Mogollon Ghost Town

No roadtrip is ever complete without the exploration of a ghost town or two for us. On our random, spur of the moment trip out to Silver City, New Mexico, we walked through the enchanting Catwalk Recreation Area then hit the road in search of Mogollon Ghost Town.

This 1890s mining camp is located within the Gila Wilderness at the bottom of Silver Creek. The location is quite isolated and it was due to this isolation that it became one of the wildest, shoot-’em-up mining towns in the West. It boasts classic wild west stories of stagecoach robberies (in 1 year, the stagecoach from Mogollon to Silver City was robbed 23 times by the same person), Apache raids, and even served as temporary hideouts for Butch Cassidy and Billy the Kid.

Mogollon’s peak days saw a population ranging from 3,000 to 6,000 miners. It’s hard to imagine that sort of hustle and bustle in such a small town, especially since we didn’t see a single person (there are a handful of year-round residents).