THIS WEBSITE IS UNDER RECONSTRUCTION
It augments the original www.blackrange.org website.
To most of the world, The Black Range of southwestern New Mexico in the United States is a rather insignificant place. The Range is roughly 55 miles (about 88 kilometers) long and about 18 miles (29 kilometers) wide. Its highest point is 10,165 feet in elevation - a high spot on the ridge of the range.
There are a few small towns scattered in the foothills which surround the Black Range. Some like San Lorenzo, Chloride, Monticello, Hillsboro, and Kingston are still inhabited by a few people. Others like Lake Valley and Hermosa are deserted, in the parlance of the American West, they are ghost towns.
My name is Bob Barnes, I live in one of those small towns, Hillsboro, along with a hundred or so other people - depending on the season. That makes it a special place, at least to me. On this website I hope to portray the Black Range in such a way that you can understand my feelings - perhaps not agree with, but understand. The “Brits” have a wonderful name for such places, when speaking of them they refer to those places as “their patch”. The Black Range is my patch. I may be reached at bob@birdtrips.org.
In general, this website is divided into two major sections; one dealing with the Natural History of the Black Range and the other with the Human History. I am more of a Natural History person but have found that the Human History helps explain some aspects of Natural History which are missed if the links between the two are broken. A detailed site map of these sections is listed to the left. However, the listing is not comprehensive - there are multiple page layers below many of the entries to the left, they are accessed directly from those pages.