Magdalena and Kelly

The Santa Fe Depot building in Magdalena is listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings and currently serves as the Village Library.  It was built in 1915 and is Santa Fe Railroad's Standard Frame Depot #3.  The last run for this line was in 1973.  The Boxcar Museum contains many local artifacts and is generally open to the public.  Unfortunately, it wasn't opened the day we were traveling in this area.  The librarian let us roam about the library which hasn't changed much since its use as a depot.  The old timbers were carved with names, dates, etc. 

Magdalena was the scene of a lot of rodeo history.  Many of the old-time rodeo performers appeared there.  Today, roping competitions, livestock judging and the annual Old Timer's Reunion and Rodeo are held at the rodeo grounds.

Magdalena was the "End of the Trail" for the cattle and sheep drives which came from as far as eastern Arizona.  The Magdalena Livestock Driveway ranked in importance with the famous Chisholm and Goodnight Trails and outlasted them by dozens of years. 

Train engineers were instructed to never blow the whistle while cattle were present in the corrals in order to prevent a stampede but it did happen occasionally.  The last cattle drive came into Magdalena in 1970.  The last cattle shipped out through these pens by truck in 1973.  The train rail bed became unstable and was removed in 1981.  The corrals look worn but they are a long way from falling apart.  Interesting history about the cattle drives. 

Lead, zinc, silver, copper and some gold were mined in Kelly, NM.  Because there were so many precious minerals, Kelly lasted a long time for a mining town - 1866 to 1945 - when the post office was closed.  At it biggest, the town had 7 saloons and 2 each of hotels, dance halls and churches.  Ore wagons pulled by horses or mules hauled the ore to Magdalena to be loaded on rail cars to be delivered to the smelter in Socorro.

Over its long history, Kelly produced more than $28.4 million worth of ore.  It is deserted now - a few rock foundations, some walls, a mine super-structure - are just remnants of its colorful history of Indian attacks and gun fights between the miners and cattlemen of Magdalena.