Photos by: John Mulhouse

Episode 96– You can also listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, and Amazon Music

About the Episode:

Bunny talks with John Mulhouse about his love for all things “abandoned” in New Mexico.  Mulhouse spent almost a decade documenting the forgotten corners of New Mexico through his popular City of Dust project.  Find out more about him and his amazing photography in this episode and at the links provided.

Links:
Buy John’s Books
Kevin McDevitt’s “History of the St. James Hotel”
Folsom Museum Facebook page
City of Dust blog
City of Dust Facebook page
City of Dust Instagram: @cityofdustnm
Email John: jmhouse@cityofdust.com
Bunny’s website
I Love New Mexico Instagram
I Love New Mexico Facebook

Original Music by: Kene Terry

Featuring:

John Mulhouse

John Mulhouse is a photographer and historian who blends photography and history to explore abandoned places in the United States. His work focuses on learning about the history of these places, including who lived there, what they were like in their heyday, and why they were abandoned. Mulhouse believes that people respond most to abandoned buildings with character.

Mulhouse’s interest in abandoned places began when he moved to Augusta, Georgia and became fascinated by empty old buildings, some dating back before the Civil War. He identified with these buildings, which were once full of life and hope, and has since photographed abandoned places across the country. He also has a blog called cityofdust.blogspot.com that pays homage to what he calls “the lost and wondrous wreckage of America”. 

Mulhouse spent almost a decade documenting the forgotten corners of New Mexico through his popular City of Dust project. One of his most popular photos is a sunset shot of a former church in Taiban, New Mexico. 

Bio provided from: The Taos News and CNN

Episode Transcript

Bunny : (00:00)
Hi there. I’m Bunny Terry, and you’re listening to the I Love New Mexico podcast. Whether you’re a native new Mexican, who’s lived here for your entire life, or you’re just considering a visit, this episode is for you. Join us as we share a lot of New Mexico stories, talk about all things New Mexico, and include topics like what’s magical here, where you ought to visit, what’s happening, and the things you absolutely cannot miss in the land of Enchantment. We’re excited that you’re here, and we can’t wait to show you what an amazing place New Mexico is, because let’s face it, I love New Mexico.

Bunny : (00:51)
This week’s episode of the I Love New Mexico podcast is, um, it, it’s sort of a surprise to me, and I was just, um, telling our guests that sometimes people send me books and I think, okay, I’m gonna need to carve out three or four hours to review this book and quickly scan it. And when I picked up, um, John Mulhouse’s abandoned New Mexico, um, first of all, I, I love the cover, I’m gonna wanna know where that photo was taken, but I was immediately, um, excited by this book. And it just happened to come to us at a time when my husband and I were going on a little road trip. So I did a lot of reading. And, um, John, when I read the description on the back, I had to stop because it made me cry because it’s so cool. But I don’t wanna get to that. First, I want you to tell people who you are and how you came to this project.

John : (01:49)
Well, my name is John Mulhouse, and I’m originally from Minneapolis, and I came to this project through a pretty circuitous path. Actually, it started when I went to graduate school in Athens, Georgia. And I had never taken a photograph in my life with any intent at all. And so I went to Athens and I was in grad school for botany and just fully science focused, and I really was wanting an artistic outlet. And grad school’s tough, so I was kind of looking for something that would kind of suit my mood. And it turned out that it happened to be abandoned buildings, which is , which was a surprise to me. I just found these great old buildings, especially when I moved to Augusta, Georgia to do my field work. Just these great old buildings going back to the mid 18 hundreds before the Civil War, and they were derelict and they were just decaying and open.

John : (02:44)
And in Minnesota, I’d never seen anything like that. The winter just kills everything. So I just started taking pictures and documenting them, and I would kinda watch them fall, and some of them were torn down. Um, and then that was 2002, 2003. So I’m just about at the 20 year mark of doing City of Dust. So I started doing that. I left Georgia in 2004. I went back to Minnesota for a little bit. I kept taking pictures. I went to Tennessee, California, kind of bopped around. And then in 2009, I ended up in New Mexico. And when I ended up in New Mexico, it was like everything opened up. I mean, there weren’t just abandoned buildings, there were ghost towns. It, there was this great western field that I love. I love the desert. I just thought I can document not just individual buildings, I can go out there and, um, document entire towns, entire places.

