Jul 26, 2010

Couple resurrect long-neglected NM ghost townBy Rene RomoTimesRecordNews.com

Chloride, N.M. — A wrong turn taken by a visitor more than 30 years ago has given this Sierra County ghost town new life. Chloride was a dilapidated old mining town with a handful of full-time residents when Donald Edmund, a retired IBM manager, and his wife, Dona, arrived in town on Labor Day weekend in 1977.

Donald Edmund had been heading toward the Gila National Forest that day when he turned left at Winston, instead of right, and two miles later ended up in Chloride.

The Edmunds were smitten. They thought they had stumbled onto a deserted movie set, and Dona Edmund remarked, “If it’s for sale, we should buy it.”

Edmund quickly struck up a conversation with some of the residents, and, within hours, he had made an offer to buy a neglected property with a crumbling house. Only the building’s walls were standing, the roof had caved in, and brush was growing through the floor boards.

Edmund said he planned to burn it down and start over with a small cabin, until Chloride’s old-timers emerged to tell him about the building’s history.

That evening, his wife told him they had to save it.

They did, and so started three decades of purchasing, renovating and resurrecting a series of long-neglected buildings in Chloride.

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