Preface

Authors’ own photograph of Shakespeare Ghost Town, looking northwest; 12/02/2007 .

Shakespeare ghost town lies in Hidalgo County, in the southwestern corner of the State of New Mexico. The ghost town lies approximately two and a half miles southwest of the County seat, Lordsburg, which is situated on Interstate 10, about 20 miles east of the Arizona border. Despite an area of 3,446 square miles, Hidalgo County is sparsely populated. The 2010 Federal Census cited a population of just under 5,000 people, with the 2020 population having dropped to an estimated at 4,234, approximately 2,273 of that number living in Lordsburg. The southern boundary of the County forms part of the International Border between the United States and Mexico

Hidalgo County was formed in 1919, seven years after New Mexico Territory became the 47^th State, from part of Grant County, which now lies to its north and east. Until this time, the town of Shakespeare lay in Grant County.

Map (Wikipedia) showing location of Hidalgo County in the State of New Mexico

Originally founded as Ralston City in the spring of 1870, the town-site was surveyed and laid out on behalf of one of the men involved in the promotion of mining claims in the area.  These claims had been made on the series of prominent quartz ledges – ancient weathered volcanic dikes – which lie to the east, west and south of the town-site, which itself is situated in a small valley immediately to their north. These ledges and the mining claims made on them, together with Ralston City, would form the nucleus of a new mining district by the name of the Virginia Mining District. The laying out of Ralston City and the sale of lots in the town-site would be among the first of many legally dubious actions on the part of the town’s creator.

Examples of the quartz dikes/ledges around the town of Shakespeare.

Authors’ own photographs, 12/02/2007.

The town of Ralston City acquired the new name of Shakespeare towards the end of the 19^th Century at a time when a second attempt was being made to develop and work mining claims in the Virginia Mining District. It is claimed that this re-naming was done largely as an effort to disassociate the settlement from the unsavory reputation it had acquired during its days as Ralston City. However, contrary to the standard account, this was more than just a simple re-naming of the existing settlement.

Between the end of April 1879 and the beginning of August of that year, a series of land claims were made immediately to the north and east of Ralston City. All of which were shortly thereafter consolidated by their sale to an association of three men who owned many mining claims in the District. Also included in this consolidation was another area of land, 40 acres in size, which for the most part overlapped the old Ralston City town-site and the buildings standing upon it. In fact, it is these 40 acres which underscore the questionable legality of the original Ralston City town-site. The Grant County record book entry relating to these 40 acres states specifically that this land had been claimed from the public domain, that is, there had been no previous claim made upon it, at least, none that was legally recorded and recognized. So, rather than Ralston City having been given a new name, what had in fact happened was that the old town-site became incorporated into the new land claims, and it was these claims which were to be known as Shakespeare.

Today, all that remains of the old town is a cluster of some seven or eight buildings situated on either side of what was Ralston City’s Main Street. Of these, only two – the Stratford Hotel and the General Merchandise store – have provenances which are traceable to any great extent, both buildings being well documented in Grant County records. A third structure, the powder magazine, although in its original location (as shown by County Deed Book entries) is a reconstruction. Unfortunately, all that remains of the General Merchandise store are its foundations, the building having been lost to a catastrophic fire in 1997. The structure referred to as the Grant House has more modern origins, as does the name itself. As we will show, neither the currently existing building nor the name it now bears existed in the 19^th century.

Our attention was first drawn to Shakespeare by the statement that it had once boasted a population of 3,000 people; this detail was found in a brochure advertising Shakespeare Ghost Town as a place of historic interest. This seemed to be an astonishingly high figure. We made a quick comparison of the amount of land suitable for settlement in and around the Shakespeare town-site with that taken up by the town of Lordsburg, which – at the time we made the calculations – had a population of approximately 2,700 people. It just did not seem physically possible that there would have been room for 3,000 people to have dwelled at Shakespeare, or Ralston City as it was then callled.

We soon discovered that there were numerous articles written about the old town, and that it was described in just about every book published on ghost towns of the southwest. There were many variations in the details presented in each, some more marked than others, but the basic story was always the same:

– Shakespeare, under a series of former names, had developed as a settlement at the site of an old stage coach station which had been established at a spring there.

– In 1870, an extremely rich silver strike in the hills adjacent to that stage station led to the formation of the Virginia Mining District, and to the establishing and development of a booming town which was named Ralston City.

