Latest Blog Posts for City of Dust

• The Ruins by the Rails: Ricardo, New Mexico
  on May 31, 2016
  Ricardo, New Mexico is yet another of the many towns that came to life seemingly overnight as the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad (AT&SF RR) built the Belen Cut-off through the east-central part of the state. Located in De Baca County, a few mil...
• The War Correspondent
  on Apr 17, 2016
  Despite the photo from Cedarvale, New Mexico above, this isn't a ghost town piece. Instead it's yet another story to fill in the time between my all-too-infrequent posts. This one is called...THE WAR CORRESPONDENT“You’re married? You’re fucking...
• Little Place on the Prairie: Dunlap, New Mexico
  on Apr 13, 2016
  The Homestead Act of 1862 was an attempt by the U.S. government to entice citizens to open up the West by offering 160 surveyed acres in exchange for a five-year commitment to reside on the property. Untold numbers of people who couldn’t afford the...
• A Tale of Two Towns: Acme & Frazier, NM
  on Mar 1, 2016
  Those of you who are fans of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote might be excited to hear that there was once a town in New Mexico named Acme. However, the corporation which lent its name to the place made cement blocks not jet-propelled unicycles. In...
• Get the Motor Running: Highway, New Mexico
  on Feb 28, 2016
  After last month’s epic 1,600 word post on the bayside ghost town of Drawbridge, California, let’s make some concessions to time and ADHD with a snack-sized post on the tiny dot on the map of eastern New Mexico known as Highway. Located on NM Hig...
• My Mother was the Marshland: Drawbridge, CA
  on Jan 18, 2016
  My mother was the marshland. My father was the railroad. I was born in 1876 after they met on Station Island. Some now say that I am a ghost town, sinking in the mud. Maybe I am, but I hate the name. So do the people who remember. They remember the i...
• The Real Desert
  on Nov 26, 2015
  This month I'd hoped to finally finish a piece on Drawbridge, California, the ghost town in a salt marsh, but time has moved too quickly. So, rather than let City of Dust go dark for all of November, I thought I'd post this tale. While it contains no...
• No Rattlesnakes/No Pinto Beans: Cedarvale, NM
  on Oct 23, 2015
  Let’s stay in central New Mexico for one more post and add yet another piece to the picture of a region that in the 1920’s was the country’s largest producer of pinto beans. While you probably aren’t going to drive through without reason, as...
• Pinto Beans and Singing Conventions: Claunch, New Mexico
  on Sep 21, 2015
  Of all the places we could go from long-lost Centerpoint, New Mexico, which we visited last time, perhaps it makes the most sense to simply continue south down Highway 55 and follow it through a few sharp turns until we get to Claunch, something less...
• Too Small to be a Village, Not Large Enough to be a Town: Center Point, New Mexico
  on Aug 11, 2015
  On Highway 55, about 40 miles south of Mountainair, New Mexico, is a charming old one-room schoolhouse. It’s one of those abandoned places that is a sheer pleasure to visit. I even put the above photo on my City of Dust "business" cards. But where...

{pvComments::user_name}

{pvComments::date}

Delete 

{pvComments::comment}

Post a Comment