Next Location: westbound eastbound
It’s late in the day. We travel south from Oljato (pronounced with a J not a Y), cross the 37th parallel and turn north on a graded road that wizens into a dirt track. The track deteriorates further into a path. When we arrive at the line we get out and look around the landscape for evidence of mining activity. There were two mines here, Radium Hill No. 1 and Utah No. 1, but we don’t discover the adits (mine entrances). We do encounter some bent steel and rusty sheet metal that could easily have been left behind when the mines were shut down fifty years ago. All that’s left now is a sense of abandonment, not just the toxicity of mining activity but also the landscape, overgrazed into dormancy, abused and abandoned.
Just north of here stands an enigmatic doorway with little evidence of an actual dwelling, abandoned before a building that was hoped for, perhaps.