– In 1872, it was at the center of what would become known nationally as “The Great Diamond Hoax” or “The Great Diamond Swindle”, an infamous scam in which it was claimed that the hills around the town-site were a rich source of those precious stones. It was this, it is claimed, which led to a massive influx of treasure seekers, swelling the town’s population to 3,000. The hoax exposed, the town just as quickly became all but deserted until it was reborn as Shakespeare in 1879, when it prospered as a mining center and became notorious for its lawlessness.

For such a small, out of the way place, Shakespeare has provided a wealth of subject matter for many, many writers, and indeed it does merit attention as it was truly important in its time and in its own way.

Central to the majority of accounts was a man by the name of John Evensen who, supposedly, had lived at the site since the end of the Civil War, first as a station keeper for the southern overland stage line, and later becoming post master for the town. It is Evensen’s reminiscences, as recalled and written about by a later resident of the town, which form the core elements of Shakespeare’s history as it exists.

We began to read all we could find about Shakespeare – the standard texts on the history of New Mexico by Bancroft, Anderson, Prince, and Twitchell¹– as well as oral histories such as those collected by Lou Blachly². Then we discovered that there had been a series of articles written about the town by Mrs. Emma Marble Muir, and by Rita and Janaloo Hill. Emma Muir had lived in Shakespeare as a child and young woman beginning in the early 1880s, and it was she who would later write of the things that Evensen had passed on to her, as well as of her own memories of the town. Rita Hill and her husband Frank would acquire the town-site in 1936, with their daughter, Janaloo, being raised there.

These three women are regarded as being the authorities on the town’s history, and so we acquired copies of as many of those articles as were obtainable, along with other publications written by Rita and Janaloo. It was not long before we realized that, almost without exception, everything written about Ralston City/Shakespeare from 1948 onward could be sourced back to these three authors. The same was true of biographies and essays on notable figures in southwestern history whom, it was claimed, had been associated with the settlement in one way or another. It became apparent that in many instances authors were unaware of this; one author would cite another who in turn perhaps cited yet another who had first obtained his/her information from a Muir or Hill article or interview.

This led us to begin digging a little deeper, and numerous trips were made from Los Alamos, where we lived at that time, to the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives at Santa Fe. We were trying to fill in some of the gaps in the town’s recorded history, and were successful to some extent, but what we were finding was that the history of Shakespeare as presented by those three ladies bore very little resemblance to actual events as documented in official Territorial records.

A post-retirement move to Silver City gave us easy access to all of the existing records for Grant County, New Mexico; Silver City being the Grant County seat. Ralston City/Shakespeare had been located in Grant County, which was formed in 1868, up until 1919 when Hidalgo County was established. Ralston City/Shakespeare then fell within the boundaries of this new county. We were now able to make use of a wide variety of records, from mining locations and deeds, to records of marriage and Probate Court proceedings. We also made use of early Grant County newspapers, archived at the time on microfilm at Silver City Museum (now digitized and relocated to the Silver City Public Library) and at the Miller Library at Western New Mexico University in Silver City. One thing above all else was now becoming increasingly obvious – almost nothing of what was being portrayed as the history of Shakespeare could be verified by County records or documents, or by the newspapers of the time.

In Parts I and II of this work we give an account of how Shakespeare’s history developed into its present form. At the same time we make corrections to this history and provide much more accurate information on some of the buildings at Shakespeare, and the people and events most often associated with them. Much of the history of Shakespeare, as it currently exists, has its roots in “tradition”; stories handed down in the form of tales from “old timers”. There are also mongrel mixes of actual historical elements, often embellished and, in some instances, there is pure fabrication. From Part III onwards our aim is to provide a more accurate history of the settlement, using as far as possible reliable sources of information such as County, State and Territorial records, and Congressional documents. We attempt to put into perspective the place that the history of the town occupies in the broader history of southwest New Mexico and places further afield. It is a history which is relevant to that of the Southern Overland Mail Route – vital to the development and commerce of California and many other places – and that of the Southern Pacific Rail Road; to the expansion of mining in Grant County and beyond, and to the histories of towns such as El Paso, Mesilla, Deming, Lordsburg, Silver City and Tucson.

PART I – The Evolution of a Fiction

CHAPTER 1 – First Hand Accounts

Before we begin the account of Shakespeare’s true history, we first have to examine that history which currently exists. We have to take a close look at its origins – how it was born, and how it grew and evolved into its current form.

