By PATRICIA MELESKI
TIERRA ENCANTADA has many ghost towns. Given a little knowledge of the state’s history, even the most awed visitor can generally determine the reason for the existence of one of these abandoned communities-gold was discovered nearby, or the railroad had a loading spur there, or it was a stage stop on the Butterfield or Santa Fe Trail, or its marked a fording place on the Rio Grande..
But Trementina seems to be a mystery unto itself. Located on a rocky ridge fifty miles east of Las Vegas, New Mexico, near State Road 65, it lends few clues s to it reason for being. The name Trementina is a Spanish word meaning “turpentine,” which apparently was obtained from the pinon trees in the area. Could pine oil have been the industry which maintained the community? None of the ruins suggest an office, or shipping and storage buildings. The railroad is far away. Main roads are far away.
Possibly a farming community, the visitor muses. Yes, there is the tiny valley of Trementina Creek below the settlement. But all those ridges covered with pinon, cedar, cholla, bear grass, mesquite, and above all, the formidable rocks-all surrounded by the familiar mesas-not very much usable farmland to support a community.
Well, then, meditates the viewer, since there is no main travel route, no railroad, no mine, no industry, no farmland, perhaps religion was the mainstay. There is the church, obviously not Roman Catholic as in so many little outlying settlements in the state. A Protestant mission established here in the middle of nowhere? On the far ridge, away from the town proper, are the ruined walls of an apartment-like dwelling, each room having its own entrance. Did missionaries abide here, serving the faithful?
The strange graves nearby pique the viewer’s curiosity. It is unusual to see above-ground burials in New Mexico, neat monoliths, with decorations on the tops strangely suggestive of Indian art-suns, clouds, animals-crudely designed with red paint. There are only a few of these odd graves scattered around the apartment dwellings. With a town of this size, surely there were other deaths, yet there is no apparent graveyard. If religious leaders lived here, why did they build a home so far from the church which itself lies in the center of town? And supposing religion were the centrality of Trementina, still there must be economic support.
When the reason for its existence becomes established, then one can perhaps determine when Trementina was built, and why it was abandoned. There are probably many reasons why it became a ghost town…speculatively, an epidemic, economic depression, or the death of religious leaders.
So there is another ghost town. The rock walls, a few remaining vegas, a rusting car, a chair losing its padding to the wind, a sagging gate, the church, the strange graves, and to complete the picture, the silent visitor who wonders-why? Who can answer that why? Perhaps no one, for perhaps nothing of Trementina survives in the lies of men of the Southwest except what remains on the rocky, wind-swept hill with its ever-so-slight modulation.