Kingston covered in 1926 American Mercury magazine

The American Mercury edited by H.L. Mencken, September 1926 carried a story about Kingston by Duncan Aikman.  It's a wonderful look into a town that once thronged with as many as 1,500 people--miners and attending businesspeople--that had dwindled to a mere 300 people when Aikman visited.

Aikman leads with a description of a mansion and grizzled miner hanging on to hope of what might still come -- a good grubstake. No names are given, but the descriptions are vivid.

Aikman was a prodigious writer in the day. He wrote a biography of Calamity Jane and many magazine articles on culture and on politics in Latin America. The latter piqued the interest of the FDR administration; Aikman was apparently subjected to wiretaps.

You can read his Kingston story, "He Sentimentalists' by clicking here.

Kingston in Myth and Memory

By Craig Springer

To see the old photos, you can tell that Kingston was a busy place for a time. But that time didn’t last.

Set on the east flank of the Black Range in western Sierra County, Kingston is today a relic of the distant past. On some maps, it’s a ghost town. But everyone living there is alive--engaged in business, creating art, active in retirement. It’s an old mining town at the head of the Middle Percha Creek. From a distance, the Black Range looks the part of a long purple armada. The 10,000-foot Hillsboro Peak stands like a silent sentinel above. Vision through the gray distant haze over steep folded mountainsides becomes clearer as you get closer. And so it is with the myth of Kingston being New Mexico’s largest territorial town.

Kingston had its start with the discovery of silver. In the early 1880s, prospectors from nearby Hillsboro, Lake Valley, and Georgetown worked under the continual threat of Apache depredations as they scratched dirt for signs of precious metal. Like most of the Black Range, the surface is more rock than soil. It’s the rock that drew attention; it was rich with silver ore. In October 1882, James Porter Parker, a civil engineer and former Confederate Lt. Colonel and General George Custer’s roommate at West Point platted a townsite. The portly fellow became Sierra County’s first Assessor two years later.

Kingston topped out at about 1,500 residents ca. 1893. Starr Peak and the Caballo Mountain are seen in the distance. The stone church stands in the right margin of the photo. Photo Black Range Museum

Kingston was to get bigger. A Methodist minister in January 1888 reported on the progress of a stone church to serve Kingston’s 1,000 residents. There was work to do: “If I could take the reader along the main street on our way to a school-house for evening service, he would see the typical mining town in all its wickedness.” The minister lamented the gambling, smoking, drinking and a woman singing in soprano at the back of a hall. 

The town grew bigger yet -- but only in myth. In travel guides, state tourism office promotions, and academic writings by professional historians, you will see a phrase repeated so often that a myth has turned to “memory,” that Kingston once exceeded 7,000 residents and was the largest town in New Mexico. It’s even on Forest Service signs. Seven thousand is about as big as Truth or Consequences is today. And it’s a bogus number, usually attended by an equally bogus count of the number of newspapers that kept shop in town: three.


One is led to think that three publications competed for readers and advertisers. Actually, 10 newspapers published in Kingston from 1883-1893, but all were very short-lived titles except the Weekly Shaft. From April 1885 to March 1886 during Kingston's supposed prime the town lacked a newspaper. The Mines of Kingston, a March 1883 prospectus on the then five-month-old town of Kingston, was published by the weekly Tribune. Editor and publisher Charles W. Greene would pull up stakes and move the newspaper to Deming by Kingston's first birthday.

The 1890 census counted 1,449 people in Kingston; 3,785 lived in Albuquerque--more than all of Sierra County’s 1890 population. A Territorial Bureau of Immigration publication printed in 1894 reported on the condition and prospects of the territory stating that, “The town itself is well situated, has a public water service, churches and schools, two good hotels, and a pushing, go-ahead population of about 1,000 persons.”

Those prospects may had already changed by the time the Bureau publication hit the streets. The economic Panic of 1893 and with silver prices going south, Kingston was all but abandoned. 

How such a myth got started is a bit of a mystery. The earliest writing on an inflated town size, a purported 5,000 people, that I found was in Log of a Timber Cruiser, published 22 years after Kingston was abandoned. 


Then, in August 1936, WPA writer Clay Vaden interviewed Sadie Orchard in Hillsboro. Orchard told Vaden that Kingston thronged with 5,000 residents in 1886. You can read what Vaden documented from Orchard in the Library of Congress holdings.


That same year Sierra County pioneer, James McKenna published Black Range Tales and upped the Kingston population by 2,000. And so it’s become gospel since, that Kingston was New Mexico’s largest town. 


The entire population of Sierra County didn’t reach 7,000 until 1950, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.


