CANDELARIA LOST - A Tribute and a Lament

Impressions from a visit on June 16-17, 1998

by Sue Hobbs

This was a bittersweet visit, as a large mining operation is busily destroying what's left of the town. Tailings are piled up, forming hills where none stood before, burying parts of the ruins. Someone has gone through with a big machine and stirred up the rubble, leaving few foundations intact. Aside from Main Street, the original roads are virtually gone, so that pin-pointing the locations of houses is next to impossible.

My great-grandfather's building remains, in a state of collapse save for the front and back walls and portions of the sides. Well-preserved timbers which once supported the roof now lie amidst the rubble. Bricks that could be salvaged have long since disappeared -- as is the case with the rest of the town. The windows are broken. Two of the four metal doors remain, once green, now rusting badly. A doorless safe lies behind this, which was once the bank, telegraph office, general store, jail, etc. for the town.

We find no access to Pickhandle Gulch. The road that appears to have once gone that way is roped off and access to it is forbidden. To its credit, the mining company does seem to have taken some trouble to preserve the cemetery, having erected a chainlink fence around its perimeter, accessible through a gate on the Western side.¹ The cemetery is in an advanced state of decay, with only seven markers remaining legible, and these all appearing to have been erected fairly recently, as replacements for lost or damaged markers. Out of film, we did not photograph the markers, but we did transcribe them.²

The cemetery's orginal fence is still largely present, though not intact. The graves are, by and large, discernable only as mounds, many lined -- one guesses recently -- with the large pieces of black volcanic rock so numerous everywhere in this area. It can be seen that some of the graves were surrounded by fences of wood or iron -- with remnants of these still remaining in some cases. One or two fences remain barely standing. Runoff from the surrounding peaks and tailings winds through the cemetery, gradually eroding it. The cemetery is largely overgrown with the native flora, and walking through it is difficult.

When I first arrived on the main street -- now heavily used, it seems, by mining trucks -- I walked to the front of my great-grandfather's business, so familiar although I'd never been to Candelaria before. What stuck me at that moment was not the joy of arriving after some 25 years of intention, but the dismay of seeing something of which I felt such deep ownership being swept away in the pursuit of ore.

I determinedly hiked up the hill to the point from which the 1888 photo in my hand had been taken. Breathless, I strode up, up, up -- muttering as I went. I needed to reconcile the turmoil in my heart. Standing at the top of the hill, looking back down on this profoundly familiar yet disassembled sacred ground, I wondered how anyone could fail to appreciate the place -- how anyone could trample it so. I affirmed that I certainly would never advocate sacrificing the needs of the living for the sake of honoring the dead, but this wasn't need, this was greed, and it was wanton destruction of the creations of both God and mortals.

They could not see what I saw there, from the top of that hill. They could not hear the voices of the ancestors or see their homes and gardens. They did not know about my great uncle Ben -- Bennie at the time -- riding his scooter up and down the street to the amusement of the adults, nor the drama of my grandmother's birth (and near death) attended by the only other woman in town that day: a prostitute.

They didn't know, they didn't see, and they didn't care. I felt violated, and yet as I stood on that hill I knew that the land was theirs. They held the deed and they had the right ordained by law to do as they wished with my heart, my heritage, my ancestral home. As aggrieved as I was, I knew that no matter how deeply they buried Candelaria, it would live on in my cells, in my heart, in my story. They can't kill a heritage.

After exploring the ruins, we pulled the camper up and over the hill, well out of view of the mining operation. We parked where there was little evidence of human presence. There we ate, played cards and wondered at the landscape. After sunset, we stood under the same night sky our ancestors had known. We listened to the silence of the desert and slept that night in its cold, arid stillness.

I know that Candelaria is dying as she lived. Born in greed, at the foot of a mine where tailings piled high and higher, she thrived when the mines produced and waned when they didn't. The residents of her graveyard include sons, brothers and fathers who died in her mines. The current holder of the land displays a sign proudly declaring that it's only been 178 days since the last time lost accident, and I realize that 178 days is a long time as measured by those engaged in dangerous and grueling work. Just as the founders of Candelaria violated the land of one people, modern miners now desecrate the the home of Candelaria's founders. One day, someone may descrate something deemed sacred by the miners and perhaps they will in that moment allow their thoughts to turn to Candelaria.

¹ I later learned that what little remains of Candelaria does so due to the efforts of the spouse of one of the miners, for which I have thanked her personally.

² Please see Candelaria Cemetery at http://members.aol.com/famhistbuf/candelaria-cemetery.htm

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