The ghost town that never existed.
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June 19th, 2025 at 11:54:51 AM
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Trementina is a ghost town that is some fifty miles southeast of Las Vegas, New Mexico( not LV Nevada) in the Badlands.
The town was founded in the 1870s, and had eleven families in the 1880 census. It was essentially a ranch that grew into a town.
The 1900 census shows everyone in town is either a relative or an employee of Santiago Blea. In 1901, a force of nature arrived. Alice Blake was a Protestant missionary and a bit of a revolutionary. She opened a school and invited females of every age to attend. She soon had some fifty students, about half of them adult women. She built the first health clinic in the area with her students and recruited doctors to make extended visits. Her anti-catholic rhetoric caught the attention of the Women's Board of her church and they arranged for several families to move to the now-growing town, including a doctor a skilled carpenter and a lawyer.
By 1910, the town had a church and the beginnings of a main street. The population was 288 and growing., but trouble was on the horizon. The town was a perfect example of small-town living, and with good farming and plenty of game, it was ideal for a small town in the Old West.
With only an elementary school, the children had to goo to boarding schools to continue their education and when they returned they told tales of indoor plumbing, electricity and a new thing called radio. Few of the town's children now wanted to live there and began to move away, creating a labor shortage.
The 1930s brought the Dust Bowl and the Depression, and the town rapidly declined. A group of Mennonites moved to town, but by the early 1950s, only one family was left.
Looters emptied the town of its windows, stripped off its tin roofs, and all the ornate stonework the town was noted for. The state demolished some buildings for material to build the interstate and the once beautiful town was reduced to ruins and rubble.
Anyone driving past it would think it was abandoned long ago.
A new television show called Rawhide used the town for some location shots. In doing so, they built a large platform on Main Street for cameras and used stones to make a few platforms. Another camera platform was constructed by the Blea house. Stagehands went about town and painted arrows on posts to indicate a camera shot. After shooting on location for a few weeks, they packed up and left, leaving the platform and lots of material behind.
Then it got strange.
In 1961, a travel writer stumbled into Trementina. She saw the two wooden platforms and decided they were above-ground graves, similar to those found in pre-Columbian Central America. She interpreted the various marks the stagehands had painted to be religious markings and decided the town must have been practicing some pagan cult like religion. She included several photos in her article and when it was published readers wrote in with their "knowledge" of the markings. Her story caught on, and soon every paranormal investigation book had to have a chapter with the author's take on the town. The ranch bunkhouse became a monastery for a mysterious group of monks. The high infant mortality rate was proof of the cult's sacrificing their young. Someone pointed out the "fact" that no cemetery in a town almost a hundred years old. One article suggested that there was no record of the town or it's inhabitants in any government documents, and no birth certificates were ever issued. A local writer tried to dispel all these rumours, but the story was growing. By the early 1970s, Trementina, the town that practiced the old religion, was on every weird town list.
Most former residents are related by blood or marriage, and many migrated to Las Vegas, NM, after the town failed.
In the 1980s, the former residents formed an organization to preserve the memory of their unique town.
The town was founded in the 1870s, and had eleven families in the 1880 census. It was essentially a ranch that grew into a town.
The 1900 census shows everyone in town is either a relative or an employee of Santiago Blea. In 1901, a force of nature arrived. Alice Blake was a Protestant missionary and a bit of a revolutionary. She opened a school and invited females of every age to attend. She soon had some fifty students, about half of them adult women. She built the first health clinic in the area with her students and recruited doctors to make extended visits. Her anti-catholic rhetoric caught the attention of the Women's Board of her church and they arranged for several families to move to the now-growing town, including a doctor a skilled carpenter and a lawyer.
By 1910, the town had a church and the beginnings of a main street. The population was 288 and growing., but trouble was on the horizon. The town was a perfect example of small-town living, and with good farming and plenty of game, it was ideal for a small town in the Old West.
With only an elementary school, the children had to goo to boarding schools to continue their education and when they returned they told tales of indoor plumbing, electricity and a new thing called radio. Few of the town's children now wanted to live there and began to move away, creating a labor shortage.
The 1930s brought the Dust Bowl and the Depression, and the town rapidly declined. A group of Mennonites moved to town, but by the early 1950s, only one family was left.
Looters emptied the town of its windows, stripped off its tin roofs, and all the ornate stonework the town was noted for. The state demolished some buildings for material to build the interstate and the once beautiful town was reduced to ruins and rubble.
Anyone driving past it would think it was abandoned long ago.
A new television show called Rawhide used the town for some location shots. In doing so, they built a large platform on Main Street for cameras and used stones to make a few platforms. Another camera platform was constructed by the Blea house. Stagehands went about town and painted arrows on posts to indicate a camera shot. After shooting on location for a few weeks, they packed up and left, leaving the platform and lots of material behind.
Then it got strange.
In 1961, a travel writer stumbled into Trementina. She saw the two wooden platforms and decided they were above-ground graves, similar to those found in pre-Columbian Central America. She interpreted the various marks the stagehands had painted to be religious markings and decided the town must have been practicing some pagan cult like religion. She included several photos in her article and when it was published readers wrote in with their "knowledge" of the markings. Her story caught on, and soon every paranormal investigation book had to have a chapter with the author's take on the town. The ranch bunkhouse became a monastery for a mysterious group of monks. The high infant mortality rate was proof of the cult's sacrificing their young. Someone pointed out the "fact" that no cemetery in a town almost a hundred years old. One article suggested that there was no record of the town or it's inhabitants in any government documents, and no birth certificates were ever issued. A local writer tried to dispel all these rumours, but the story was growing. By the early 1970s, Trementina, the town that practiced the old religion, was on every weird town list.
Most former residents are related by blood or marriage, and many migrated to Las Vegas, NM, after the town failed.
In the 1980s, the former residents formed an organization to preserve the memory of their unique town.
The older I get, the better I recall things that never happened