Craig Springer and his wife Felicia own the historic George T. and Ninette Stocker Miller home in Hillsboro. He's a professional writer in Santa Fe County.

Panic of 1893

By Brandon Dupont, Ph.D.
While it was later eclipsed by the 1907 financial crisis and the Great Depression, the Panic of 1893 remains one of the most severe financial crises in American history. Its impact on Sierra County, New Mexico was lasting. Silver mining towns, like Kingston, were all but abandoned in short order.

This 1895 poster for the Broadway melodrama, The War of Wealth, depicted the national economic crisis, and the run on banks that effected lasting change at Kingston and silver mines in the West.  Library of Congress.

The panic, and the economic depression that followed through the year 1897, had wide-ranging effects on the national economy, including an unemployment rate that remained stubbornly above 10 percent for five consecutive years. Its impact goes beyond just the widespread bank runs and the negative effects of high, persistent unemployment; perhaps more importantly, the crisis brought the decades-long debate over the bimetallic standard to the forefront, culminating most colorfully in William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 presidential campaign. Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech ended with a flourish:  "Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

Named for U.S. Mint engraver,
George Morgan, the Morgan Dollar was
common currency in 1890. U.S. Mint.

Since bimetallism was an important factor in 1893, as evident in Bryan’s speech, a quick review should be helpful. Starting with the first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the U.S. economy had been on a bimetallic standard. Under that standard, U.S. currency was equivalent to a certain quantity of gold and a certain quantity of silver; initially, the prices were set such that 15 ounces of silver were equivalent to 1 ounce of gold. Because of deviations between this official price and the world market price, only one of the two metals would circulate in the American economy at any given time. From Hamilton’s 1792 coinage act until 1834, silver was in circulation because gold was undervalued at its official price; therefore, it made economic sense to export gold coins to Europe, exchange them there for silver, then import that silver back into the U.S. This all changed in 1834 when the official ratio was changed to 16 ounces of silver per 1 ounce of gold, which then made gold overvalued so that it slowly began to replace silver, which was either hoarded or exported. Starting in 1834, the U.S. moved to a currency system where gold was the circulating coin. Silver dollars remained largely out of circulation from 1836 until the 1873 coinage act. 

At first, the 1873 act seemed only to legally recognize the demonetization of silver dollars; after all, they had not been used since 1834. Even the representatives of the silver interests in Congress did not object to the legislation. But in a curious twist of history, what was thought to be mere legislative housekeeping quickly became a highly politically charged issue. Silver prices had started to fall in 1872, but the decline accelerated shortly after the 1873 legislation mostly because of increased silver supplies from new mines in the American West. Because of the falling silver prices, U.S. silver producers had an incentive to bring silver to the U.S. mint for coinage. They did just that only to discover that they were legally barred from having silver coined by the 1873 legislation, which they quickly dubbed the “crime of ’73.” 

Kingston came to life in fall of 1882. Its roughly 1,200 residents circa 1890 were tucked in the narrow Middle Percha Creek canyon captured on a glass-plate negative here by photographer J.C. Burge. Photo Black Range Museum

By 1878, the silver interests were successful in getting Congress to pass the first of two significant silver purchase laws, the Bland-Allison Act, but the pro-silver interests were not satisfied because that legislation did not provide for unlimited coinage of silver. The second significant Congressional action did not come until the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act. This legislation also failed to provide for unlimited silver coinage but it did increase the amount of silver purchased every month by the U.S. government, and by then, silver mining was in full-swing in Kingston and Lake Valley, New Mexico.

All of this led to considerable uncertainty by the early 1890s as to whether the U.S. economy could remain on the gold standard. Adding to the problems, the Treasury’s gold reserves had fallen to dangerously low levels by 1893; this was exacerbated by news that the Treasury would stop redeeming the notes issued under the 1890 act in gold if the reserves fell below $100 million. 

Lots of flags waved in Kingston at the patriotic event circa 1890. Only the Percha Bank building remains today, and is a beautiful museum.  The bank incorporated in 1886 by President McKinley pal, Jefferson Raynolds, and boasted holding $30,000 in cash in 1890. J.C. Burge photo courtesy Black Range Museum.

These long-running issues of gold versus silver certainly played a role in the 1893 crisis but there were many other contributing factors. Important among them were significant distress in western agricultural markets caused by declining crop yields and falling agricultural prices. Another factor in the depression was the slowdown in railroad construction that had peaked in the railroad boom of 1880s. Moreover, American exports to Europe had dropped as European economies struggled. 

The Percha Bank building stands on the left, looking west, in 1919. The Panic of 1893 devastated silver mining towns throughout the West. Kingston produced $6.2 million in mineral wealth, mostly silver, according to a 1904 report. Photo courtesy Black Range Museum.

