Don't look for houses or streets at Gold Dust. They aren't
there any more, except a building or two used as a ranch head-
quarters. You do look for a whole little valley of cone-shaped
"haystacks!'. Hundreds of them. Even when you see them, the
"haystacks" turn out to be mounds of sand and gravel piled up by
modern dredging machinery. They run for a mile or two down the
valley.
But Gold Dust was a mining boom town once. Tents at first, in
1880. Then houses lined the streets. Today, as you drive past
the ranch buildings, you see the disappearing foundations and
crumbling walls of early day homes. There are mine tailings and
old prospector holes on the slopes, too.
Up on a hill beyond these ruins is the most permanent
reminder of Gold Dust, the cemetery. Some of the graves are
barely visible. A few have stone markers. Only one has a
wrought-iron fence around it. You have such a lonesome feeling
as you stand there looking out across the vast sweeps of
greasewood and on to the purple mountains in the distance.
When Gold Dust was still a tent town. the Apaches attacked it.
But the miners, who had carried their rifles to their claims,
swarmed out from their work and drove off the Indians. In time the
miners were also driven away by less and less returns from creek
beds, tunnels and shafts.
Not long ago an enterprising operator came in with dredging
machinery and found enough pay dirt to justify his piling up those
gravel "haystacks" up and down the gulch. No other ghost town in
New Mexico has such an unusual identification.
To reach Gold Dust from Truth or Consequences, take US 85
south for 15 miles. Then turn west on Ranch Road 180 for 11
miles. You'll see those strange "haystacks" a mile away.