Red River

Red River's second founding did not ride in with a gold pan. It arrived in 1936 with a family looking for a living. L.S. Lewis brought his wife Jessie and their children Clifton, Evelyn and five-year-old Lester to the west end of the valley, and bought 110 acres that stretched from what is now River Ranch toward the Black Mountain Playhouse on Pioneer Road.

Some Red River stories begin with a gold strike. This one begins with a honeymoon. John and Judy Miller honeymooned in Red River in 1957 and decided to move there in 1963. John went to work as assistant manager at Red River Ski Area and, with four children to feed, also took a job at the molybdenum mine down the road. Skiing was not a side interest for the Millers. It became the work of their lives.

Drive east from Questa toward Red River and you pass a side canyon most visitors never name: Sulphur Gulch, a tributary of the Red River. For years, prospectors who noticed the soft black mineral and the earthy yellow material along the gulch assumed they were looking at graphite and sulfur, and walked on. In 1916 they learned better. The black mineral was molybdenite and the yellow coating was ferrimolybdite, and Sulphur Gulch held molybdenum, a metal valued for hardening steel.

Every mountain town has one dining room that feels like it has always been there, and on Red River's Main Street that room belongs to Texas Reds Steakhouse. The restaurant dates its start to Thanksgiving 1967, and its own description of the formula has barely changed since: the best and freshest food it can serve, at a reasonable price, with generous portions of friendly service and an old west atmosphere. In a town built first on mining and then on welcoming visitors, Texas Reds became one of the fixed points of an evening on Main Street.

Just west of Red River, generations of beginners learned to ski on a small, friendly hill with a name that promised no intimidation: Powder Puff Mountain. It was never the biggest ski area in the Enchanted Circle, and that was exactly the point. Powder Puff specialized in first-timers, children and families, and for nearly two decades it gave Red River a second, gentler front door to winter.

A mining camp needs saloons and stamp mills. A town of families needs a school. That difference is written into one small building in Red River, the Little Red Schoolhouse, built in 1915 and used as a school until 1942, according to the town history at redriver.org. It is one of the town properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places, entered on February 23, 1984 as part of the Red River Multiple Resource Area.

Some historic places ask you to look through glass. The Red River Community House, at 116 East Main Street, asks you to come in, join in, and stay a while. That invitation is not new. It is more than eighty years old, and it is still being renewed every week by the families who walk through the door.

Every mountain town has a room where the night comes together — and in Red River, for generations, that room has been the Motherlode. At 406 Main Street, the saloon with the big stage, the big dance floor, the pool tables in the back, and the front porch for watching the evening go by has been the town's honky-tonk through every era of its modern life.

Before Red River was a ski town, before it was a tourist town, it was a mining camp — and mining camps needed schools. Around 1917, a small one-room schoolhouse rose in Red River, and for the next two decades it rang with the lessons and laughter of the town's children.

Stand on Main Street in Red River today and you will hear river water under the bridges, see visitors strolling past galleries and shops, and smell coffee drifting from the cafes. It is easy to imagine the street has always looked this inviting. It has not. One hundred and thirty years ago, this same stretch of road was the commercial heart of a raw mining boomtown that went by a different name: River City.