John : (03:44)
And I’d already started the blog at that point, the City of Dust blog. So I’d done some stuff on Georgia, some stuff on Tennessee, some of my own writing. And then I really started to focus on doing specific towns in New Mexico. And a ghost town in my definition isn’t a place that has no people. So there’s not that many places with no people. So when I say ghost towns, it’s just places that are depopulated. Um, and I just, you know, went off to the races and I left New Mexico in 2018, so I was there for a solid 10 years, but I get back at least once, sometimes twice a year, and I’ll be back in July to do some more of this work. So the work continues. The blog, I wish I had more time to put things up. I just did one on Cabazon. I say just, it was September, actually last September. So I wanna keep doing this time is tight, but, um, there’s just so much more I could do a second book. I have enough material, I just need the time and the, the space to put it together. Um, so I, I went to New Mexico as a botanist. I worked at UNMI worked at the Vieta Refuge, kind of down by Bosque de Apache, um, doing, doing Chihuahua desert research. And so I was out there on the landscape. I was in Socorro County a lot great places in Socorro County to photograph. So it was just, just a bonanza. I mean, I put 10 years into it, pretty, pretty steady.

Bunny : (05:06)
Well, I wanna read, if that’s okay with you, I wanna read the description on the back. And as I told you when we were talking, when I, the first time I read it, when I was reading it to my husband, Toby, and we’re both, um, New Mexico natives, we both grew up here. Um, we, we were babies here, although I was born in Amarillo because it was the closest hospital . But, um, when I read it to him, I had to stop. And I said, I don’t know why this makes me cry, except that it is. So, um, it’s such a great description of this place we call home and the whole reason that we do this podcast. So I’m gonna read it and, and please forgive me if I have to stop for a moment, but I’m, I’m hoping that I can read it straight through.

Bunny : (05:52)
But the name of John’s book is “Abandoned New Mexico: Ghost Town’s Endangered Architecture and Hidden History.” And, um, as the description, it says, this book encompasses huge swaths of time and space. As rural populations decline and young people move to ever larger cities, much of our past is left behind. Out on the plains are along now Quiet Highways changes in modes of livelihood and transportation have moved only in one direction. Stately homes and handbuilt schools, churches, and bars. There are, these are not just the stuff of individual lives, but of an entire culture. New Mexico, among the least dense states in the count country, was crossed by both the Spanish and Route 66. The railroad stretched toward every hopeful mine and Outlaw Outlaws died in its arms. Its Pueblos are among the oldest human habitations in the us and the first atomic bomb was detonated nearly dead in its center. John Mulhouse spent almost a decade documenting the forgotten corners of estate like no other, through his popular City of Dust project from the Sunbank Chihuahua and Desert to the Snowcap Moreno Valley travel through John’s words and pictures across the legendary land of Enchantment. And it’s a perfect description of what you’ve done here. I, um, yeah, and then I read, you know, as I just said to you, um, you know, there are a lot of people who are great photographers and, um, are not necessarily, um, good at conveying, um, through prose, but you did, I when you were talking before about the work you did in Georgia and how tough it was to be, you, you say in your introduction that at the time you began this, this, this journey of taking pictures of abandoned buildings that you felt somewhat abandoned yourself. And you say in the introduction that what what I felt was just as important as what I saw, and that, that seemed, um, to me to be a perfect description about what New Mexico does for a lot of people. You know, it, I know that if you’ve never been to New Mexico, you may have a, if you’re a listener, and you know, we have listeners all over the world, but if you’ve never been to New Mexico, um, you may have a picture in your mind of the Sonoran Desert. You may even think that we have, um, why can’t I think of the name The cactus? Is that they Saguaro cactus. Yeah. May even think that’s a cactus even. Yeah, we have a lot of Saguaro cactus. We don’t. The cool thing about New Mexico is that it has almost every single temperate zone except tropical, I believe. And, um, so, so this is a very diverse and beautiful state, but what I wanna tell you is what John says is true. What you feel when you’re here or, or when you’re traveling here, is just as important as what you see. So thank you for those words. And then I open up the book and the first photo of the, let’s see, hang on. Other than the Desert Sands in Albuquerque, and, um, an old house in Estancia, is this picture of the church at Nara Visa, or, I have been to many funerals because that’s my neck of the woods. That’s so cool. Don’t you love that space? Oh,

John : (09:30)
Really, it is. That is just beautiful. I hope to go and photograph that’ll be out there in July, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna take some new shots. But yeah, it’s just, and again, it is what you feel when you’re standing looking at that church, and you can just feel the sky and you can feel the space and you can just feel the building. And it, it really is trying to capture that through photography, which is really tough. But yeah, it’s, it’s really the feeling. You’re right.

