Lake Valley boomed big from 1878, when George Lufkin
discovered silver here, to the panic times of 1893--fifteen years
of tearing silver from short distances below the surface and
turning it into money. Every cloud had its silver mining.
Today only a few false-fronted buildings barely outline the old
streets that once teemed with thousands. But the schoolhouse is
still there, and the cow country people of the Lake Valley
community meet in it for their frequent dances and other
get-togethers. Still here, too, are the great rips that eager miners
made in the Mississippi limestone to get out the silver.
One lucky miner hit a rich vein and promptly sold it for
$100,000. Two days later miners, following the vein, broke into
the fabulous Bridal Chambe vug that fairly gleamed with silver
$3,00.00 of it! One piece of almost pure silver was so heavy that
it had to be broken up before it could be handled.
That set off wilder stories of riches. Get-rich-quickers swarmed
infrom everywhere. Some looking for silver. Some for high wages
or a business enterprise. Still others looking to gambling, skin
games and robbery. Even Apaches loitered in nearby hills and
occasionally terrified Lake Valley with a hit-and-run raid. George
Daly, manager of the biggest mine here, was killed by Apaches
the same day the Bridal Chamber vug was discovered.
But by 1885 the last Apache raids ended. The Santa Fe rail-
road had built a Spur into Lake Valley. What were meant to be
permanent stone and adobe business houses lined the two main
streets. Good dwellings ran on out into the greasewood flats.
Now the greasewood has come back into town. It lives well on
Main Street. Small operators have tried sporadically to revive
some of the mines, with the added incentive of some manganese
and lead. But Lake Valley remains one of the classical ghosts of
the great New Mexico boom days.