' Human settlement in the Catron County region dates to some of the earliest in the Americas. During the Clovis period, between 10999 BC and 8000 BC, and Folsom period, between 7999 BC and 5999 BC, the Ake Site was occupied near Datil.
Bat Cave, near Horse Springs, was occupied around 3,500 BC."
The Mimbres culture was expressed by the Mogollon people. They lived throughout the Catron County area from AD 1000 to 1130. Their art is renowned for its beauty.
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"Kingston’s history is a tale ripped from the pages of a western novel.
Geronimo’s Apache tribe once roamed the rugged and beautiful Gila wilderness, including the lush creek-fed valley where Kingston was founded.
The Apache clashed with prospectors and ranchers who came to forge a new life on the western frontier.
Eventually, more than three million acres of this region’s wild, natural beauty was preserved and protected as the Gila National Forest and Wilderness.
During the 1880s, Kingston became the center of a thriving mining district that included Hillsboro and Lake Valley, when rich silver strikes attracted thousands of prospectors from all over the world to the region, seeking their fortunes. With blood, sweat and tears, miners dug hundreds of holes in the ground, and produced millions of dollars worth of silver.
Soon this wild-west boom-town was populated with merchants, saloon-keepers, and madams. Kingston boasted an opera house, a church, a school, a bordello (on Virtue Street), three newspapers and twenty-some saloons. Visited by the famous and infamous, such as Mark Twain, Lillian Russell, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Kingston became known as “the Gem of the Black Range.”
But life was not easy – the fledgling community suffered from Apache raids, hunger, illness, and each other. Some did strike it rich, some were swindled, and when silver was demonetized in 1893, the price of silver collapsed, and the boom went bust. From thousands of residents, just a few hundred remained in Kingston by the turn of the century "
https://www.newmexico.org/places-to-visit/regions/southwest/kingston/
"Following prospecting developments in Hillsboro to the east, silver was discovered in the district in 1880, and extensive mining efforts commenced in 1883. From 1883 to 1893,
almost 6,000,000 ounces .
of silver were produced from 27 mines.
From 1934 to 1957, 67,940 ounces of silver were produced, plus 124 ounces of gold. "
"Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is a U.S. National Monument created to protect Mogollon cliff dwellings in the Gila Wilderness on the headwaters of the Gila River in southwest New Mexico. The 533-acre (2.16 km2) national monument was established by President Theodore Roosevelt through executive proclamation on November 16, 1907.
The Mogollon peoples are believed to have inhabited the region from between 1275 and into the early 14th century, during the Pueblo III Era. It is not known why the community was abandoned. "
"Named from Bloodgood Canyon, a tributary of Little Creek in northeastern flank of Diablo Range, in secs. 5 and 6, T. 13 S., R. 14 W., Grant Co., NM [Basin-and-Range province]. "
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"The Bloodgood Tuff is a series of columns made of petrified ash piles left over from ancient volcanoes "
"The geology in and around Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is a result of volcanic events ranging from approximately 50 million to 25 million years ago. It started with two eruptions from a super-volcano which formed the Bursum and Cliff Dweller calderas. This activity created several layers of rock from the igneous rhyolitic layer to the petrified ash piles of the Bloodgood Tuff. Somewhere in the middle is the Gila conglomerate, a cocktail of many different kinds of rock held together by a natural sandstone mortar.
Earth was making masonry here long before the Mogollon! "
"Wind, water and fluctuating temperatures have been acting on the Gila conglomerate over the course of millions of years and have instigated a process called exfoliation, whereby pieces of rock of varying sizes flake off and fall to the ground. This is the process that created the alcoves where the cliff dwellings were built. The flakes were later found by the Mogollon people who broke some of them down even more and used them to build their walls. Exfoliation is an ongoing process that never stops until the mountain is eventually (probably in hundreds of millions of years or so) reduced to a flat surface. "
"Lightfeather Hot Spring is about a 3/4 mile, twenty minute walk from the Gila Visitor Center along Trail 157, the Middle Fork Trail. It is situated in a steep canyon and flows from the base of a hill into the Middle Fork of the Gila River.
The water pulses from the ground in about one minute increments and has a temperature of about 130 degrees.
With such scalding temperatures, it's important to avoid the source and instead soak in the rock-lined pools constructed in the Middle Fork and maintained by visitors and local residents. Geothermal activity may cause the rocks in the riverbed to be hot in some spots. "
"Jordan Hot Spring is about a seven mile hike via Little Bear Canyon, Trail 729, or a little over eight miles via the Middle Fork route. Each route features many river crossings. The hike is moderately strenuous and, while some do experience it as a day hike, it's recommended as an overnight. There are a number of camp sites both above and below the spring. Due to the popularity of this destination, firewood can be hard to come by. Please remember that it is unlawful to cut down trees or brush for fires; only dead and down wood should be used. Also, the spring is in the wilderness.
Leave-no-trace practices should be followed."
"The hot spring's pool is about twenty feet in diameter, about three feet deep, and has a water temperature of about 94 degrees Fahrenheit. For this reason, some refer to Jordan as a "warm spring."
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"Geronimo was in prison in Fort Sill, Okla., when he died in 1909. Legend has it that nine years later, members of Yale's Skull and Bones society who were stationed at the army base absconded with his skull."
"nine years after Geronimo's death, Skull and Bones members who were stationed at the army outpost dug up the warrior's grave and stole his skull, as well as some bones and other personal relics. They then sprinted the remains away to New Haven, Conn., and allegedly stashed the skull at the society's clubhouse, the Skull and Bones Tomb."
"To make matters even more intriguing, legend has it that
the grave-robbing posse
included Prescott Bush,
father of George H.W.
and grandfather of George W."
Written from one Bonesman to another, the letter, which is dated 1918, reads:
The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club and the Knight Haffner is now safe inside the Tomb, together with his well-worn femurs, bit and saddle horn.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark who represents the Geronimo family says that Geronimo made it very clear — even before his surrender — that he wanted to be in the Apache lands of southwestern New Mexico.
When he met with Teddy Roosevelt, for instance, in March of 1905, his request was that he and the other Chiricahua Apaches who were prisoners of war be permitted to return to the headwaters of the Gila River ... adding that if he couldn't return in his lifetime, that he wanted to be buried there," says Clark.
Apaches do not like to disinter remains, and there is no tradition of burying them in their birthplace. Apaches were nomadic people," says Houser. "When somebody is buried we traditionally do not revisit the grave. We don't make a big deal out of it."
https://www.npr.org/2009/03/09/101626709/mystery-of-the-bones-geronimos-missing-skull
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