Wallace and Other New Mexican Ghost Towns

 New Mexico is dotted with ghost towns. 

Some were mining towns that died when the mines either closed or ran out of ore. Dawson, was a coal mining town until the mines shut down in the 1950s. Now all that is left is a haunting cemetery that remembers the 383 men who lost their lives in mine explosions in 1913 and 1923. Lake Valley was a silver mining boomtown and White Oaks was a hub for those who sought to make their fortune in gold. Ancho was a center of brick production, providing most of the bricks San Francisco needed to rebuild after its disastrous 1906 earthquake. 

Others, like Glenrio and Budville, catered to the traffic on old Route 66 and died when I-40 came through. 

Steins, New Mexico

And before the highways came through, there were  railroad towns that blossomed as the rails were being laid, only to whither when the work was done. Steins, Montoya, and Wallace are such towns. 

Wallace was a town on Indian land, along the Galisteo river three miles east of Santo Domingo Pueblo. It was created to be a distributing center for merchandise in the San Pedro mining district, serving Cerillos, Golden, Madrid, Hagan, and many other little sites that are now forgotten.   The first house was built in January 1880. By the end of 1882 there were 600 inhabitants, and the town boasted a Fred Harvey dining room, a post office, hotel, and a school that was in use seven days a week because it served as the dance hall on Saturdays and the church on Sundays. Two years later, the population was over 1,000. In its heyday, the town boasted several general stores, carpenters and blacksmiths, two chinese laundries, a pool hall, and numerous saloons. 

Even from its outset, Wallace was a wide open town known for its drinking, gambling, murder, wild gunfights, and lynchings. One of its most infamous residents was J.H. Conway, also known as Ellis Conway, O.L. Hale. Although he was a wanted man, for murder, forgery, and jail escape, he managed to get himself elected as Wallace's Justice of the Peace. While serving as a judge, he also ran a gambling ring that was known to resort to robbery when they did not win through cards. 

But all good and not so good things must come to an end. Wallace's boom turned to bust soon after the new millenium began. One reason is that Santo Domingo Pueblo was not happy having such a rowdy town occupying its land. The railroad removed its shops and roundhouse, leading to the demise of the boarding house. Many railroad families moved away. By 1906, the town's name was changed to Thornton, perhaps in an attempt to distance itself from its infamous past. In 1932, a new highway was cut between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, bypassing the town, now known as Domingo, by four miles.

We would know almost nothing at all about Wallace if it were not for Father Stanley, a priest who wrote small histories of New Mexico's towns. His book The Wallace (New Mexico) Story was published in October of 1962. By then, the town had become little more than a trading post used by the local Indians and visited by tourists wishing to see an old-time trading post. Stanley hoped that Fred Thompson, the owner of the post, would reconstruct part of the old town and make it into a tourist attraction, but that did not happen.

Today, Wallace is, I believe, completely gone. The site remains on pueblo land and is difficult to get to since Santo Domingo blocked off the old road between Madera and Algodones during the COVID pandemic. Looking at online satellite land maps, the land looks barren. 

Gone, but not completely forgotten. When a copy of Father Stanley's book came into my possession, his story about Judge Conway fired my imagination, and The Winding Road to Wallace, my Western Romance, was born. Although my main characters are purely my invention, Conway is in my book, as are some of the merchants and lawmen that Stanley mentions. A little bit of this ghost town has risen from oblivion to ride again. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff lives in the hills above Madera, another of New Mexico's ghost towns. The Winding Road to Wallace will be published in May, 2026. It will be Jennifer's 16th published book.