Today we drove almost 40 miles out from Elephant Butte to see Chloride. Rimmed by mountains and rolling, folded, extruded grass land/ranch land, Chloride is billed as a ghost town. That isn't quite right though. In the late 1880s a muleskinner discovered silver (chloride) and although he and his party were killed by Indians about two months after they filed their claim, word of the discovery spread true to cliche, and the place was swamped by men, and the usual saloons and general merchandise stores sprang up. Women who answered the invitation to settle there were rewarded with a building site. The father of the first baby born there was enticed with the same reward, "if they could figure out for sure who the father was." Chloride had a newspaper, photographer, supplies, assay office and 3000 people when the government inadvertently lowered the value of silver (and the town) by putting the country on the gold standard. By 1900 it was a quiet village and the mine was closed.

Today, as Dona Edmunds says, they have a population of six, with a co-op Gallery and the Museum, and a potential restaurant waiting for a cook. Next to the Museum, attractive state-built modern restrooms and picnic tables intrude on the aura of time travel.

At some point in the last 40 years, people moved to the town and began restoring buildings. After hearing the history of their falling down home, Don and Dona restored it by tearing it down board by board, and rebuilding it. They also purchased and in the 1990s over three years restored the General Store which had been closed for 77 years, its remaining contents shared by rats and bats. Today, the store is a museum, and all the treasures inside originated on-site—except for the objects belonging to two long-time citizens who they felt deserved a place of honor.

So I am mulling over what little I have seen and been told of Cassie Hobbs. She was a true pioneer girl who didn't live in a house until she was 14. Traveling from place to place, living in wagons and tents, she didn't have the opportunity to attend school. All her life she fearlessly and endlessly created, and Dona and Don, who bought her home and workshop, were enriched by some years of her company and left with her things.

When he saw her workshop, instead of the modern tools he expected, he found a hand saw, hatchet and other simple tools. She knitted, made her own shoes and boots, clothing, dolls, furniture, painted, made frames from beer cans. And on and on. Her relatives didn't want anything she made, and Don and Dona thought at least some of her work should be seen.

In the photos below, Dona shows me everything she made. She was working on her self-designed boots when she died. The rose-covered dress and t-shirt were for the country's Bicentennial. The dolls, tablecloths, bent wood furniture, box—just a fraction of what she made. She was always beautifully dressed, her nails were long and painted, her hair beautifully done. You can see for yourself, in the picture on the Coors can frame. She lived in the house (b&w photo) and her workshop was in the stone house. In the peaceful town of Chloride.