The crisis culminated in the summer of 1893 with widespread bank runs. Of course, this was long before the introduction of federal deposit insurance (that does not arrive until 1933), so any risk that a depositor’s bank would fail tended to immediately lead that depositor to withdraw funds from the bank. Bank runs, wherein large numbers of depositors did just this, spread rapidly and, while they occurred nationwide, they were concentrated in the western states. In total, nearly 500 banks in the U.S. suspended their operations at least for a time to weather the storm. The economy officially went into recession in January 1893, a few months prior to the waves of bank runs that hit that summer. The affect was felt locally -- Kingston being a silver town was abandoned and never rebounded. After a brief economic recovery in late 1894 and into 1895, the economy plunged back into recession by the end of 1895 and would not officially climb out of recession until the summer of 1897. 

A legacy of the 1893 crisis remains with us today: the National Monetary Commission, whose work and recommendations led to the formation of the Federal Reserve System in 1914, noted in its report on financial crises that, while the causes of crises were varied, the method of handling them was simple. There should be, the report concluded, a reserve of lending power because the ability to increase loans from a central reserve to meet the demands of depositors “would have allayed every panic since the establishment of the national banking system [in 1864].”  Locally, the hillsides around Kingston are pocked with the work of expectant silver prospectors in what they left behind.

Happy Independence Day

Hillsboro has been known to throw a good party on the Fourth of July, and today will no doubt be the same. Here's a look at few images captured early in the 20th Century.

This 1919 Deming Headlight makes an invitation to Luna County residents to come visit. See bottom-right column. Courtesy Patti Nunn

Without a rodeo arena, cars parked along the Percha afforded a place to watch cowboys put on a show, in 1920. Courtesy Patti Nunn

Who needs fireworks when you have this? This image was taken moments apart from the previous image. Courtesy Patti Nunn

Near the present-day post office, folks gathered round to watch a drilling contest--miners competing bust rock faster than the other guy. Courtesy Patti Nunn

Meet the Press - Kingston

by Craig Springer
Any reader of area history is familiar with this phrase, or a derivation: "It had 7,000 people, 22 saloons, 14 grocers, and three newspapers." We speak of Kingston. Ghost Towns and Mining Camps by James and Barbara Sherman, exemplifies the snapshot ghost town profiles that pack in the interesting and arcane fun facts of a rip-roaring past in a small printed space. The Shermans even name the three periodicals. Theirs is the story twice-told. But we're not telling it again here, because the Shermans had it wrong: Kingston had 10 newspapers!

Meet the Kingston press by order of appearance--and disappearance. Also included in this list is the frequency of publication. This is thanks in large part to the University of New Mexico Press book, The Territorial Press of New Mexico, by Porter Stratton.

While prospectors were scratching around on the east face of the Black Range as early as the late 1870s, industry had picked up by 1880. In September 1882, the town of Kingston was platted. The boom was on. According to one early observer, writing for the Engineering and Mining Journal who was there in November 1882, a printing press had already lumbered into town. That press seems probable to have belonged to this first Kingston newspaper on our list.

January - October 1883. Weekly. Tribune. Moved to Deming.

January - November 1884. Weekly. Clipper. Renamed the Sierra County Advocate.

November 1884 - March 1885. Weekly. Sierra County Advocate. Moved to Hillsboro March 1885.

April 1885 - March 1886. No publications per Stratton.

April  - July 1886. Weekly. Percha Shaft. Merged with Ledge summer 1886.

July 1886. Daily. Ledge.  Merged with Percha Shaft summer 1886.

July - December 1886. Weekly. Percha Shaft and Ledge. Became Daily Shaft.

December 1886 - March 1887. Daily. Daily Shaft. Became Weekly Shaft.

December 1886 - February 1887. Weekly. Black Range Herald. Combined with Sierra County Advocate.

Fall of 1888. Weekly. Sierra County Democrat. An election campaign publication.

March 1887 - December 1893. Weekly. Weekly Shaft. Moved to Rincon.

Newspapers came and went in Kingston. Based on Stratton, 10 newspapers called Kingston home but never did any of them compete with one another for any length. Only one periodical had any lasting life, the Weekly Shaft. It too found its end as did much of the boom town with the Panic of 1893.

Comparably, in the same time period (1883 - 1893) Albuquerque with a population of 3,785 in 1890 had 16 daily and weekly English-only newspapers, according to Stratton, many competing with one another for readers. Also it's worth noting that during the oft-reported heyday of Kingston, c. 1885 - 86 where some writers say Kingston reached its peak population, that no newspaper published in Kingston for an entire 12 months.

It begs the question, what was different with Kingston? Did Stratton miss something? Email or comment with your ideas.