The Gold of the Ortiz Mountains: A Story of New Mexico and the West’s First Major Gold Rush

Description

Author: Baxter, William  (1943-2015)

Publisher: Lone Butte Press

Pub Date: 2004

Binding: Paperback

Condition: 2 copies.  Copy 1 (JOG24): Good.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears, bends or folds.  Appears unused.  Copy 2 (RM): Fair.  Binding tight.  No tears, bends or folds.  Previous owner’s blindstamp on upper corner ffep.  Pencil markings throughout.  Pen marking through price on rear cover, with “new” price inked in.  Light edge and corner wear.

Notes: The earliest documented gold mine in the western United States is for La Mina del Santo Niño, in New Mexico territory, in 1831 (18 years before Sutter’s Mill) in the Ortiz Mountains east of Albuquerque.   This book is more episodic than narrative–from early early New Mexico (Indians, geology) to the Santa Fe Trail, to the Civil War, to personalities involved (including Thomas Edison).  My friend, Max Chavez, quit college in 1972, to begin gold mining in the Ortiz Mountains.  He knew what he was doing, and it made him rich.  Richer than if he’d stayed in college studying god-knows-what.