The town of Mogollon was long on my bucket list. I was thrilled to finally check it off. I even returned a second time to poke around a few years later, that’s how fascinating this little town is. Pronounced Muggy-ohn, Mogollon is a historic mining ghost town in the Gila. It has been preserved and many artisans now call it home.
Driving up to Mogollon is a stressful experience. The road is incredibly narrow and windy, down to one lane as it cuts through dramatic mountains. The area is also open-range, with both cattle and elk seemingly at every turn. I highly recommend going at a crawl up here.
Just as you enter the ghost town of Mogollon, you pass this little abandoned structure with a pine tree growing within. And someone decorated it! I thought it was such a perfect picture, a little Christmas miracle far from Christmastime! When I came again in June years later, the tree was not decorated but this perfect scene of the tree through the window was still there.
This is the ghost town of Mogollon. The tiny town clings to the narrow valley of some very rugged mountains. It is beautiful in a wild, raw way.
The town itself is a series of historic buildings and current houses built along the banks of Silver Creek. There are several abandoned buildings and a few operational ones, separated from the road by a deep canal for the creek and accessed by little bridges. There is even a restaurant, the Purple Onion, which is really cute but open only a few days a week. It was closed both times I went.
My favorite thing about Mogollon is the mining history. You can view old mining carts and equipment around the town.
There are also doors to old mines hidden in the mountains.
First time was mid-April and the air was crisp. Second time was summer, and it was temperate. The skies were clear and shockingly blue, with just a few puffball clouds, both times. I was surprised that there was no snow left in April; often in spring there will still be some unmelted snow in the shade in the Gila Wilderness.
So let’s talk about the history of Mogollon. It actually all started with a little town called Cooney on the Mineral Creek, down the mountains from Mogollon. James C. Cooney was a sergeant in the Army when he found a gold vein near Mineral Creek. He staked a claim in 1870 and began working it in 1875. He got rich fast and drew hundreds of miners to the area, thus establishing the little town of Cooney. He was killed in an Apache raid in 1883. His tomb can still be visited off McKean Road, coordinates 33.41303°N 108.83758°W.
One of the miners to stake a claim in Cooney’s region, John Eberle, built his cabin in what would become Mogollon in 1889. The town only grew from there, even absorbing the population from Cooney once Cooney’s gold reserves dried up. There was a jail, a store, a saloon, and even a school, which opened in 1892.
A stagecoach was created to move money and goods between Mogollon and Silver City. A man figured out he could rob it easily, so he did – 23 times! He was finally apprehended by Wells Fargo.
There is a tale that some stagecoach robbers stashed bags of gold and silver near Cooney. Sounds like this famous story about bank robbers stashing loot near Datil. Another stash of stagecoach loot is also supposedly hidden near Stein in Doubtful Canyon on the Arizona line. Yet another is supposedly stashed in the Malpais after the Pine Springs Stagecoach robbery. Whether or not these stories are true is impossible to prove as these treasures are never found.
People still search for these treasures fruitlessly. If you ever go out to the Cooney area, you will understand why no one can find anything lost in the Gila. This is absolutely the best place in the world to hide a treasure! The land is unbelievably difficult and rugged, and it’s easy to get lost.
Marshall Bulle and Larry Ditzer believe that the Lost Adams Diggings is somewhat near this area, in the Black Range. Others think it is closer to Datil. There is no doubt that there is a lot more gold in the Black Range than the Datil Mountains.
By 1909, Mogollon had swelled to 2,000 people and had 300 students in its school. There were two hotels, two brothels, five saloons, two restaurants, four stores, and other services like a bakery and theater. The stagecoach ran to and from Silver City twice a day, running over 80 miles with passengers, goods, gold, silver, and copper. Mogollon was a happening place.
In fact, by 1914, Mogollon was larger than Silver City; Silver City was merely a waypoint on the railway for moving precious metals. That is difficult to believe now!
The Mogollon Mining District contained 20 mines, which produced 40% of New Mexico’s metals in 1914. Over 18 million ounces of silver were mined from the Mogollon Mountains. The gold, silver, and copper mined from here is estimated to have been worth about $20 million dollars.
Despite its wealth, the town itself was ill-fated. Multiple floods from the Silver Creek wiped out the town, and citizens always rebuilt it. Multiple forest fires also destroyed the town, and again, citizens rebuilt with stone, mud daub, and adobe in an effort to fireproof it. The few buildings that remain are remarkable testaments of human grit in the face of natural disaster. Nature always wins in the end, though, Spanish flu wiped out a huge portion of the population in 1918. You can find many of them buried in the Mogollon Cemetery, including children and babies.
By the 1930s, the grade of the gold ore being produced in the Mogollon mines started to plummet, as did profits. The town’s population dwindled. When the Fanny Mill closed, so did most of the mines, as it was no longer profitable to ship their metal elsewhere for process milling. Mogollon was a ghost town by 1940. During WWII, the mines were reopened to retrieve metals for the war effort, but they soon closed again.
In 1973, a Hollywood Western was filmed here. The movie is called My Name is Nobody. It starred Henry Fonda and Terrence Mill. The set included a fake general store and saloon. You can still view the remains of the store in Mogollon today but the saloon was torn down for a house. Things decay here, but not as fast as one would expect, making one feel like time is frozen in this narrow valley.
Mogollon was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1987. That aided in preservation efforts. While it is currently a ghost town, Mogollon does have about 12 residents. Twelve! That means living residents, of course; something about this town makes my hair stand on end and the Silver Creek Inn is allegedly really haunted! So I’m sure there are plenty of residents of the paranormal variety.
A company called Summa is actually re-commencing mining operations in Mogollon after finding high-grade ore in the area. Honestly, I think this is a travesty. Mining is notoriously harmful for the environment and the Gila need to be protected.
https://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/NM/Catron/state.html