Mining Town History

The Little Red School House in Red River in a black-and-white photograph from about 1980.

Sunday, October 25, 2026

Sunday is starting cloudy and cool in Red River, near 37 degrees this morning after a 7:18 AM sunrise, with showers expected through the day, a high near 49, and sunset at 6:12 PM. Tonight rain is expected to change to snow showers as temperatures fall, and Monday should turn sunny with a high near 51. It is a good day for a slow Main Street stroll between showers, a warm drink, and a little town history, which in Red River is never more than a block or two away.

Read more about From Gold Camp to Mountain Playground: A Sunday Look at Red River's Story

Baldy Mountain's bare, treeless summit rising above pine forest at Philmont Scout Ranch, seen from Copper Park camp.

Yes — it is the same mountain. The Baldy Mountain that looms over the old Maxwell Land Grant stories is the very peak that Scouts today know as Mt Baldy, the highest point of Philmont Scout Ranch. At 12,441 feet, Baldy is the tallest summit in the Cimarron Range, rising some 3,640 feet straight out of the Moreno Valley about six miles northeast of Eagle Nest — close enough to Red River that its bare, treeless crown is part of the skyline this whole valley lives under.

Read more about Baldy Mountain: The Gold Peak That Became Philmont's Crown

Did you know that one of Red River's most unassuming little houses once served as the town's contagious ward? At the northwest corner of Jayhawk Trail and High Street stands a one-story, square building with a gabled roof and a small porch, known today as the Red River Miner's Hospital, or the Westoby House. It was not built where it stands.

Read more about The Miner's Hospital That Became a Home: The Westoby House of Red River

Black-and-white photograph, circa 1980, of the Little Red School House in Red River, New Mexico, a one-room pressed-metal schoolhouse with a cupola below forested slopes.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Read more about A Slow Sunday in Red River: The Little Red Schoolhouse and a Town That Kept Its Past

Recent photograph of the Big Five (Oro Fino) gold mine site on Bitter Creek above Red River, New Mexico: rusted remains of the 1921 waterwheel power plant in the foreground, a pond, and the mine cabin standing on the hillside

A visitor's 1970 jeep tour sparked a fresh look at the Big Five gold mine above 10,000 feet on Bitter Creek, where the cabin, pond, and rusted 1921 waterwheel plant still stand.

Read more about The Big Five: Bitter Creek's Stubborn Gold Mine

The Pierce-Fuller House in Red River, photographed in 2012.

At Silver Bell and High Street, the Pierce-Fuller House survives from Red River's homesteader days, a sign the mining camp had become a hometown where families put down roots.

Read more about The Pierce-Fuller House: A Two-Story Cabin From Red River's Homesteader Days

The underside of a wooden mining flume in the mountains near Red River in the 1910s.

Eight miles northeast of Red River, the gold camp of La Belle rose in four months in 1894 to some 80 buildings and 700 people, then vanished within six years of its founding.

Read more about La Belle: The Gold Camp That Rose in Four Months and Vanished in Six Years

The swinging wooden doors of the Bull O' the Woods Saloon on Main Street in Red River.

A Main Street landmark since 1939, the saloon first opened as the Silver Spruce Tavern and took its Bull O' the Woods name from a legendary blizzard that struck in March 1989.

Read more about Bull O' the Woods: How a 1989 Blizzard Renamed Red River's Main Street Saloon

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