To this end we present an overview of those various articles which form the basis for this; they are presented in chronological order of publication by author so that the reader can easily follow the growth and evolution of this history. It is important here to understand how heavily these articles are relied upon, and how frequently they are used as reference materials by even the most well-known authors, and as such they have found their way into some of the most popular and most prestigious publications.

Oscar Waldo Williams 

The earliest written account (other than newspaper items) of day-to-day life at, and the inhabitants of, Shakespeare is that of Oscar Waldo Williams who spent part of 1880 and 1881 living there. Williams kept journals, and in later years he recounted various episodes from them which were published as newspaper articles and/or pamphlets. Of greatest relevance to this work are the pamphlets entitled In Old New Mexico, 1879 – 1880; After Many Years; A City of Refuge, and Letter to Mrs. John T. Muir³.   

In 1928, In Old New Mexico, 1879-1880 was published in serial form in the Lordsburg Liberal newspaper. It was subsequently reprinted as a pamphlet in the 1930s⁴. It is this work which primarily tells of Williams’ time at Shakespeare.

In the mid-1960s, many of the pamphlets, together with personal correspondences of Williams, were collated and published in book form by S. D. Myres, who provided the editorial commentary and annotation for the book Pioneer Surveyor – Frontier Lawyer: The Personal Narrative of O. W. Williams, 1877-1902.

Williams, a lawyer by profession, came to New Mexico in the spring of 1880, arriving at Silver City from Texas on April 17 of that year, and departing from there that same day for Shakespeare. He arrived at Shakespeare “At about 6:00 P.M.” on April 17, 1880⁵. 

Myres states that Williams remained in southwestern New Mexico for a period of 15 months, returning to Dallas, Texas, in the winter of 1881. It is important to note that Williams did not spend all of those 15 months in Shakespeare, nor even in the Virginia Mining District. In May of 1880, he spent some time prospecting near the Mexican border and in the Tinaja Mountains (the Victorio Mountains), south of present day Gage. In July of that year, he was in Silver City for a brief period, and at Carrizalillo Springs⁶.  By July 20, 1881, he was resident at Silver City, having applied for and been appointed to the position of Deputy Postmaster for that town. It is uncertain how much time Williams spent actually in Shakespeare; even so, he was very familiar with some of the people associated with Shakespeare at that time.

Although of great value to anyone interested in the history of southwestern New Mexico, Williams’ memoirs do come with a caveat in as much as there are some historical inaccuracies in his writings, albeit minor ones. There is, however, one major flaw in the work; this arises not from Williams himself, but rather from Myres’ work as editor and annotator.

Emma Marble Muir

This leads us into a discussion of the work of the next people to chronicle some of the history of Shakespeare – Mrs. William H. Marble and, later, her daughter Emma.

Mrs. W. H. (Jane) Marble and her two daughters, Emma and Ella, arrived in Lordsburg from Virginia City, Nevada, in 1882. Historian Marc Simmons says that they arrived on August 7 of that year⁷. They had come to join Mr. Marble who had been at Shakespeare since 1880.  Emma, the older of the two girls, was about 8 years old at the time⁸. The reunited family took up residence at Shakespeare.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Mrs. Jane Marble wrote some local interest pieces for the Lordsburg Liberal newspaper. For example, a brief overview of the history of Pyramid City⁹, and a piece on the arrival at Lordsburg of the first Southern Pacific passenger train from the west  in October of 1880 – an event that took place almost a full two years before Mrs. Marble and the girls arrived¹⁰. Much of the writing is of a highly romanticized style, as was the fashion of the day.

Emma also contributed some pieces to the Liberal, by which time she was Mrs. Emma Marble Muir, having married local rancher John T. Muir in 1899. It was Emma who would come to be recognized and lauded as the first historian of Shakespeare and Lordsburg.

In 1948, over 65 years after her arrival at Lordsburg, she wrote several articles centered on events at Shakespeare during the 19^th century. Four of these articles appeared in the New Mexico Magazine in July, August, September and October of 1948 (The Stage To Shakespeare, The Great Diamond Swindle, Bonanza Days At Shakespeare, Shakespeare Becomes A Ghost Town) with two more appearing in the same publication in May of 1949 and October of 1952 (The Pony Express, The First Militia.)

