Afternoon in Sierra County: Monticello, NM

We decided to take a Sunday jaunt to Chloride and Monticello, old ghost towns in Sierra County between the Gila and Truth or Consequences. I fell in love with this area and I want to share it with you, dear readers. You can read about our visit to Chloride the same day here.

I was inspired to visit Monticello, NM after seeing it featured on City of Dust. It is just as magical, quaint, and peaceful as I imagined.

From Cuchillo, we took Hwy 142 to Monticello, NM. The sunbaked sand is broken only byArab creosote bushes and mesquite for about 20 minutes, until you suddenly enter the Monticello Valley. There, the desert suddenly meets green farm fields.

The deepening valley is suddenly punctuated by huge cottonwoods whose shiny leaves whisper secrets in the breeze that you can’t quite understand. A few farm fields and some goats remind you that Monticello is, and always was, a farming town, fed by the Alamosa River.

Originally called Cañada Alamosa, this area was the site of the Southern Apache Agency in the 1870s. It was settled by Chief Cochise and a band of Chiricahua Apaches and had a population of nearly 500. The Apaches were eventually moved to the Ojo Caliente reservation near Dusty, and the town’s population rapidly declined.

Due to needing a one-word name for the postal system,  French immigrants Alphonse Bourguet and Aristide Bouguet decided to name it Monticello, after the New York town where they had once lived. Other people claim this name change was actually made by John Sullivan, one of the original postmasters of the town whose house and stage coach stop still stands in Monticello.

There seem to be a lot of people still living here and farming here; I would not call it a ghost town so much as a town where the past and the present collide. For every abandoned building, there is a gorgeous house with murals and roses next door.

It didn’t take us long to find the shell of the old Monticello School.

The Monticello School was built in 1935 by the Works Progress Adminstration, Teddy Roosevelt’s effort to employ millions of Americans in community building, public works, and the arts.

At some point, the Monticello School burned down. It is said that a student’s chemistry experiment exploded and caused the school’s demise, but there is no evidence that this is anything more than an urban legend. The adobe structure is still in incredible shape and you can barely tell it burned.

Now its classroom walls have fallen away and its floor has become a nursery bed for plants. Among the trees and weeds, you can see rusted metal desks and fallen roof rafters.

I also wanted to take pictures of the quaint old San Ignacio Catholic Church. However, a lot of people were crowded inside, apparently taking part in some function. The church appears to still be the town’s central pulse, proving that Monticello is very much still alive.

There is a local legend about the “Monticello Light.” This is a ball of hovering light that appears in the San Ignacio Church. Once this light supposedly followed a resident all the way home. I didn’t see the Monticello Light sadly, but the energy of this place is almost tangible in the air. I haven’t felt that electrified tingle in the air since I visited Arabella! My hair was standing on end most of the time I was in this area (in a good way!).

Returning home, I felt a strange sadness. I felt nostalgia for an era that I never lived through, and yearning for the vastness and stillness of this part of New Mexico. Someday, I will go back, maybe to stay.