Silver City

Ah, Silver City. A picturesque little town nestled in the mountains of the Gila Forest. An ordinary town of ordinary people, boasting a college campus, several schools, many churches. You can find a Walmart here. Family Dollar. McDonalds. All the essentials.

If you were to visit Silver City, you would find a lot to see. You could walk through the “Historic Downtown.” Visit the Silver City Museum. Eat at the local restaurants. Experience the art in the numerous galleries. Explore the trails out at Little Walnut or the Catwalk. If you’re feeling adventurous, drive up through the mountains and see the Gila Cliff Dwellings. (Those, of course, are an entirely different story.)

It is a friendly town. It would be easy to be a tourist here. To only look on Silver City’s surface.

But, ah, my friends, we are not just tourists. And Silver City is not just an ordinary town.

When you visit Silver City, walk alongside the Big Ditch. Despite the unassuming name, it can be quite a pretty place. A creek runs past downtown, eroded deep into a ditch. A path walks alongside it. Trees and greenery break up the desert landscape. There are benches to sit on and enjoy whatever snack you picked up downtown. You can walk on the bridges crossing the ditch or climb down the steps and hop on the rocks in the water.

At first glance, it’s quite pleasant. A nice little city park. Occasionally a bit trashy, but what city park isn’t?

It isn’t until you dig deeper that you discover the unnerving story behind this cutesy place.

There are clues. Look at the curious streets along downtown. Did you notice the raised sidewalks? Why make a sidewalk a foot off the ground? You no doubt dinged your car door on this ridiculous curb the first time you parked. Why build such an inconvenience into the entirety of downtown?

Your next clue should come in the street names. Bullard Street. Broadway. There’s one missing. Silver City’s downtown used to boast a bustling Main Street. Where has it gone? You can still find references to it in Silver City’s history. How did an entire street disappear?

If you are familiar with the desert, you will know. The desert has many dangers. It does not even try to hide its hazards. The heat. The wind. The poisonous snakes and scorpions. All are out in the open for you to watch for. But one of the desert’s most potent dangers is one you wouldn’t think of.

Rain.

The year: 1895. It was an ordinary day on Silver City’s Main Street. It was the monsoon season, a usual occurrence from July to September. People knew to expect rain. But there was no expecting this.

Silver City’s downtown sits right in the middle of the land’s natural drainage. People built but did not consider that the land had already shaped itself. And on this day in 1895, the town paid the price.

A flash flood. What was once a creek became a wall of water, a river that washed away an entire street. Shops – gone. Homes – gone. People – gone.

Everything was gone. The water carved out a gaping riverbed where Main Street had once been. The land had taken itself back. It had washed itself clean.

And what did people do? Did they leave, run away screaming, while the land remained? Of course not. People in the desert are a hardy folk. They rebuilt businesses a few feet from the gaping remains of Main Street. They raised the sidewalks so that when the roads flooded again, they would not get their feet wet. They added culverts under the roads. And then, they christened the graveyard of Main Street as a city park.

That, my friend, is the story of the Big Ditch. It marks the watery grave of hundreds who were swept away in the flood, all that remains of Main Street. It is the graveyard of a town – now a pleasant city park. Do you see now how places can tell a story, if you know how to listen?

Of course, the people of Silver City do not shy away from this history. Did you see the tile mosaic as you walked along the Big Ditch? The one that depicted buildings swept away by a wall of water? Did you not wonder what the colorful art meant? Did you look at the list of businesses lost and recognize it for what it was?

So, what does it say about this town that this is how they chose to memorialize a tragedy? To take a tale of such death and destruction and turn it into a pretty little city park? At first, you may have mixed feelings about visiting such a place. Treating it as a park, eating at picnic tables and watching children occasionally play in the creek that once destroyed a town, may feel a bit wrong, akin to playing in a cemetery.

However, I encourage you to look a bit further. Rather than allowing themselves to be devastated by such a horrific event, this small town rebuilt itself. Desert folk are notoriously resilient. They must be, after all, to contend with the many challenges the desert throws at them. The Big Ditch is a testament to this. It is a memory of the resilience of a small town in the face of nature’s ferocity.

As I have said, Silver City is no ordinary place.