November 7 has twice changed the map around Red River. On this date in 1911, voters here helped choose the first leaders of a state that did not quite exist yet. Five years earlier, on this same date in 1906, a presidential signature in Washington set aside the forests that still surround this town. Today we follow both threads, and six more, through mining camps, ski slopes, high passes, and the heritage Red River still carries into a cold November Saturday.
Red River Town & Main Street
On November 7, 1911, New Mexico held its first state election, and Red River voted as part of Taos County. Democrat William C. McDonald defeated Republican Holm O. Bursum for governor statewide, while Taos County itself favored Bursum, a reminder that mountain towns have always thought for themselves. Voters that day also chose the first State Corporation Commission and approved the amendment Congress required before statehood. Two months later, on January 6, 1912, New Mexico entered the Union as the forty-seventh state, and the mining camp on Main Street became a town in a brand new state.
Mining & the Gold Rush
No exact November 7 strike is recorded in the Circle, so consider the season honestly. In October 1866, only weeks before this date, a Ute visitor brought pretty rocks to Fort Union, and Captain William H. Moore sent three prospectors to Baldy Mountain. Panning Willow Creek, they found gold in nearly every gulch, carved the words Discovery Tree into a ponderosa pine, and then retreated because winter comes early on those high slopes. Their secret leaked during the winter, and when snow melted in the spring of 1867, the rush that built Elizabethtown, and later Red River, began.
Founding Families, Characters & Legends
The 1911 election also carried a familiar Red River name. Edmund C. Abbott, who had come to Red River in 1897 and represented Taos County in the territorial House of Representatives in 1901, was elected on November 7, 1911, as the first judge of the First Judicial District under state government. Abbott had served as district attorney and United States attorney before voters sent him to the bench. His story is a useful corrective to the gunfighter legends: by 1911, the men shaping this valley were as likely to carry a law book as a prospecting pan.
Skiing & Winter
Early November is preseason in Red River, when the town watches the thermometer and waits for snowmaking cold and the first real storms. Later this month holds the record worth remembering: on November 29, 1975, a storm dropped thirty-four inches of snow on Red River in twenty-four hours, a New Mexico record that launched the ski season in an era when snowmaking here was still a novelty. That is why old timers measure every early season against 1975, and why a quiet, cold night like tonight, with opening day planned for later this month, still feels full of promise.
Enchanted Circle Towns & Places
November also tested the Circle towns that mining built. Elizabethtown, founded after the 1866 Willow Creek find and named for Captain Moore's daughter Elizabeth, once counted thousands of residents, served as the first Colfax County seat, and stood as New Mexico's first incorporated town. Yet harsh Moreno Valley winters thinned its population every year, as miners and merchants retreated until spring brought them back. That seasonal rhythm, boom in summer and endurance in winter, shaped every town on the Circle, from Questa and Eagle Nest to Angel Fire and Red River itself, and it still shapes the quiet weeks before ski season.
The Land, Weather & Wildlife
On November 7, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the Taos Forest Reserve, setting aside 233,200 acres of timbered public land in the Territory of New Mexico. It became a national forest on March 4, 1907, and on July 1, 1908, it was combined with part of the Jemez forest to create the Carson National Forest, the forest that still surrounds Red River, Questa, and Wheeler Peak. For a valley that had watched mines clear timber and creeks run with tailings, that signature began a different relationship with the land, one based on watersheds, wildlife, and forests meant to endure.
Roads, Stage Lines & Travel
Before there was a highway, early November travel around the Circle was a gamble against snow on the high passes. Wagon roads over the divide between Red River and the Moreno Valley could turn treacherous weeks before modern plows and pavement. That is why the Red River Pass road, built in 1915 and 1916 by the Good Roads Association, mattered so much: it replaced the harrowing old wagon route, let families arrive in affordable automobiles, and turned a mining camp that emptied in winter into a mountain playground visitors could actually reach in every season.
Living History & Heritage
That forest and road heritage is still protected and told today. The Wheeler Peak Wilderness, first set aside as a wild area in 1960 and designated wilderness in 1964 under the Wilderness Act, now covers 19,661 acres around New Mexico's highest summit at 13,161 feet. In town, the Red River Historical Society museum in the Little Red Schoolhouse preserves the photographs, school desks, and everyday artifacts of the families who lived the stories in this almanac. Together, a wilderness boundary on a map and a small museum on Jayhawk Trail do the same work: they keep November 7 from being only a date.
So November 7 in Red River is a day of signatures and ballots, of gold pans put away for winter and forests set aside for good. The state chosen in 1911 is now more than a century old, the Carson National Forest still rises on every side of town, and the first ski turns of a new season are only weeks away. Walk Main Street tonight and you are walking through all of it at once, which is exactly why this town keeps telling its history, one day at a time.