The San Pedro Catholic Church is partially hidden among some trees southwest of the school. The building next to it was a barbershop. The large adobe directly north of the church was the home of a prominent landowner. Visible from U.S. 380 is the sand swept and desolate San Pedro cemetery. |
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| Site Gallery - San Pedro |
| Town of San Pedro | ||
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| San Pedro Cemetery | ||
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| For More Information |
| Ghost Towns of New Mexico |
| Text source partially extracted from: Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of New Mexico, James E. Sherman, 1975 New Mexico's Best Ghost Towns, Philip Varney, 1999 |