Shakespeare, NM

Shakespeare is a ghost town located 2 ½ miles southwest of Lordsburg, NM. It is only open on the 2^nd weekends of the month, with tours at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Tourguides are Janaloo Hill and her husband, Manny Houghes. Janaloo’s parents bought the property in 1935. Of the many buildings which existed here in the 1870s, only a few remain: the Grant House Saloon, Grant House (stage station), Stratford Hotel, old mail station, assay office, and a powder magazine. A National Mail and Transportation building has been reconstructed.

Shakespeare has had a number of names over the years, beginning with Mexican Spring. After the Civil War, it was called Grant for a while, then Ralston City between 1870 and 1879, when it was renamed Shakespeare.

The oldest structure still standing on the property dates from before the Civil War—an old one-room mail station with a flat, dirt roof. Both the San Antonio and San Diego Mail and the Butterfield Line used Mexican Spring as an alternate stop. The back room of the Grant House was the old Butterfield station, built between 1858 and 1861. In 1870, a new dining room was added to the front. In this room, several men were hanged, including Sandy King and Russian Bill in 1881.

Silver ore was discovered nearby in 1870, and the town began to boom. At it’s highpoint, there were 3,000 people living here. When the silver became impractical to mine, many of them left. Two men then salted another nearby hill with diamonds, but that turned out to be a hoax, giving Ralston City a bad reputation. People left.

William George Boyle bought the claims in 1879, renamed the town Shakespeare, and started the Shakespeare Gold and Silver Mining and Milling company. Main Street became “Avon Avenue,’ and the principal hotel was named “The Stratford.” This second boom brought several hundred people to Shakespeare, but it died away as the railroad took root nearby, creating the town of Lordsburg. Billy the Kid supposedly washed dishes for a time at the Stratford—before moving on to Lincoln County.

A third, even smaller boom, took place after 1900, but by 1932 there were only a handful of residents. In 1935, Frank and Rita Hill bought the property for a ranch, but they eventually started giving tours of what remains of the town. Their daughter Janaloo and her husband Manny Houghes carry on that tradition today.