Treasure in Coyote Canyon?

This week in my Grey Matters column, I find that there may be gold and silver in those mountains — Manzano Mountains and right beneath Manzano base. Are gold and silver connected to UFO sightings? I probably don’t know the answer to that, but I muse about it a bit anyway.

Billy the Kid-Treasure Hunter?

No one man has captured the fascination of so many New Mexicans than Billy the Kid. Although he’s been dead for well over a hundred years his life is still fiercely debated and tall tales still abound about how the Kid supposedly killed a man for each year of his life and even how he once left two of his guns in the fork of an oak tree that has since grown with them in its center. The most popular tales about the Kid, however, are the ones that insist that he wasn’t killed on the night of July 14, 1881, in Fort Sumner by Pat Garrett.

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Billy the Kid-Treasure Hunter? - Roswell Edition - My Strange New Mexico

Mountainaire and Ghosts

The previous post links to a news story about a ghost in the Shaffer Hotel in Mountainaire. Personally ghosts anywhere and everywhere in Mountainaire wouldn't surprise me. I have been there many times because I like to visit the old Pueblo Missions around there and Mountainaire is pretty much the only near by town to stop and have lunch.
There is something so strange about that town. Every time I have been there I feel like I have stepped out of modern America and into the 1930s Depression Era. I think most of the buildings (not that there are many) were probably built then. I suppose some people would find the town quaint, but I find it creepy. The locals in the diner always stare in such a menacing kind of way and quite possibly that is just how they look and they don't mean anything by it, but there is something creepy about people staring at you the entire time you are having your lunch. It isn't just me that feels that way either. Last time I was there three other people were with me and they all couldn't wait to leave that diner and the town. They all found it as creepy as I did.

That being said, the Salinas Pueblo Missions, like Abo are really fantastic to visit. There is also a legend about a treasure of Spanish gold being buried near there and we were on a treasure hunt last time I was there, so that is also something fun to do. Though maybe bringing your own lunch would be a good idea. :-)