Shakespeare, New Mexico Ghost Town

A small spring in the desert sustained animals, then the Apache, and finally California-bound settlers. The Butterfield Overland Stage Company designated a stage stop at the water hole, then known as Mexican Springs, on its 1858 route linking St. Louis and San Francisco.

The place was renamed Grant in honor of the Union general. Subsequently, a county of the same name was formed.

A government surveyor named Brown showed William C. Ralston, founder of the Bank of California, some silver samples he had discovered in the Pyramid Mountains near Grant. Within a few weeks, Ralston had staked enormous mining claims, the town began filling with anxious prospectors, and the name changed to Ralston City.

Within two years the population swelled to three thousand. But the silver deposits were not what they had been predicted to be.

Ralston City was a complete Ghost Town by 1875, with stage station operator John Evensen remaining as the sole inhabitant.

Times were so bad for Evensen that he added an adobe saloon to the Grant House stage stop and dining hall to try to attract more business because daily stage routes had been cut back to twice weekly.

Colonel William Boyle and his brother, General John Boyle, came to the Pyramid Mountains in the late 1870s. They honored their native England by forming, in 1879, the Shakespeare Mining Company, filing claims for many neglected silver mines near Ralston City. They changed the name to Shakespeare. Main Street became Avon Avenue; the hotel, built using the walls of the old Confederate fort, was named Stratford.

The Silver Panic of 1893 turned Shakespeare into a Ghost Town. Lordsburg, on the other hand, had a railroad to sustain it and could claim a thousand residents.

Life returned to Shakespeare in 1914 when a spur line was sent up Avon Avenue to the mines at Valedon, and Shakespeare's buildings opened to entertain miners. Finally, the Depression ended Shakespeare's life as a blow-off town.