Emma was a child of about 8 when she arrived at Shakespeare in 1882; she would still be only a young girl of about 14 when John Evensen died six years later in April of 1888. It was Emma who was the “later resident of the town” referred to earlier, with whom Evensen shared his memories and stories. It would be another 60 years before the first of her articles was published in the New Mexico Magazine.¹¹

Bonanza Days At Shakespeare is the title of the third in the series of four articles written by Mrs. Muir for the New Mexico Magazine in 1948. In it, she draws very heavily on the memoirs of O. W. Williams, sometimes quoting him directly, but very often paraphrasing his words.

In Emma’s writing, Williams’ accounts are blurred and distorted, locations are changed, and elements not found in Williams’ original descriptions are added in. Those who may not have read Williams’ memoirs may easily be left with the impression that Emma is writing of her own personal reminiscences. The following are some examples from Bonanza Days.

Emma writes that when O. W. Williams arrived at Shakespeare “the population then was about 150, and it was well rooted and growing.”¹² The figure of 150 is indeed cited by Williams; he states that when he arrived “there were probably one hundred and fifty men, women and children living in the place.” He makes no mention of it being “well rooted and growing”, rather he makes it clear that this was a falsely inflated figure “due to the fact that the Indians were raiding that part of the country and all of the whites had gathered for safety in the town.” In fact, he goes on to say that just one month later, the Indian crisis having subsided, the town’s population was “a scant hundred” and “composed almost entirely of grown men.” ¹³

A second example occurs when Emma relates the tale of a Shakespeare resident named Victor Gibson. Emma describes how Gibson “rode into town” [Shakespeare], and how he had been:

hoping to live to reach Shakespeare, obsessed with yearnings for Roxy Jay’s beer, which at least was cooler than the sun.¹⁴

Compare this with Williams’ original and first-hand account:

I met him … on the old stage road from Soldier’s Farewell, about fifteen miles out coming back to Shakespeare … When in hearing distance he called out for water. ¹⁵

Another example is found in her description of how stage coach passengers arrived at the “Grant House” where they were welcomed by:

The freckle-faced, sandy-haired Bean Bellied Smith, and where prospectors clamored to show their ‘specimens’ to incoming passengers, hoping for the quicker return of sale than the slow yield of pick and shovel on their claims.¹⁶

Again, compare this with Williams’ own words:

[The stage] stopped at the door of a small one-story adobe hotel. A rather small man of about thirty-five years, sandy haired, blue eyed and freckle faced, came out and introduced himself as Fred Smith, the proprietor of the hotel.¹⁷

The Hotel was the center of interest when a stage from the East or the West came to a halt in front of its door. Every passenger was a possible customer for some mining claim, and the prospectors were there waiting, loaded with specimens of ore backed by the assayers certificates and ready to seize upon a victim.¹⁸

The similarities are plain to see, but there is one crucial difference. Williams makes no mention of the hotel having any specific name, while Emma states categorically that the stage coaches arrived at the “Grant House”. This was a name first used by Emma in the earliest of her New Mexico Magazine contributions – The Stage To Shakespeare. The “Grant House” plays a central role in the existing history of Shakespeare, being the scene of some of the most significant events to take place at the town. Because of the importance attributed to it, a separate section will be dedicated to a discussion of the building later in this work.

There are many other similar examples found throughout Emma’s work. In Shakespeare Becomes A Ghost Town, she relates yet another incident which had originally been written about by Williams. She tells of how:

The rustler, Charlie Williams, rode into camp [Shakespeare] one day with a bad gunshot wound [and] his friends laid him on a bed of boards with only a blanket beneath him.¹⁹

A reading of Williams’ first-hand account, tells us that the wounded Charlie Williams was in fact cared for in Silver City. Williams writes that while on a visit to Silver City he learned that:

A man commonly known as Charlie Williams had been badly wounded and was then under medical care in town.²⁰

S. D. Myres – Editor and Annotator of the Memoirs of O. W. Williams

Towards the end of the section in which we discussed the memoirs of O. W. Williams, a comment was made regarding a major misstep taken by Myres in his editing and annotating of those memoirs. That misstep was his reliance on Emma Muir’s New Mexico Magazine articles – including those which echo Williams’ own words – both as reference materials and as supplemental commentary for Williams’ accounts.

In his notes to Part II,²¹ Myres references the New Mexico Magazine series of four Muir articles on 12 occasions. Describing them as “an excellent account of Shakespeare”²². He appears unaware of the fact that a good number of Emma’s words are almost identical to Williams’ original writing; neither does he draw any attention to the discrepancies between Williams’ accounts and those of Emma, as for example in the two versions of the Victor Gibson anecdote.

