Whitewater Canyon Catwalk NM

Gila National Forest, Glenwood NM. New Mexico harbors some of the richest endowments of mineral wealth of any American state: 1st in potash, 1st in zeolite and perlite, 2nd in copper, 2nd in uranium and so on. Pulling those resources from the ground is often not so easy. To make extraction of metals like gold and silver profitable it is often important to process the ore close to the mine. When strikes were made in Whitewater Canyon in the 1880s the gorge was too narrow to purify the ore. John Graham had a solution - build a mill at the mouth of the canyon. But to get the water necessary to power his steam engines Graham needed a pipeline to run three miles through the canyon from sources high in the mountains. He first directed the construction of a four-inch pipe, encased in wood and packed with sawdust to prevent freezing. Things went well enough in the first few years that in 1897 an 18-inch pipe was constructed next to the original. Workers dangled from ropes into the canyon to blast holes for the support braces. Despite the engineering bravado the mill sputtered along until closing forever in 1913. During the Depression in the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps rebuilt the “Catwalk” workers used to repair the pipeline as a recreational trail.

In the 1960s the Forest Service upgraded the National Scenic Trail with steel. The route travels .5 mile up the canyon - mostly, but not entirely on the Catwalk. There are spots where you drop down for water crossings, or as your dog will consider it, playtime. Flooding in 2012 washed out the navigable part of the trail after that. The early part of this hike heads up the canyon on either side, forming a loop with the original CCC trail.