The story
Chloride began around 1880 after a freighter named Harry Pye found silver chloride ore in a creek bed in the Black Range foothills — a discovery that cost him his life in an Apache raid soon after. The strike made Chloride the center of the Apache Mining District, and by 1883 the town held perhaps 3,000 people, with eight saloons, general stores, a stage line, and the usual boomtown machinery.
The Silver Panic of 1893 knocked the bottom out of silver, and the district faded through the following decades. The town's signature story is its Pioneer Store: its proprietor locked the doors in 1923 and walked away, leaving the shelves stocked. Decades later the building was cleaned out and reopened as a museum, its 1920s goods more or less as they were.
About twenty residents live in Chloride today, many descended from the original families, keeping the Pioneer Store museum and the neighboring Monte Cristo gallery open for visitors.
What remains today
Roughly two dozen original buildings — the Pioneer Store museum, the Monte Cristo saloon-turned-gallery, cabins, and the 'hanging tree' on the main street.
Questions from the field
- What is the Pioneer Store Museum in Chloride?
- The town's general store, locked up by its owner in 1923 with its stock still on the shelves. It was later cleaned out and reopened as a museum, preserving cast-iron cookware, canned goods, and mining supplies as a period-perfect snapshot.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Chloride — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Chloride's permanent record.
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Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 905118
- — Pioneer Store Museum, Chloride (Sierra County)
- — Legends of America — Chloride, New Mexico