Bunny : (09:55)
Well, and to me, um, you know, because, uh, my history is really steeped here, um, you know, without, without sounding sounding too cliche or, um, um, emotional about it, to me, when I look at those buildings, it really is, um, as though, you know, the, our ancestors are talking to us in some way. And I don’t, I don’t know if you found that, but, um,

John : (10:24)
I definitely do feel something. I definitely feel a resonance. There are some places I’ve been to that I feel like I shouldn’t stay there long. Like maybe this is not the place to be. Right. Um, and then there’s other places where I could stay there for days and days and days, and they look the same. They’re often the same abandoned areas or, you know, the structures are decaying in. Some just feel have a wonderful energy and, and some don’t. Um, and I do, one of the main things I try to convey is that I do approach this with a lot of respect. Like, even though a lot of what I photograph is looks like it’s decaying, and some people say like, oh, you’re just taking pictures of, of junk or abandoned places. Like, no. Like, these are places where people lived. And I get comments all the time from family members of people who knew these places. And their, their connection to them is really, really strong. And they’re often very sorry to see them in the state that they’re in, but they understand why they’re in that state, why they’re, you know, not being maintained. But, um, really these places are important to, to people that are still alive as well as the people that are no longer here. So I try to keep that in mind all the time.

Bunny : (11:34)
Well, and you got a lot. I mean, I say all the time, I mean, one of the reasons we do this podcast is that I feel like stories save us. And if we’re doing nothing else here, nothing else here, other than saving stories that might not be heard elsewhere. Um, I think it’s really important to tell stories and on, and I followed you for a long time on Facebook. Um, you got stories directly from villagers and family members that I, that’s, that’s, I mean, I don’t know a different way to say it other than that’s so cool. What a, what a way to get your stories.

John : (12:11)
That is probably the best part of having done this project. And I, you know, I just got a series of photos from Wagon Mound at the McCarthur General store, and the photos are stunning. Like they were taken a 1913, they were professionally taken by a photographer, Almar and Newman, who was a war photographer based outta Trinidad, Colorado at one point. And this woman sent me these, and, and her grandfather was, I want to, I believe it was Arthur MacArthur. But her, her grandfather ran the story and her great-grandfather established it. And he died fairly young. And so her grandfather had this just wonderful store that, you know, I’ve been to Wagon Mountain and I’ve looked at that building and I photographed it, but the photos she sent me of this general store, like in, in its prime, was just jaw dropping, like what it looked like inside. And the people that were out front and the things they were selling vitrolas and, and chairs and Navajo rugs and, and the groceries for sale. It was, it was amazing. And then her story, her family history, that doesn’t exist as far as I know. You can’t go to a book and find that, like it has to come from the family members who have these stories and the photos. And that’s a good example of that. It was a three part post. ’cause she sent me like nine just really beautiful photos of, of the general store. And you would never know. Now looking at that general store,

Bunny : (13:42)
That is so cool because I, we go through Wagon Mound all the time when we leave Santa Fe to go home to Quay County, we always, I mean, I, we don’t get on I 40, we go to Wagon Mound, and then we go to across the Canadian River Canyon to Roy and Mascaro and Head, head down the hill to Logan. But we’ve stopped a lot of times, um, in front of that store and eating our lunch, or, I mean, there are still signs in the window. It looks John like somebody locked the door and walked away. I mean, there’s still merchandise inside, not a lot, but there’s signs in the window. I’ve taken a lot of photos of, you know, women’s coats for $2. And, um, so I can’t wait to see what you do with that. That, um, that’s so interesting. And, and you’ve done a great job of recording, like you said, stories that weren’t captured anywhere else other than, um, you know, in, in somebody, maybe in somebody’s family oral history. Um, you know, and, and having lost both my parents who were born in the thirties last year, I get, you know, know there’s a lot of, a lot of stories that I heard that their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren are not gonna hear unless we save them in some way. So that’s fascinating about the Wagon Mound store.

John : (15:06)
Yeah, I just put the third of the series up two nights ago, so now I’ll post. You can go in and check ’em out. Start with number one, which I think I posted that might be in April. So you have to scroll down a bit and you can just read the history and see this just in Incre. When she sent me the email and I looked at the attachments, my jaw literally dropped. I said, where did these photos come from? These are professional. And she was like, oh, actually they are professional . I was like, wow.

Bunny : (15:32)
Wow.

John : (15:32)
That’s amazing, .

Bunny : (15:34)
Yeah. So, um, there, there’s so many different directions that we could go with this conversation because you went all over the state, right?

