One of the great things that we love about this road trip is that we don’t have much of a schedule. We often don’t decide where we’re headed until we get in the car, and we’re easily steered in any direction if there’s something interesting along the way.
Three Rivers Petroglyph was one of the few places that we’ve spent multiple days at–partly because we were waiting for less windy weather, but also because it was incredibly interesting. While the petroglyphs caught our immediate attention, it was the ancient village site that really drew us in. At least 700 years ago a small group of people lived there, carved petroglyphs in the rocks, and made beautiful pottery–among other things. At first glance, there’s almost no sign of their settlement at Three Rivers, but when we turned our eyes toward the ground we could hardly walk a few paces without finding broken pieces of 700 year old pottery scattered about. Surely, the area had been picked through, dug up, and combed over years ago by folks looking for whole pieces and points, but there was something fascinating about feeling like we had discovered these things lying on the ground. Some of the broken bits were painted carefully with black stripes–some thick and some thin. Some were plain and grayish, others plain and reddish, and we even found one piece that was clearly the top of some pot or jug. It was pretty neat to see these things first hand, not behind a glass case in a museum, but right there at our feet among the sand and the stones of the desert.
When we got back to the campground that day, we started talking to the campground host about what we had found and he shared some information about the history of the area and the people who once lived there. And, he mentioned that if we wanted to see a great collection of Mimbres pottery that we should check out the Deming Museum. “It’s free, it’s got some beautiful pottery, and you could wander around in there all day.” This is the kind of tip that we love to hear–one that steers us towards a place we would never end up by simply following the road map.
Five days later we made our way into Deming and found the museum after a few wrong turns, some inaccurate directions from a gas station, and one phone call to information. The Deming Luna Mimbres Museum is set in an old armory, but the outside does no justice to how big this place feels inside. It’s a maze of exhibits covering everything from a very impressive collection of Mimbres pottery to a button hook collection to an exhibit about polio and the use of iron lungs (this includes two iron lungs–one for infants and one for adolescents complete with appropriate mannequins). We spent hours going through this museum which is apparently run entirely by volunteers–this according to a random newspaper article placed next to one exhibit. It seems to be, in some ways, a collection of other people’s collections–some with obvious historical value, and others that you swore you’ve seen at numerous garage sales or in your house when you were a kid (like the Betsy Ross and George Washington liquor bottles). Some other highlights included a cowboy hat exhibit that included hats of actual cowboys from the area over the past 50 years, thunder eggs, an old Playboy magazine in braille (some people do read it for the articles), and the first electric washer machine from the town of Deming. The geodes and rocks exhibit even includes a section of stuff that you can buy–just see the volunteer at the front desk and they’ll unlock the case for you. We managed to make it back outside without purchasing a Deming Luna Mimbres Museum sweatshirt (I’m not sure if that’s good or bad yet), and enjoyed a nice lunch of cheese and crackers and a tangelo on the museum steps in the warm sun. If you are ever traveling through this part of New Mexico make sure to stop here. And if you do, let me know. I might ask you to pick up a sweatshirt for me.
