Saturday, 2 August 2014

Madrid, New Mexico

After our trip up the Sandia Mountains we decided to continue following the Turquoise Trail as far as Madrid.
 
Founded sometime during the mid-1800’s, Madrid was a coal mining town. Because of the geology both hard and soft coal was mined, this was unique as there were only two other mines in the world where this happened. I must admit I thought coal was coal and had no idea it could be hard or soft.
 
The shafts were very deep going as far down as 2,500 ft.   During its heyday the town supplied coal to the Santa Fe Railroad, local consumers and the US Government.   When coal declined Madrid became a ghost town.

These days Madrid is known for its galleries and arts and crafts stores, it also has an original soda fountain as well as an original tavern.

The road through town is quite narrow and we had trouble parking the truck so it didn't stick out into the road.   If we’d gone in the middle of summer (we were there in April) I'm not sure where we would've been able to park. 

We had coffee at Jezebels, the Soda Fountain, after that we walked along to the tavern and mooched around the stores.    There were some lovely things and some gorgeous lamps.

By this time it was getting late and places were closing up, so we headed back to Bernalillo. 

Have fun, we are!

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