Boston Hill Open Space

We are staying very close to the Boston Hill Open Space, and end up walking or cycling (John) there almost every day. It’s a recreation area at an old mining site that was run by the Massachusetts Mining Company, thus the name which otherwise seems very out of place in the southwest! We consider it to be like our Humboldt Park of Silver City – always a pleasure to visit and somehow never gets old.

Having said that, it’s undeniable that the scenery is much more rugged and spectacular than Humboldt Park’s bucolic urban oasis geography. We are getting pretty spoiled with endless vistas and blue skies! One of the main Boston Trail trailheads is about a 10 minute walk from where we’re staying, and once there the main route is to go up to the top and then choose a direction to explore from there. It’s very well marked with maps, benches and signposts. I’ll describe some features that we see along with photos below.

The landscape is desert with a lot of cacti. A lot of big, spiny cacti! From the top, the view back down over the university and Silver City is really nice, and is lit up with different hues depending on the time of day. Many parts are covered with a “desert grass” (not sure of the real term!) which is very pretty too. And trees that fall tend to petrify in place, leaving very sculptural shapes around.

These photos are from the less steep other side of Boston Hill. It’s good for biking and John’s been going for sunrise mountain bike rides around the whole top of the hill. We learned very quickly that it’s exhausting to get a bike up to the top, so he drives to a trailhead that is already significantly up the hill to get started.

The map below is one of many posted on the hill, and very helpfully points out where you are on the map. We are staying near the Cheyenne Trailhead (top center) and so often our first stop is the bench marked 1 on the map. Our rallying cry when taking on one of these trips is “To the bench!” You can see frm the bench #1, it’s possible to take trails over to the right and end up at Spring Street Trailhead, which is downtown. That’s what we call the “Up and over” route to downtown. Once we went off the map (not my idea!) and ended up near that Legal Tender Mine and shocked a javelina family that was not used to seeing people down there! John (and Miles but not at sunrise…) will start cycling at the Market Street trailhead on the top left.

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More pics from a recent evening walk. We try to go out at 5pm Central when the work day (hopefully) finishes and it’s still light for more than an hour.

We’ve found a particularly nice walk that involves circling the Comanche Pit and even walking through it. These mining pits are huge rips in the ground, and the Comanche Pit has a slope that you can take down into it. We’ve become real connoirseurs of old mining pits, today Miles commenting that one of his favorite things about Boston Hill is the small pits on the Spring Street side. It’s a super interesting place, so grateful that the people of Silver City turned it into a recreation area!