The Lordsburg Door
Mike Smith
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Like a brokedown car on blocks, the city of Lordsburg sits parked in the extreme southwest corner of the state, letting weeds twine up through its center and rust eat away at its edges.
Founded in 1880 as a railroad town and currently the largest settlement in Hidalgo County, Lordsburg is home to more than 3,000 hardy souls, a thriving methamphetamine trade, and wind and dust storms so intense they will sometimes blow cars and trucks from one lane of Interstate 10 into another.
The businesses of Lordsburg’s main street sit mostly abandoned, and all around the town the desert swirls away into flatness, careens toward a horizon of ancient and eroded hills, and warps into a stark and gorgeous world of sand and cactus, in which things like cities and government and the written word can sometimes start to feel like a barely remembered dream.
Cormac McCarthy tapped into this feeling when he made the area a primary setting for his 1994 novel The Crossing.
"The new country was rich and wild," he wrote. "You could ride clear to Mexico and not strike a crossfence."
In such open desert, in country such as this, there is often a feeling of life gone atemporal—independent of time—a feeling that isn’t dispelled upon talking with the locals.
In Lordsburg, people trade stories of horsebound cowboys chasing flying pterosaurs across the desert, tell of airplane-sized “thunderbirds” many times larger than any fowl alive today, and match tale for tale of strange creatures flapping straight out of the past and into the present.
Also in Lordsburg, a number of ranchers and hobbyists claim to have sighted an abundance of UFOs and strange lights. From the 1990s to 2006, amateur UFOlogists Ramón Ortiz and Benjie Medina photographed and filmed scads of unusual air traffic over the city, much of it during the day, and some of which appears to show technology far beyond any currently known to the public—objects that zip, hover, divide, flash, and even change shape in mid-air.
And none of these objects, of course, had anything to do with the Lordsburg Municipal Airport, with the not-too-distant White Sands Missile Range, or with oval-shaped lenticular clouds, either.
In Lordsburg, stories suggest that perhaps the usual walls between the past and the present, and the present and the future, aren’t quite as solid as they should be—and it’s almost natural that locals would look for something to explain it all...for something like the Lordsburg Door.
The Lordsburg Door, also called the Lordsburg Gate, is said by locals to be a sort of vortex, a naturally occurring portal that bridges time and the dimensions of space—a hidden gateway in the desert outside of town. The Door is one proffered explanation for why the past and the future seem to meet here—for why so many stories of living pterosaurs, supernatural entities, and futuristic aircraft could rise from one tiny place so easily.
Albuquerque economist Rob Feightner recently rode a Ducati motorcycle down to Lordsburg and Silver City, to gather information on this subject for “My Strange New Mexico”—and chronicled his bizarre trip on his blog, Desertoftherealeconomicanalysis.blogspot.com (in postings you can link to here and here). As part of that journey, Feightner spoke with Hidalgo County resident Helena Hammer, who told him that certain Lordsburg-area ranchers say their “hybrid, high-grade cattle would sometimes ‘disappear’ and be replaced by low-grade, Mexican cattle.”
“Apparently,” Feightner learned, “some cattle would enter the portal and others would exit…. This replacement indicated that rustling was not involved in the disappearance of the cattle because cattle thieves would not replace stolen cattle with inferior stock.”
Lordsburg UFOlogist Ramón Ortiz said in a recent interview that the Door stands in Gold Gulch just north of town, near mile marker 17 on State Highway 90, and he said it resembles Moses’ biblical burning bush, burning fiery red. (Other accounts place the Door just south of town.) A small chair and table carved of rock sit next to it, Ortiz said, and an old stump sits just in front of it, with a human leg bone trapped in its center—a bone said to be the end result of someone who stepped straight out of the Door and into a tree, a la the Philadelphia Experiment. (That experiment had to do with an alleged 1943 incident in which five living sailors were purportedly fused into the metal walls and decks of their ship.)
The Lordsburg Door, Ortiz said, has already let in everything from shadowy giants, to living pterosaurs, to the spirit of Geronimo—the legendary Apache warrior. The Door can only be seen by those who are “wanted there,” can only be opened with a peacefully made burnt offering, and can only be closed with a sword. Ortiz also said the Lordsburg Door is one of seven such doors in New Mexico's Boot Heel region, all of which lead, circuitously, to Heaven, and one of which happens to be in Ortiz’s basement.
