Cerrillos Opera House

Long abandoned, I wonder what this Opera House was like many years ago? Cerrillos is a village on the Turquoise Trail  about 15 miles south of Santa Fe.  It appears to have changed very little since it was founded during a lead strike in 1879; the old hotel, the saloon, and other buildings look like an Old West movie setting.

Madrid on The Turquoise Trail

Because it's still the winter season, this is one of the few open shops in Madrid on the Turquoise Trail.  It's much busier in the summer when the  town is a draw for the tourists. Madrid (pronounced Mah-drid) and the neighboring village of Cerrillos, not far from Santa Fe,  were in a fabled turqoise-mining area dating back to prehistory. Gold and silver mines followed, and when they faltered, there was coal.  The Turquoise Trail towns supplied fuel for the locomotives of the Santa Fe railroad until the 1950's when the railroad converted to diesel fuel. Madrid used to produce 100,000 tons of coal a year but the mine closed in 1956.  Today this is a real funky town of craftspeople and artists, shops and import stores and ramshackle houses.  I've been told that it was a haven for hippies in the 60's, and by the looks of it, I wonder if any of them left?!