There is one more inhabitant of Ralston City/ Shakespeare who must be included in this section, and that is John Evensen – the man who shared his memories of the early days at Ralston City with Emma, memories which she later incorporated into her writing and which were subsequently utilized by the Hills. In fact, Evensen is a figure crucial to the history of the settlement, with the claim being that he was living at the site even before Ralston City came into existence. Because he is so central to the writing of both Emma Marble Muir and the Hills, we will devote a separate section to him. This will be the upcoming second installment, that is, Chapter Two of Part One.

©2007-2023 Jim & Erica Parson

REFERENCES FOR THIS INSTALLMENT:

Documents located at the Grant County Clerk’s Office (1400 Hwy. 180 E. Silver City, NM 88061) are denoted by (GCCO).

Documents located at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (1205 Camino Carlos Rey, Santa Fe, NM 87507) are denoted by (NMSRCA).

¹The Works Of Hubert Howe Bancroft. Volume XVII. History Of Arizona And New Mexico 1530-1888.  San Francisco: The History Company, Publishers. 1889.

²Anderson, George B. History Of New Mexico. Its Resources And People. Illustrated. Los Angeles, Chicago, New York: Pacific States Publishing Co. 1907

³Prince, L. Bradford. A Concise History of New Mexico. Cedar Rapids, Iowa: The Torch Press. 1912

⁴Twitchell, Ralph Emerson, Esq. The Leading Facts of New Mexican History (1917). Cedar Rapids, Iowa: The Torch Press.

 ⁵Lou Blachly Papers. Center For Southwest Research, General Library, University of New Mexico. 

 ⁶Myres, S. D. (Editor) Pioneer Surveyor – Frontier Lawyer. The Personal Narrative of O. W. Williams, 1877 – 1902. (1968, Second Edition). The University Of Texas At El Paso: Texas Western Press. Page 331. Hereafter referred to as Myres (1968).

 ⁷Ibid.

 ⁸Ibid. Pages 116-120.

 ⁹Two miles west of Hermanas, New Mexico, on NM Highway 9, in Township 28 South, Range 11 West, Section 29. The spring is also known as Hermanas Spring.

¹⁰ Simmons, “Growing Up A Girl In NM Territory”, Santa Fe New Mexican. Oct. 11, 2008. 

 ¹¹The 1880 Federal Census for Virginia City, Storey County, Nevada gives Emma’s age as 6, and her estimated year of birth as 1874. She was born in Nevada. The same Census gives the age of her father, William H. Marble, as 41, his estimated year of birth as 1839, and Michigan as his birthplace. He gives his occupation as “laborer”. The city of Lordsburg Bicentennial (1776 – 1976) commemorative publication In The Shadow Of The Pyramids states that William Marble came to Shakespeare before the Southern Pacific Rail Road reached its eastern terminus at El Paso. (Page 30).

 ¹²Located approximately 5 miles south of Shakespeare in Gore Canyon.

 ¹³The Day New Mexico’s First Train Came Through Lordsburg. In The Shadow Of The Pyramids. Bicentennial (1776 – 1976) publication. City of Lordsburg Bicentennial Committee. Pages 20-21. This article had first been published in the Lordsburg Liberal on November 14, 1947.

 ¹⁴The Stage To Shakespeare. New Mexico Magazine, July 1948, Pages 25-27, 52, 59. Hereafter referred to as Muir (July 1948).

¹⁵The Great Diamond Swindle. New Mexico Magazine, August 1948, Pages 26-27, 46-49. Hereafter referred to as Muir (August 1948).

¹⁶Bonanza Days At Shakespeare. New Mexico Magazine, September 1948, Pages 26-27, 41, 43, 45-46. Hereafter referred to as Muir (September 1948).

¹⁷Shakespeare Becomes A Ghost Town. New Mexico Magazine, October 1948, Pages 25-27, 47-51. Hereafter referred to as Muir (October 1948).

¹⁸The Pony Express. New Mexico Magazine, May 1949, Pages 14-15, 44-46. Hereafter referred to as Muir (May 1949).

¹⁹The First Militia. New Mexico Magazine, October 1952, Pages 19, 41, 44-46. Hereafter referred to as Muir (October 1952).

 ²⁰Muir (September 1948). Page 26.

 ²¹Myres (1968). Page 121.

 ²²Muir (September 1948). Page 45.