Sunday, November 9, 2008

The Simple Life in Silver City, NM

OK, the last few posts have been a little extreme, not particularly practical. Now Silver City, New Mexico seems a lot more of a real possibility. I say seems because I've never been there, but with the magic of the internet and clipping a few chosen pics, we can all get the start of an idea.

Somehow, I seem to be connected to Silver City without having gone there. More than 10 years ago, I had a friend who moved from So. Cal. to Silver City and then disappeared. More recently, my friend Bob met a friend in Phoenix, Kristen, who is originally from Silver City and had recently returned to live there. Bob has visited a few times and given me the low down on what a nice town Silver City would be to live in.














With about 10,000 people, it is a college town, a mining town, and a retirement town. Bob says that everyone is friendly and the pace is relaxed.













As for weather, Silver City is pretty far south, say about parallel with Tucson, but at almost 6,000 feet elevation its cool and dry like Prescott. As for the surrounding country side, they are just south of the mountains that are more than 8000 feet elevation and covered in pine. Further south, the valley becomes typical Arizona/N.M. desert, so there is a lot of variety.

Housing is quaint with lots of these old Victorian homes in the downtown district. It looks like you can live on the cheap with a poor little house for under $100k, but nice Victorian houses like this would be more like $150 to $250.

Now the only challenge would be the idea that the next big town is 100 miles away.

4 comments:

  1. Jac,

    The fair and lovely Debbie and I visited Silver City, NM back in 2006 with an eye to retiring there. Nice enough place. Had a good sandwich at a small restuarant on the very street seen in your photo. The window in your blog entry photo looks very familiar:

    http://tinyurl.com/5otsqr

    We wandered through the artsy places and talked to friendly folks. It seems a good town for outdoors things, history, photography, or living in a double-wide trailer.

    Doug

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  2. Doug,

    From what Bob says, the picture was probably taken from the small restaurant you mention. It seems that Bob frequented that restaurant because they had Guiness on tap.

    We need to work on him to tell some of his more eclectic Silver City stories.

    Note the Guzzi in the picture.

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  3. Doug,

    By the way nice picture. Much better composition and lighting than the one I found on the internet.

    Jac

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  4. Jac, glad you liked the photo. Looking at the two photos it tells me one thing for sure: Some business owner needs to change his window display more often.

    Doug

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