Oldmesquite -- the Fake Real Ghost Town

In southern New Mexico, about twenty miles north of the Mexican border, if you are lucky you will find a ghost town called Oldmesquite, vintage 1890's, in an area of mountains with old abandoned mines and not much else but desert. The town consists of one street and about a dozen old buildings, some crumbling, most dilapidated or weather worn.

At it's high point, the town is said to have consisted of a cafe, three saloons, a laundry and bathhouse, a land office, livery stable, blacksmith shop, bank, jail and a bordello. Below, you see the land office and cafe.

The windmill and water tower stood at one end of the street.

You can still see tattered rags of the old curtains in these windows.

Here is the old pump and tub at the front of the laundry and bathhouse.

And inside the blacksmith shop.

Here's the bank, where, so the story goes, the safe was stolen and transported several miles out of town, where it was later found, blown apart and empty.

And the jail. The bank robber or robbers, incidentally, were never caught.

Behind the town lies the graveyard.

Here we are inside the bordello, apparently the "nicest" building in town, with an adobe brick fireplace and an incredible old Victrola -- which plays -- still in residence.

These adobe buildings are crumbling but were built with adobe clay found just a few hundred yards away.

Battered and rusted artifacts lie about. An old milk can,

an anvil outside the blacksmith shop,

traps for ... I'm not sure what kind of small animals would have been prey here.

This town reminded me of many old ghost towns, abandoned mining towns, that I visited with my family forty or more years ago in Montana. It always surprised me to see what things had been left behind when buildings were abandoned. There was evidence of that here at Oldmesquite too.

This ghost town of Oldmesquite however is one of a kind, and not the usual kind. It has a very unusual history. It was completely and totally constructed by one man, Randy McCowan, in the last decade.

Oldmesquite lies in the backyard of Randy's house.

Randy is the great-grandson of John and Ellen McCowan, pioneers who came to New Mexico in 1888.

Much of their history has been lost, but Randy had spent the last ten years building this town, carefully researched to be authentic to "its" day, to recreate for himself a connection to their lives, while learning as much about them as he could.

He scavenged old lumber and made his own adobe bricks to make his --their-- town "real."

What he couldn't discover about his great-grandparents, he gleefully created, and if you ever get to tour of Oldmesquite, Randy, with eyes sparkling, will regale you with stories of the golden days of John and Ellen McCowan and Oldmesquite, complete with bank robberies and shoot-outs.

And so the sun sets near Oldmesquite, New Mexico.

Today was a good day.

Biosphere 2

I wish all of you could have been with me for this adventure. Since you weren't, I'll do my best to make it as real and exciting for you as it was for me. Chorro would like you to know that he was not allowed to go. I'm still waiting for forgiveness.

Here it is, ta dum, Biosphere 2!

The highly publicized 1990's experiment of living sustainably in a sealed-in atmosphere and environment was, according to the media, a failure in that about a year and a half into the experiment, it was necessary to add oxygen to the system in order to keep the crew functioning. Nevertheless, eight people did live within this environment for two years, raising their own food and making a multitude of scientific observations about the system.

I drove up the road in high anticipation of learning somethng new and fascinating. I remember envying the people who were part of this experiment when it was taking place. Now that would have been an adventure of the highest order!

In this beautiful setting, I caught my first glimpse of Biosphere 2. Biosphere 1, of course, is the Earth, where the experiment of sustaining life in a closed system has not yet been completed.

Here is a closer view of all the components -- sealed, air-tight. To the left, the pyramid is the huge greenhouse that contains five different environments with many species of plants and, during the experiment, animals as well. The central slightly rounded building with the round tower houses the living quarters on the left side, called the 'human habitat' of the unit. The right side is the work area for the Biospherians, with desks and computers. The three curved structures behind are greenhouses that contained the 'farm' where food was cultivated and animals were kept. The little dome on top is the library. Looks pretty sci-fi doesn't it!

Each of the eight had specific tasks to be done on a daily basis, since there was an incredible amount of monitoring and maintaining required. And every eighth day, each person would have their turn as cook, preparing meals for the entire crew, who ate together in a common dining room, which is just to the right at the end of the hall in the first picture below. Their snazzy Scandinavian-designed kitchen in the second picture had the most efficient appliances available at the time.

Each also had a private apartment, here's one side of it -- on the other side is a staircase leading to a second-floor bedroom. They decorated these apartments according to their own tastes.

Here's a view of the farm area. There are three greenhouses adjoining that comprise the farm, you can see only the middle on in the picture below. In addition to raising vegetables and berries, they kept chickens, pigs and goats as well. They were not as successful at farming as they needed to be however and although their food was nutritios and they did not suffer ill-health, it was low in calories and consequently the crew lost an average of 24% of their weight during the two years. They complained of being hungry much of the time.

Here's the main glass pyramidal structure that contains the five biomes, environments, which are still maintained for experiments.

You can see here the aluminum frame structure and the hundreds of thousands of glass panels.

First we entered the savannah and ocean environments, one on each side.

The ocean is 25 feet deep, has a coral reef which is no longer alive, and in the beginning had over 100 species of fish, most no longer alive. There is a 'wave machine' that creates waves that wash up on shore. At some point, someone used the 'tsunami' setting and created a wave so huge that it washed most of the white sand beach on the end out into the center floor of the ocean.

The savannah recreated the conditions of coastal Africa with huge acacia trees.

And here's the desert -- not an Arizona desert however, but actually a recreation of a Californian desert.

The rainforest felt the most exotic, with tall ferns and trees and constant raindrops falling in the 100% humidity environment. You can see the mist.

