The Old West

Certain images arise in my brain when I read those three words.  Some of them come courtesy of Hollywood film factories, where westerns were made by the thousands from the 1930s through the 1960s.  Regardless of whether the format was a movie or an episode for television, The Old West conjures wide open spaces with tumbleweeds, cattle grazing, cowboys and Indians.

An extremely beautiful but frequently ignored part of New Mexico fits those specifications.  We don't often hear about Wagon Mound, Maxwell, Watrous, or Clayton, but these are all places steeped in history, and are part of the geography where mountains give way to the plains, and where the wind sometimes runs roughshod over the landscape.

When photographer Steve Immel and I recently drove through Mora County to Fort Union across the plains, the vast expanses were mesmerizing.

Even through one of the doorways of the Mechanics' Corral at Ft. Union, the horizon is endless.

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image