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Big changes altered the landscape and the future of the Territory dramatically in the 1880's. Railroad companies, power companies, metals and steel producers explored for fuel and energy rather than gold and silver. Where dirt roads led, permanent rail beds followed. Earth moved into standardized grades, inscribing new contours on the Southern Rockies.
Whole villages moved with the railroad; Isleta Pueblo Indians traveled with
the AT& SF on the line west from Albuquerque to California. The monumental
scale of the construction was matched by the rapid progression from survey to
completion. About 80% of the common carrier mileage was built in two
periods: 1878-1882 and 1898-1910. This doesn't include short haul
freight lines that ran the last few, and often treacherous, miles to the mines.
(see
The Repeal of the Sherman Act in 1893 [more:
on the web ] sent silver prices into free fall. And the ensuing financial panic had a devastating effect on prospecting enterprises in New Mexico. In the aftermath, new ventures began extracting coal. According to Paige Christiansen, "By the end of the century, this relatively unromantic, little prospected, industrial mineral became the leading product of New Mexico mining;…" Learn more about coal use from prehistory to the presentThe economies of scale gained ascendance. Profits came from large volumes of cheap natural resources like these:
| Extracted before 1880 | Extracted after 1880 | ||||||
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Gold Silver Lead Zinc Turquoise Copper (for coinage) |
Coal, Oil and Gas
Copper, Uranium, Zinc, Lead, Tantalum
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Each of these "new" industries created a system of mining, processing and distribution. In isolated areas they built company towns, or combined several operations at one location. Mining operations varied, but they all required large doses of venture capital and an even bigger labor pool just to lift the first load of ore from the ground.
In New Mexico, temporary shacks turned into company towns with hundreds of families supporting a real "24-7" (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) schedule. These people belonged to the first generation of the new American workforce. They built the structures that housed the formidable array of equipment they ran, and maintained, and repaired on the spot.
C
Headframes, C loading chutes, C tipples, C flumes, C trestles, C ore concentrators and washers, C stamp mills, C coke ovens, C generating plants, C machine shops, C forgesA generous offering of these feature attractions are still showing at locations throughout the State.
Other Sites on New Mexico History:
Compton's Encyclopedia has a site offers history and lots of facts about New Mexico http://www.comptons.com/encyclopedia/ARTICLES/0125/01309184_A.html
The New Mexico School of Mines has always been an integral part of the history of the State. Learn about the school and a lot more from an excellent source: College on the Rio Grande: The Story of A Small School was written in 1989, New Mexico Tech's centennial year, by Paige W. Christiansen, emeritus professor of history at New Mexico Tech. It was published in a limited edition and is now out of print. http://www.nmt.edu/mainpage/paige/chap2.html
Here's an entertaining and proudly opinionated web site on New Mexico history: http://www.rr.gmcs.k12.nm.us/dNMhist.htm
Travel Route 66 with the WPA; what they saw and wrote in the 1940 "Guide to the Colorful State http://members.aol.com/hsauertieg/rt66/wpa_nm.htm
Sights and history of the Santa Fe Trail: http://history.cc.ukans.edu/heritage/research/sft/index.html You can also find out about how a Conestoga Wagon was built
References......
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