John : (15:45)
I did. And it’s just, this is a survey, you know, some people have said, well, you didn’t, you know, you didn’t cover this ghost town or that ghost town. It doesn’t, it’s not comprehensive. That would be, I would love to do like a 10 volume series and be comprehensive, and the northwest is a little thin. Like I would like to do more up in the northwest part of the state. Um, but I did more or less go, go everywhere. Yeah.

Bunny : (16:08)
And you started in the, um, I mean, the book starts, I don’t know where you started. I don’t know. You were working at UNM, so I suspect, I suspect it was easiest to begin in Albuquerque. Um, and I just, I wanna give people a small taste of, um, some of the beginning, you know, there you talk about the Albuquerque rail yards, which I have always. Okay, so back in my, um, back in the early days when I was raising my kids in Albuquerque, we used to hang out at El Madrid, which is the bar down at close to the, um, to those, um, what are they? Well close to the rail yards. Those are some gorgeous buildings, aren’t they?

John : (16:53)
They are incredible. And that actually is, I think one of the first three or four places I photographed when I got to New Mexico. The first place I ever photographed in New Mexico, I was passing through in 2005. So Clayton is actually the first place I ever photographed. Oh,

Bunny : (17:06)
I love, I love the Clayton piece and I have my own, yeah. Um, um, blackjack story. I can’t wait to tell you, but Oh, great.

John : (17:15)
Yeah.

Bunny : (17:15)
So you passed through Clayton?

John : (17:17)
Passed through Clayton. That was 2005. But when I moved to Albuquerque, we had a group of photographers, and I can’t believe they did this. We were able to rent the entire rail yard for a thousand dollars. So I think there were 50 of us. We all put in 20 bucks. Someone got the key to every single story of the building too. So we had access to the upper levels, and we had 24 hours from like 10:00 AM to 10:00 AM You could be there at night, you could do whatever. So it, that was amazing. And that those buildings are fantastic. I mean, they’re historic, um, in terms of just manufacturing structures, you know, they’re on par with some of the greatest manufacturing buildings in the world probably for that time period. Um, and hopefully they’re, they’re gonna be put to use now. It’s kind of been on and off. Um, you know, I hear something’s moving, something’s not moving, but I think there’s now some momentum to actually make the rail yards into something. You know, they’ve got the market out there, which is great, right? But to put some kind of a film, New Mexico film, um, department in some of the rail yard, but the lighting in those buildings, they’re, those are gems. Like, ooh,

Bunny : (18:30)
Great. Yeah, I was, I was glad that you covered that because I’ve always been fascinated by them. And then I had a young man on the podcast and we’ll put a link here who does Walking Tours in Albuquerque, and he always ends his walking tour at the market on Saturdays. So, um, so it’s, I you know, I mean, I think it’s a source of a lot of local pride that they’ve started to save what’s there, although it’s massive. It’s a lot. It’s

John : (18:57)
Huge. Yeah, I mean it’s definitely, I can see why, I mean, even just shoring up the roof on those buildings is millions of dollars, but they should, I mean, I understand why it’s difficult to save them, but I sure hope that they can, they can save some of the, the machines in particular, which is just massive. But I hope they can put them to use

Bunny : (19:20)
You also, I mean, I always consider myself, um, sort of a local expert, but you also, I want people to know that there are a lot of places that, um, you have in this book that I’ve never, ever, ever heard of. I mean, just in the beginning, um, Guadalupe, Riley Contreras, I know none. I know none of those places. Are they Socorro-ish? Where are they?

John : (19:46)
So Contreras and Riley are both Socorro-ish. So when I was working at the Vieta, those were kind of in the general area as was Anacostia, which is not in the book. If I do another book, Anacostia will be in there. And the Great Mission Church that they’re, that’s still standing there, but, um, uh, Riley is, some of these I got from Ghost Town books like Philip Varney’s, uh, practical Guide to New Mexico Ghost Towns. Um, but those two are in sro and Guadalupe is in the Rio Pero Valley, which is one of my favorite parts of the state. I love the Rio Pero Valley, that’s like the cab zone area. And Cab Zone’s a wonderful ghost town, but it’s on private property, so you have to, you gotta be able to pull some strings to get into Cab Zone, but Cab Zone peak kinda looms over the entire Rio Pergo Valley, and it is like driving onto a national park as soon as you go south of San Luis, and then you hit the dirt roads. It’s just unbelievable territory out there. And that’s where Guadalupe is, that’s where Gu uh, Guadalupe Mesa, which is the Southernmost Chaco outlier, I believe. Wow. Wonderful Mesa with Kivas up there. Really just a spectacular area.

Bunny : (21:01)
And is that on private land as well?

