I grew up in the shadows of Red Hill, a dormant dome volcano between Quemado, NM and Springerville, AZ. It is part of the larger Quemado Volcanic Field, which features Zuni Salt Lake. The hill is in a crater but it still rises prominently 7264 feet above the surrounding mesa. Its sides are bright red from the pumice stones that indicate its once-violent geologic past.
The area is remote and desolate, but never boring. I remember finding arrowheads, pottery shards, and cool rocks everywhere, relics of an ancient history hidden under the empty spaces, the pigmy trees, and the sandstone formations that meet the eye. I felt like we were the first settlers in our valley, but the truth is that many, many people lived there before.
The area was home to many indigenous people over the centuries. Mostly the Anasazi, Zuni, and Acoma people lived here. They were nomadic, primarily subsisting on elk, venison, and buffalo. You can still find their pottery in the area. It is close to the Zuni reservation of today.
There is also an interesting treasure legend. In 1836, a man named Adams stumbled into Pinos Altos, bleeding from several arrows. As he died, he rambled about finding a cache of gold nuggets the side of hen’s eggs at the base of a red hill. Native Americans shot at him with arrows and he fled to Pinos Altos. But he died before he could give more details about this location. When people fetched his saddle bags, they found over $7000 of gold nuggets stuffed inside.
No one could find this mysterious red hill, but in the 1920s, a few people formed a township called Red Hill near Quemado. They drove cattle and sheep and dug reservoirs to help trap the rain that is so scarce in the region. Some of those reservoirs remain today for watering cattle. Supposedly someone found some gold at Red Hill’s base and this revived the legend. People who traveled to the area to prospect were disappointed to find the gold cache was dismally small, however, and the town soon died.
This story occurred 25 years before the legend of the Lost Adams Diggings. The gold prospector has the same name and the story is remarkably similar. Red Hill is also near the suspected area of Adams Diggings, which many think is somewhere in the Datil Mountains. I smell myth building!
Not much remains of Red Hill Township today. There is just a gem and mineral shop and a real estate office, which now sit abandoned beside Highway 60. Cattle ranches and small acreages dot the surrounding hills and valleys. The population in 2020 was 17.5 people per square mile. Do you ever wonder how they get half a person?
There may not be gold here. In fact, the area is not even conducive to the formation of gold. But I do think this area is rife with treasure. If you sit still enough on a calm afternoon, you can hear the ocean in the wind blowing through the pigmy tress and the rabbit’s foot grass. The scent of the earth, the pines, the sage, and the cedar will fill your nose. And if you sit there long enough, you might just find yourself transported way back in 1920, digging dirt tanks to catch the monsoon rain, struggling to raise a meager vegetable garden in the harsh sun, and driving a wagon to Quemado or Socorro for supplies. You might even find yourself going even further back, molding red clay pots between your knees and chipping arrowheads out of obsidian to kill an elk for dinner, surrounded by the love of your family.
Or, if you’re more of a visceral type, you might enjoy the elk hunting, horseback riding, rockhounding, and hiking in the seemingly endless acres of BLM here. At night, you can lose yourself stargazing with the mesmerizingly dark night skies. This is one of the few places where you can see the Milky Way now. Springerville has some damn good food and is right by Lyman Lake State Park. Going the other way on Highway 60, there is the famous Lightning Fields art installation near Quemado, and decent green chile cheeseburgers at the Largo Cafe and Motel. You might also enjoy visiting nearby Pie Town, where you can get some pie and talk to hikers from the Continental Divide. Or you can go hike in the lumpy, funky Sawtooth mountains and the enchantingly green Cibola National Forest. Go down Highway 60 and you will encounter the vast San Augustin Plains and the Very Large Array, where Contact with Jodie Foster was filmed.
I think all of that is worth more than its weight in gold.
The Red Hill Treasure, New Mexico
https://elevation.maplogs.com/poi/red_hill_nm_usa.553445.html