Ghost Hunting in New Mexico

© Adam Sievering / RumBum.com

Cuervo, NM. Ghost Town, USA.

Cuervo, New Mexico resembles a town straight out of a 70’s B-grade horror flick. Sunlight streams through the skletons of delapidated homes and shops. Crumbled walls bare their ruined interiors, stripped of drywall and scattered with splintered debris. Knee-high weeds sprout from cracked walkways and wrap themselves around rusted vehicles half-sunken into the earth. Doors swing open and closed on their squeaky hinges and insects buzz so loudly that they sound like electric saws.

It's the kind of town that drivers pass on a daily basis but never notice. It lies just off of Interstate 40 in plain view, yet it's is so easy to pass by that it is practically nonexistent, all but deleted from the landscape, in favor of the highway, the town, the civilization just beyond the horizon.

En route to Mesa Verde and Aztec Ruins, I'd driven past Cuervo without even noticing it. I had never heard of it until I stopped by the Santa Fe Brewing Company later that day and found an ancient-looking book called Ghost Towns of the West that gave detailed descriptions of over fifty abandoned towns within two hundred miles of where I was drinking my beer. Cuervo was one of them.

I decided to backtrack and check it out.

As it takes shape in the desolate landscape, it seems to be more of a mirage than a town; faded, decrepit buildings strangely sprouting in the middle of the desert terrain. You can rub your eyes, trying to shake the image as if it were a mirage, but what you see is not a figment of your imagination. The ghost town of Cuervo, meaning “crow” in Spanish, is as real as anything.

The place gives off eerie vibes so strong that it wouldn’t be hard to stomp the gas and pass it by, never to return. It is best described as a quaint little town subjected to years of weather and time’s abuse. In its prime, it would be easy to imagine Andy Griffith patrolling the streets, children playing in the schoolyard and elderly folks congregated on their porches in rocking chairs. Now, with the children moved away and Andy Griffith long dead, the place looks as though a bomb has been detonated dead smack in the center of town.

The entire time I spent exploring the ruins, I was under the distinct impression that I was being watched. Not just watched by people passing by on the interstate, either. I felt as though someone was secretly watching my every move from a distance. I was troubled by the thought that this someone could be a highway patrol officer already drafting a trespassing ticket for me, or even worse, some violent psychopath driven into hiding. But somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that it was none of the above, but rather the eyes of those who once lived there preying on me.

It is a creepy feeling, being spied on from the eyes of the dead. But it is also a reminder that though our bodies fade with time, what we leave behind makes us eternal in some way. I never knew the inhabitants of Cuervo, but I know that they existed and found it interesting to speculate on what sort of lives they led given the clues they left behind. I raise my glass in honor of them and the little ghost town they left for wayward road trippers to explore.