Ortiz said there are also twelve blue-colored gates that lead to Hell, and he claimed all of these portals will soon be opening wide.
“Everything is coming through these doors, these gates!” Ortiz warned. “It’s Judgment Day! Jesus is coming.”
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Be sure to catch Mike Smith in the new hour-long documentary from KNME, "The Sandias."The show can be viewed for free at knme.org/sandias.
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To paraphrase Spike Milligan's "Rain"*:There are holes in the world,where the strange gets in.Yes we return to our occasional series looking at places on the Earth where the Laws of Nature have become.... unnatural: Hotspots of High Strang
Reader Comments (15)
Well, I don't know what to tell you--if the film is too slow to watch on your computer, try to catch it on TV. It's on multiple times a week, every week in November, and will be on DVD after that.
Or you could contact KNME through their website, to ask for more bandwidth. The film doesn't work very well on my computer either, and being able to download and then watch it would be a good suggestion.
And Rob--
Thanks for the comment. I'll tell ya, this piece would not have been possible without you, riding your motorcycle in the desert West, in search of strangeness. I hope a ton of people link over to your site to get a more complete picture of just how much you did for the cause.
And, if you caught the print version of this column, the editing made it so it seems as if I'm plagiarizing your work, by removing the quote signs from around part of your quote. Kind of frustrating for both of us, and I apologize.
I've still never heard back from that Sufi character, but I still want to talk to him, as I think his reluctance to disclose details of this subject adds just a little bit to his credibility.
I'd like to interview you at length sometime too, to revise and expand this column with additional quotes from you. For the book version, anyway.
Thanks again for everything, and let's talk soon.
And thanks to everyone for reading!
A vortex would explain a heck of a lot.
Thanks for commenting. I have to say though, in Lordsburg's defense: it's really not that bad. I've been there a couple of times, and I thought the neglected feeling gave the place a kind of Wild West semi-ghost town atmosphere. I kind of liked it.
The city has amazing desert country on every side of it, some really interesting people living there, and DID I MENTION IT'S GOT AN INTERDIMENSIONAL TIME PORTAL?! It might.
As for some of the perhaps-negative-sounding aspects mentioned in the column--the meth, the dust storms--what city in New Mexico doesn't have those? Did you ever see those episodes of C.O.P.S. they filmed in Albuquerque? Yeah. That made us look so bad up here--for meth and domestic abuse, etc.--that the mayor banned the show from ever coming back. ...And I've had a dust storm almost blow me off the freeway in Las Cruces.
Anyway, I liked your comments, and I appreciate you visiting the site.
Thanks again,
Mike Smith
The willingness of the people there to at least try to be helpful almost did seem out-of-place-and-time. As much so, as some of the strange creatures that they claimed lived in their region: an all black, never before photographed, or cataloged, species of condor; pigmy rabbits,"not much bigger than mice", that "live communally in holes in wash banks"; miniature, dark-silver-gray wild boars that travel in packs; weird, scrawny, desert buffalo, that crawl through fences; horrifying, mangy, glowing eyed, skeletal-looking, stilt-legged, "ghost wolves"; Pit Bull-eating Mexican jaguars; and some kind of demonic, screaming, black, drylands "otter thing", capable of chewing through walls when trapped. However, most of the locals could not even provide directions to our nearby destination, since few apparently care to venture very far out into the wastelands.
I can't really say I can blame them. If ever there was a perfect setting for an X-File it would be Lordsburg, complete with monsters. How can a place so suggestive of Dante's Inferno, exist so close to a paradise like the Chiricahuas.
We were stranded in the back parking lot of the Cowboy, signpainter and artist, and the Santa Ana winds were howling, preventing Larry from doing any painting outside.
We spotted the old adobe in the lot next door, I inquired of Verla at the Rock Shop who might own it, her brother Benny did, and she said we could just move in, free of charge, if we wanted to fix it up!
Those were the three most magical years I've ever lived, out of the 71 put in so far, and I call them my Western Movie chapter.
It is different, a place unlike anything we've experienced, very special, the Mexicans in particular. They picked up on us immediately, and we bonded.
