Mining Boom

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

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 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

A wooden mining flume carries water toward Elizabethtown across the mountainside above Red River in the 1910s.

Prospectors following placer gold uphill found the Aztec lode on Baldy Mountain in 1868, and the mine produced an estimated $1.25 to $1.5 million in gold in its first years.

Read more about The Aztec Mine: How Baldy Mountain's Million-Dollar Lode Sparked a Rush and Built a Town

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