In the living experiment, this rainforest had 6 monkeys in residence. After a time, the biospherians felt they needed the higher calorie bananas that were being produced for the monkeys in this environment and began to 'raid' the forest. The monkeys became quite upset and aggressive and were eventually removed through an airlock passage and door. A lesson for eternity in that experience I believe. Right, don't steal somebody else's bananas! And the corollary would be don't fight back if you don't have any power. Yikes.

The fifth environment is the mongrove swamp. Our tour guide pointed out the density of the root system of the mongrove trees and noted that had they still survived along the Asian coast hit by the tsunami of a couple of years ago, they would have blocked the wave from being so devastating to life and property. Our guide pointed out frequently the negative impact of many of the more recent changes in our environment, changes that have resulted from our more-money- quest.

Underneath this huge structure is an equally huge basement filled with all of the necessary equipment to sustain these different environments.

Here's a tunnel that went to one of the "lungs" -- there were two.

Here's the outside view of a lung.

This structure had a huge bladder inside that inflated and deflated with the expansion and contraction of air each day and night, necessary to prevent the air pressure from exploding the glass. It is such a vital factor in maintaining the entire pyramid and greenhouses that there are two of them, the second is a backup that has never been used.

Water, oxygen, waste, everything was recycled within this closed system. The only 'outside' support was that this complex does not produce its own energy. It is powered by natural gas generators housed in these separate buildings. I found this to be quite surprising, since the early 1990's certainly had the technology for solar power.

Construction on Biosphere 2 began in 1987 and ended in 1991. It was the dream project of John Allen, ecologist and inventor, and was financed by a Texas multi-millionaire, Edward Bass. It was intended as an experiment to demonstrate how life might be colonized on other planets without our supportive atmosphere or resources.

The main problem of Biosphere 2's original mission, the lack of oxygen, was largely influenced by the failure of plants to photosynthesize adequately during the first winter because of lack of sunlight. El Nino produced a great deal of cloudiness in Arizona that winter and additionally, the sun's rays were lessened in intensity because of a volcanic eruption on the other side of the planet. They also failed to allow for adequate curing of huge amounts of concrete used in constructing Biosphere 2, so the curing process was still completing while the first mission was in progress, a process which consumes oxygen.

A second disturbing outcome was that the eight people inside did not get along well. Fairly early in the project, they split into two factions, the scientists and the idealists, or dreamers. As their oxygen supply diminished, they became more and more irritable and less able to fulfill their tasks. Many of them never returned to Biosphere 2 after the mission ended, but some still work to publicize and create opportunities for further learning from it.

Since testing the theory of creating a community in outer space, Biosphere 2 has come under the management of the University of Arizona. It is an incredibly valuable tool for examining ecology and especially climate change, since so many variables can be completely controlled.

So far, the indications are that we're in trouble in Biosphere 1.

Well it made me wish I were a graduate student in environmental sciences at the University of Arizona!

Here's one last look at Biosphere 2 where she nestles mostly unseen in her mountain hideaway, with many more stories to tell than I learned about on my visit.

Today was a good day!

North to Prescott, Dead Horse Ranch State Park and Sedona

We've been adventuring the past few days. We took the scenic route north, heading for Dead Horse Ranch State Park. There really isn't a dead horse there, it is an old name of the ranch that eventually became a state park.

The scenic route however turned out to be too difficult to drive to enjoy the scenery. I will say that it was a good test for both me and the RV and we both passed, although with considerable anxiety on my part. Hairpin curves as we climbed from 900 desert feet up to 5500 feet of alpine air.

We stopped here at the top to breathe a bit. It was exhilirating to smell pines and feel the cool air! You can see that these vistas are from the top of the world, at least in this part of Arizona.



We overnighted in Prescott. Dead Horse Ranch State Park is only about 30 miles farther up the road (turns out the 'up' is precisely the word!) but I was so thrilled to see a Costco that we spent the night. Prescott is the old territorial capital of Arizona and has a sense of pride in its history. I hadn't seen cowboys since I left Montana, and here I not only saw a cowboy but he was packin' a pistol as well. Sorry I don't have a picture of the cowboy for you but here's a hilltop behind Prescott.

After we stocked up, I locked myself out of my RV. Yes, I thought I had a foolproof system for preventing that, but . . . what can I say. Thanks to some very nice young people at the Olive Garden and two even younger locksmiths, also nice, it was a brief delay.

What I wasn't aware of as I left Prescott was that the next pass would top out at 7005 feet. Yikes! I wasn't sure I'd be able to breathe at that altitude. It didn't matter though, because I don't think I took a breath until I reached the bottom on the other side.

There were no pull-offs for the view, so no pictures, but trust me, we thought we were going to fall off the mountain top. Coming down was also a challenge, but you know, what goes up must come down, so said -- Isaac Newton?

Four thousand downhill-in-first-gear feet later, we came to the town of Cottonwood and Dead Horse Ranch State Park. I had heard a good report on this state park but unfortunately, my experience wasn't so good and I will not return.

It did though give us an opportunity to zip on up the road (a fairly level one) to Sedona, Arizona, home of the infamous new-age spiritual power vortex of the USA.

I didn't get any shots of the power vortex ;-) but the red sandstone rock cliffs that surround the town are incredibly beautiful.

And I was entranced by green leaves on willows! Anything spring green really catches my eye, especially after the duller and darker greens of the desert.

I had to check them out up close and personal too.

In fact, Sedona was bursting with spring blooms too.

This cactus is just about to pop!

We checked out a bit of the town and found more views of the red rocks at the park

and overhanging the town

and a town character just riding through on a lovely afternoon. Peace to you, too, bro.

On our way home, we detoured to check out Red Rock State Park.


I have no sunset pictures for you tonight, but maybe you can imagine the sunset in the red rock landscape.

Today was a good day.