We spent a non-traditional Fourth of July driving down the Turquoise Trail from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. We found a couple funky little museums along the way. First, the Casa Grande Trading Post, Petting Zoo & Cerrillos Turquoise Mining Museum. We were the only visitors that morning. It was a bit of a challenge to find it on the dirt roads of Cerillos, New Mexico. (Cerillos was once considered for the New Mexico state capital. It got passed over.)
Just north of Cerillos, turquoise was mined by prehistoric Indians and traded broadly. It is still mined there today.
The gift shop had tons of turquoise and turquoise jewelry. We didn’t buy any. But we did pay $2 each to tour the museum. (We skipped the petting zoo but photographed the scenic view.) The museum covered mining, movies filmed in town, whiskey bottles galore, and much more.
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- Coming back from the scenic view, past the petting zoo, you can see the building’s roof is lined with insulators. Kay used to collect these but not in this quantity! The owner said they were close to the railroad and the railroad didn’t care since the communication wires that these insulated were no longer used.
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- Scenic view. Buffalo Mountain to the left (background); Devil’s Throne to the right.
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- Machinery.
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- Oh my.
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- Our daughter has the iron collection now.
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- Use information for the iron.
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- This millivolt meter is calculated in degrees C. Thermocouple output is in millivolts but not linear with temperature. A thermocouple is the union of two dissimilar metals that generate millivoltage based on temperature. In my early career we used similar devices (just a little more sophisticated). Electronic devices replaced these.
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- Señor, did I know Pauncho Villa, we …
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- Mermaid granddaughter’s future husband.
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- Cigar store Indian and friend.