John : (21:03)
That is not, that’s open to the public. That’s on BLM Land, that’s Bureau of Land, very rugged. So if it’s rained, you don’t want to go out there. And then we went out there in a minivan one time. I don’t know if I’d recommend that, but you can get out there in a, you know, fairly decent like a Subaru or something like that. We get out there, but it is a little, it can be a little tricky. So you have to have to plan accordingly.

Bunny : (21:28)
And then the funny thing was, I’m, um, my husband has said to me several times that his mom mentioned the village of Claunch. Like he had a, she had a teacher at Porter who was from Claunch, and he said, my mom talked about it like it was this Oasis, like it was one of the coolest places in town. So he said, I drove down there, drove to Clinch one time, and I couldn’t even, wasn’t even completely sure that I got there, but it was so funny that in be in the beginning of the book to read about Clinch, and that’s, that’s what sort of what, what this was for me. And I think it would be, in particular for people who are, um, from New Mexico or familiar with New Mexico, it’s, there’s a whole lot of this stuff that’s like, um, um, it, it’s a memory jogger. It’s like coming home. Um, there are a lot of stories that it reminded me of that came from a stor, a little snippet of a story that I had heard. But tell me about Claunch real quick.

John : (22:27)
Well, Claunch is, out to the, the Southeastern, it’s not, I should say southeast of, of Mountain Air, more or less like it’s, it’s, um, kind of off on its own. It, you know, is a ranching area, and it would’ve been in its prime known for its singing festivals. So people would, would come and they would have these giant singing festivals. And the description that I found of, of just the food was incredible. Like the spreads that they would put together with, um, you know, everyone would, would, would bring a dish and just the number of pies alone was just kind of staggering the amount of food they would have. So they would sing all morning, then they would have some food in the afternoon, and they would sing after lunch again. And just to kind of be in Clach and to imagine how vibrant it was and how it was this center for, for this singing and, and the singing itself. I haven’t heard it, it seems like it’s a throwback to something from, um, the Deep South, which even comes, I think, from Europe called Shape Notes singing, which is kind of a very old, um, form of religious song. Um, but I’m, I’m not, I don’t really know. I haven’t talked to anybody that was ever at one of these get togethers, but I’d love to know like some of the songs they were singing and, and kind of what the scene was like. And sadly, I think, you know, there probably aren’t many people that, that were at these, even though they persisted into, I think, I wanna say into the 1960s maybe, but, um, off the top of my head. But I would love to, to know more about what those were. Like. I think the population of cqu right now is maybe seven. They do have a post office. Um, it’s also a library, but I, I think they’re down to about seven seven people.

Bunny : (24:21)
Wow. Because, yeah, because I was reading, um, that somebody even remembered something that they had done in the sixties, remembered the, the spread. Um, anyway, I’m driving to Claunch sometime soon because I gotta see it for myself. Um,

John : (24:38)
Yeah, I should say that I took that description from a, another Ghost Town book. I think I might’ve got that from, um, Ralph Looney’s Haunted Highways or something. Like he got a really good description from somebody. Yeah. So I poached that from him, I think.

Bunny : (24:51)
Okay. So we want, if anybody’s listening that has any information on, um, those singing festivals in launch anywhere else in this state, um, we wanna hear about it in the comments and I want folks to know that, um, we are coming to the end of this episode, but, um, John and I are going to, um, we’re gonna have another episode next week because we have so much more to talk about. Um, if there is a link to, um, where you can find the cities of Dust blog Facebook page. Are you on Instagram as well, John?

John : (25:26)
I am on Instagram. My Instagram stuff is, is, um, more photo heavy. So that’s not strictly New Mexico. There’s a lot of New Mexico, but it’s, it’s stuff I’m doing now in Oklahoma. It’s, it’s kind of more of a photography based thing, but there is some history in

Bunny : (25:39)
There. Well, I, want folks to be able to find you and we’ll also have a link to where you can get the book, which I, I’m gonna tell you, just order it today. It’s, it’s such a gift, , especially if you’re a fan of New Mexico. So John, thanks for taking a minute to visit with us.

John : (25:56)
Thank you. This has been great. I’ll see you next week.

Bunny : (25:59)
Thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to the I Love New Mexico podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please feel free to share it with your friends on social media or by texting or messaging or emailing them a copy of the podcast. If you have a New Mexico story that you’d like to share with us, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our email address is I love New Mexico blog@gmail.com and we are always, always looking for interesting stories about New Mexico. Subscribe, share, and write a review so that we can continue to bring you these stories about the Land of Enchantment. Thank you so much.