The Turquoise Trail has a secret: a valley town that turned its mine shafts into galleries

It’s on the Turquoise Trail

Madrid sits in a rugged valley halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, right along the Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway. You say it MAD-rid here, not the Spanish way.

About 247 people call it home, and almost every old mining building on the main street now holds a gallery, a studio, or a shop full of handmade work.

The coal mines shut down decades ago, but something else moved in. What replaced them is worth the drive.

Coal kept this town alive until the 1950s

Mining started here around 1835, back when everyone called the place Coal Gulch.

By the 1920s, about 2,500 people lived in Madrid, and the Albuquerque and Cerrillos Coal Company ran everything.

Superintendent Oscar Huber turned it into a model company town with a school, a hospital, a company store and an employees club. Then demand for coal dropped after World War II.

The mines closed in the 1950s, and nearly everyone left. For roughly two decades, Madrid sat empty.

A superintendent’s son sold the cabins for cheap

In the early 1970s, Joe Huber, Oscar’s son, started renting and selling the abandoned miners’ cabins to artists and craftspeople looking for cheap mountain living.

They moved in, patched up the old company houses and set up studios. Galleries slowly took over the empty storefronts along the main road.

No outside developers drove this revival. Individual artists did it on their own, one building at a time.

Today, murals from the 1980s share wall space with sculptures finished just months ago.

Walk the main street from end to end

Madrid’s main street runs right along NM-14, and you can cover the whole thing on foot.

Galleries and shops fill colorful old buildings on both sides of the road, packed with paintings, sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, photography and folk art.

Duck off the main drag into Gypsy Plaza for more galleries and artisan businesses. Handmade jewelry is a big draw here, with local artists working in silver, turquoise and other gemstones.

The high desert landscape frames everything behind the storefronts.

Turquoise has been mined in these hills for 1,000 years

Pueblo people worked the turquoise deposits in the hills near Madrid and Cerrillos for over a millennium before Spanish explorers showed up in 1540. That history runs deep, and you can still see it today.

Several galleries in town sell jewelry made with locally mined Cerrillos turquoise, prized for its natural color variations. You can browse Native American and Pueblo-made pieces right alongside contemporary designs.

The stone comes from the same hills, hand-mined the way it has been for centuries.

The 40-foot bar was built for miners’ sore backs

The Mine Shaft Tavern has roots going back to an original bar built around 1895. That one burned down on Christmas Day in 1944, and the current building opened in 1947.

Inside, a 40-foot-long bar stretches the length of the room.

They built it tall on purpose so miners who spent their shifts bent underground could finally stand straight and stretch.

Above it, a series of paintings by artist Ross Ward tells Madrid’s story from coal town to artist colony. Live music fills the place regularly.

Engine 769 still sits where it hauled coal

Right next to the Mine Shaft Tavern, the Old Coal Town Museum spreads across several acres and multiple buildings.

The star is Engine 769, a Santa Fe Railway 2-8-0 Consolidated locomotive built around 1900 that once hauled coal out of the Madrid mines.

You can walk past old mining equipment, vehicles, a jail cell and historic medical gear, all displayed largely as they found them.

The Engine House Theatre, which originally sheltered the locomotive, now hosts live theater, movies and dance performances throughout the year.

The first lighted ballpark west of the Mississippi

Oscar Huber Memorial Ballpark went up in 1920, and the coal mine’s own electricity powered the lights, making it the first lighted ballpark west of the Mississippi.

The semi-pro Madrid Miners played here in the Central New Mexico League, drawing big crowds to a town of 2,500.

A tin-roofed grandstand came in 1928, and the Works Progress Administration added stone walls and dugouts in 1935. The ballpark also hosted rodeos and Fourth of July celebrations.

Dedicated residents recently rebuilt the grandstand to its original design.

Airlines rerouted flights to see the Christmas lights

Starting in the early 1920s, Madrid miners strung about 150,000 incandescent bulbs across the desert valley, all powered by the coal company’s generators.

They built life-sized scenes on the surrounding hillsides, and during peak years, up to 100,000 visitors came to see them. TWA actually rerouted holiday flights so passengers could look down at the glowing town.

World War II blackout regulations shut the tradition down, and the mine closures finished it off.

But Madrid has brought Christmas back with an annual parade, town lighting and holiday shopping weekends every December.

Five miles of trails wind past ancient mine sites

Cerrillos Hills State Park sits just a few miles north of Madrid and covers 1,100 acres of high desert terrain.

Five miles of trails wind past old mine sites and geological formations shaped by over 1,100 years of digging.

You can hike, mountain bike, or ride horseback and catch views of the Sandia, Ortiz, Jemez and Sangre de Cristo mountain ranges.

Interpretive signs along the way explain the geology and mining techniques used through the centuries. The park stays open year-round, sunrise to sunset, no reservations needed.

Cerrillos once had 21 saloons and almost became the capital

A few miles north on NM-14, the village of Cerrillos has its own ghost town feel, with unpaved streets and old adobe buildings.

During its mining peak, Cerrillos had 21 saloons and four hotels, and people actually considered it as a possible site for the New Mexico state capital.

Now you can walk the quiet dirt streets, browse handmade jewelry and explore the Casa Grande Trading Post and Mining Museum.

The village also serves as the gateway to Cerrillos Hills State Park, with the visitor center right in town.

Studio tours open every door in late September

Every Fourth of July, Madrid throws a parade down Main Street that matches the town’s eclectic personality.

During the last two weekends of September, the Turquoise Trail Studio Tour opens artist studios and galleries across Madrid, Cerrillos, Cedar Crest and Santa Fe.

You can watch live demonstrations and meet the people behind the work.

Christmas in Madrid lands in early December with live entertainment, a parade and the annual town lighting, carrying on a tradition over 100 years old.

Live music at the Mine Shaft Tavern runs nearly every weekend, from country and blues to rock and Americana.

Explore Madrid on the Turquoise Trail

You can reach Madrid by taking NM-14, the Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway, about 40 minutes south of Santa Fe or roughly an hour north of Albuquerque.

Most shops and galleries open daily from spring through fall, with reduced hours in winter, so check ahead if you visit in the off-season.

Parking lines the main road and fills designated lots, but weekends get busy, so aim for mornings. Walking the town costs nothing.

The Old Coal Town Museum charges a small admission fee. Cerrillos Hills State Park charges $5 for New Mexico residents and $10 for nonresidents.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• Walk through 700-year-old cliff rooms in New Mexico completely for free
• This sky-high town in New Mexico has Wild West soul, art, and nature paradise
• This tiny New Mexico town at 7,000 feet is a living museum of three civilizations