Kelly, NM – Ghost town

I was directed, by a pamphlet I picked up at the VLA, that there was a small ghoest town just 3.5 miles off route back to the Interstate and I wasn’t going to pass up such an easy target to sight-see and take some photographs.

Kelly, misspelled when registered at the courthouse (it is suppose to be “Kelley”), was a mining camp in the late 1800’s with a peak population of roughly 2000 residents. The main ore mined was silver, lead, and zinc. The mines continued into the 1930’s when the great depression took it’s toll. The Kelly Post Office was closed by 1945 and the last of the residents left the town by the early 1950’s.

As I walked up the gravel road, only a few segments of sidewalk and one stone wall remained of the town. Really not much to speak of here, but you can see just enough to understand that people once lived, banked, and raised children here.

The main attraction, a 1/4 mile up the gravel, was the Kelly Mine smelter and headframe still standing today. Surrounding it is the ruins of what once was a bustling mine and town. Every other structure was either dismantled to recycle the brick and wood for the nearby town of Magdalena. some others were lost to fires or collapse with their sleeping piles still there today.

Many patches of discolored rock and dirt layered the ground. I can only assume it is from the mining processes and it’s runoff. The headframe still appeared strong although the mine below looked dark and gloomy. Although both had a sparse covering of barbed wire to prevent trespass, it wouldn’t have stopped anyone with the missing brain cells stupid enough to give them a try… myself being one; I climbed a dozen steps up the headframe before coming to my senses and returned to ground level.

After looking around for about an hour, snapping the pictures you see above, I had a quick lunch and headed back down the dirt road to meet back up with the Interstate and an afternoon’s rest before settling in for the night at the local Walmart in Socorro.