A Place of Plenty

A Place of Plenty. . Long before the arrival of Europeans, Mescalero Apaches made their home amongst the tall trees of the Sacramento Mountains; a place they named Piscah, "place of plenty.", At the turn of the twentieth century, the need for lumber to construct the western railroads and mines was great. The trees cut here were used for mine timbers and railroad ties across the Southwest., Settlers seeking to exploit valuable timber resources were attracted to the region. Their endeavors to live and work the rugged hillsides have had an enduring impact on the land. Imagine standing amid the old-growth trees of the Sacramento Mountains which once had an average diameter of two feet. By the 1940s these large trees were nearly all logged. Now, while visiting the trestle and its wooded surroundings you can observe the secondary forest regrowth., Harvesting timber required a lot of labor. Men and women of different ages and ethnicity, including Native Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, and European settlers worked in the mountains, either as camp caretakers or out in the forest. Workers felled trees in the mountains and horses and mules pulled the timber down log chutes to the railroad. There log-loaders loaded it onto railroad cars to be transported down the A&SM Railroad to the sawmill in Alamogordo., Captions , Images courtesy of Tularosa Basin HistoricalSociety