David brings us a personal 5-minute water short about his home town, Silver City, New Mexico. Silver City is in a big bowl that sets the stage for us to learn about its ditch. Yes, one of the town’s most endearing and characteristic features is a ditch. Not just any ditch, it’s a BIG ditch. In fact, that’s the official name: the Big Ditch. We hear directly from Silver City’s mayor, Ken Ladner. Enjoy.
Yet, it’s still water that shaped the town. It really doesn’t matter where you live, the rain and the water define so much of what we see around us.
David Ladner
Transcript
Ken Ladner:
Silver City is located in a bowl surrounded by wooded foothills. And that’s a natural collection place for water, which runs downhill from all the mountains that surround Silver City.
David Ladner:
Hello, listeners of The Outfall. This is David Ladner, bringing you a little water short episode today. This edition is on a bit of a personal note because I want to tell you a little story about my hometown, Silver City, New Mexico. Here’s the mayor of Silver City, my dad, Ken Ladner.
Ken Ladner:
The thing that made Silver City so attractive initially to the Indians and then Spanish explorers and then Western settlers and gold miners was the water and trees just made it a beautiful little spot to be.
Ken Ladner:
When it first began to grow and became a real town, downtown had two rows of businesses situated on either side of an intermediate stream that ran right through the middle of Silver City, and that was our Main Street. I don’t know why our ancestors decided to have Main Street there. One advantage was they could throw all their garbage right into Main Street and when it rained, it would all get washed away. Send it downstream and don’t worry about it anymore was the way people looked at it at the time.
Ken Ladner:
As the town grew, there was a need for things like wood to power the mills for all the mining that was going on around there, and also for the increase in population because they use wood for heating and things like that. And also people began to dig up the hills because that dirt made excellent bricks. And grazing animals on the hillside was something that took place too.
Ken Ladner:
Well, as all of that continued to grow, as this population grew, the town grew prosperous and as the hills grew bare, the runoff became swifter with each passing season.
Ken Ladner:
And then in 1895, a major flood swept through the town and turned Main Street into a gorge about 15, 20 feet deep in places. It scoured out the land to the bare rock, which was granite. And so all that was left was granite boulders at the bottom of this gorge and water that ran down it at an intermediate rate, mostly when it rained.
Ken Ladner:
The locals referred to this as The Big Ditch, because at the time, the same time the Panama Canal was being, and that was called The Big Ditch too, so it was a natural name for our big ditch.
Ken Ladner:
So at that point, The Big Ditch was a long way away from what it is now, but over the following 60 years, locals spent a lot of time and energy to turn that big ditch into a wonderful tourist attraction and place for locals to go.
David Ladner:
So this major flood comes through town and wipes out Main Street. Actually it didn’t travel perfectly down the street, the water ran more on the East side than on the Westside. So all the Eastside buildings were washed away, leaving the buildings on the Westside still standing. But they had no street in front of them anymore, they just had a big ditch.
David Ladner:
So what do you do if you’re a business owner and the street in front of your building is washed away? Well, they started receiving customers through the back door. I assume they did a bit of remodeling to make it work, but that was the answer. The back door of the building became the front entrance.
David Ladner:
So this big flood really shaped the town. If you look at a satellite view of the city, you can see a ribbon of green in a straight shot down through town. That’s The Big Ditch greenery and where The Big Ditch begins on the North side is where two smaller creeks meet that feed into The Big Ditch. You see a big Y in the satellite view of the town, a Y created with ribbons of green. And right where the two arms of the Y meet is where Main Street ends, washed away in a flood decades ago.
David Ladner:
Silver City only gets about 17 inches of rain per year. Compare that to about 52 inches of rain we get in Clemson, South Carolina, and we see that Silver City is a pretty dry place. Yet, it’s still water that shaped the town. It really doesn’t matter where you live, the rain and the water define so much of what we see around us.
David Ladner:
Thanks for listening to this short episode of The Outfall Podcast. Leave us a review on iTunes or send us an email with your thoughts or story ideas. Hopefully, you’re already subscribed somewhere. We have a lot more to share, so we’ll be in touch.