The first couple of weeks there, living in the bus, and working from the adobe, a couple of the Mexicans came by with a hand made wooden cross, nailed together, and they wanted to know if Larry could paint their Uncle Johnny's name on it, as he was buried up in the Shakesphere cementary, and they wanted to remember him with a grave marker.
I worked at Sunshine Haven Nursing home as aide, and these beautiful Mexican people would get together on break and I didn't speak spanish, so they would switch to english so as not to leave me out.
It was a special time out there, sitting beneath the wren tree in the front yard, and watching the storms blow in over the desert, out from behind the mountains that stretched up toward Silver City.
If you go to our website at www.larrydiditsigns.com you will be able to view some of the paintings that I did in my sketchbook while out there. It was quite the life, and we never did see any of the creatures listed in the writing about this old Gateway to the West.
Marsha Hill was director of the Chamber of Commerce at that time, and she told us about a railroad museum being either put together, or expanding, and it was at this time at I donated a cutout signboard painting of a hobo and his dog.
I wonder if that is still around? Anybody know?
I love Lordsburg, and have three of those pin on buttons to prove it. It's truly a magical place! Yeaaaa for Lordsburg.
Peace, and love,
Lois and Larry Ellsworth
The jaguars were real, so maybe a desert dwelling Lontra is more than just "otter nonsense", as well. ;-)
please let her know when it's time again.
The truth about Lordsburg is, that if you are almost over the edge due to that which you have unwillingly glimpsed from the corners of your eyes, then, what can clearly be seen there, where there are no "blinders" to shield you, can, and will, drive you the rest of the way over.
And then it is "your" choice, to either embrace it and find your own way back - or not. Either way, the Universe probably considers its self less burdened - completely with, or completely without you.
For all my meanderings, Lordsburg would still have my vote as the place most likely to hide things, especially from people who refuse to look at their selves. I had "the desert experience" near there, once. All that I can say, of what I now know about "things in Heaven and Earth", is that the Bard was right - "Horatio"!
What makes me wonder is all the Biblical/Catholic similarities with there being Seven Doors, the number seven having a great deal of Biblical significance (the Spaniards also believed in Seven Cities of Gold founded by Seven Bishops). The fiery burning bush comparison as well as the door being opened by a burnt offering and closed with a sword also seem like notions from the days of the Conquistadors. It is interesting to note as well that the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden is guarded by a flaming sword (If I remember that right). It just seems like there is a lot of Catholic/Spanish inspiration in the Lordsburg Door story.
I don't see anything wrong with Lordsburg. To tell the truth, I had never heard of it until my second year of college when a student from there enrolled. I thoroughly enjoy going through the town, and someday when I am not pressed for time, I intend to stop and look around.
Some of the happenings described by Mike Smith sound a good deal like some misadventures in the northeastern part of Utah in the Uinta Mountains. Frankly, I think you folks have two or three skinwalkers loose. For more information on these creatures, or some of their friends, you might read HUNT FOR THE SKINWALKER, by Colm Kelleher, Ph.d, and George Knapp. Dr. Kelleher is a physicist, who with a few fellow scientists tried to explain the strange occurrances on a ranch in the Uintas. The strange things going on at the ranch drove both the rancher's family and the scientists out. George Knapp is a reporter/author out of Las Vegas who has investigated UFOs, paranormal things, and a few other things that I don't have room to describe. Both men are extremely interesting, and I think you will enjoy the book. One word of warning, however:
Read the book at high noon when there is plenty of light, and among lots of people. The darned thing is fascinating, but scary.
Now the way I was told by my Mexican kin - it was Mexicans that got rid of the big blotchy cats dew to their disagreeable habit of eating babies old people and other loved ones. The houses people lived in down near the border lands tended to be deficient in many of the modern conveniences that we take for granted today - like solid doors windows and sometimes entire walls. Most Mexicans are real attached to their families and tend to hold a powerful grudge about that sort of bad behavior for a real long time. I know that my wife's family still does.
Are you sure it's a Jag, and not a Sabertooth or the extinct North American Lion that could have come through the Door?
This was on another site, and if I can remember exactly where I saw it, I'll be back with a link, but a while ago I remember a report of the otter thing being seen down near the city of rocks. Wish I could remember more.