Lake Valley, NM

After silver was discovered, the mining town of Lake Valley, NM, was founded in 1878. “Almost overnight,” the Bureau of Land Management reports, “the small frontier town blossomed into a major settlement with a population of 4,000 people.” Today a ghost town remains where that town once stood, largely emptied out by 1893 silver market panic and a fire down Main Street in 1895. The website Sierra County New Mexico reports that “Manganese mining led to a short revival which had ended by 1955. The last permanent residents left in 1994, leaving behind a true ghost town.”

Through an agreement with the BLM, Cornerstones is working to  preserve several buildings in Lake Valley, filling out a historic site where the BLM provides walking tours. This work maintains a part of New Mexico history while it also allows a great training ground for Cornerstones’ interns. 

At what’s known as the Kiel House, interns Kateri, Lea, and Ruben participated in structural adobe repairs, including basal repair and “stitching” new adobes into the wall. They practiced making assessments of the structural problems alongside Historical Architect Randy Skeirik and adobe mason Issac Logsdon. Named after Judge William P. Kiel, the house is one of the few remaining buildings in the ghost town of Lake Valley. We will continue to work on the Kiel House, School House, and Chapel at Lake Valley through 2023.