Get Creative in Madrid

Jackson and his wife, Alicia Colón Jackson, sold their Florida house and traveled the country in a 10-by-8-foot Scamp trailer for two and a half years. They worked as bartenders for events and festivals, before settling down in 2021 in the former mining town turned artist haven. They connected with the funky, slightly off-kilter village of 200 residents and its unabashedly independent lifestyle. “We’re used to living minimally,” says Jackson, noting that the couple has recently upgraded to a 30-foot trailer a mile south of town.

Like many of the people here, Madrid found them as much as they discovered it. As if unearthed from the remains of the past, this rough-cut gem thrives in a space where fresh energy and old ways play off each other like the music that drifts over the Refinery patio. “The Land of Enchantment isn’t just a saying,” Jackson says. “There’s just something special about it.”

A BOOMING MINING COMMUNITY IN THE 1920s, Madrid became a ghost town when its commercial coal-mining operation mostly dried up after World War II. It lay nearly deserted for decades before attracting a few ambitious artists, hippies, and others seeking an alternative lifestyle in the 1970s.

Since then, jewelry makers, gallerists, herbalists, filmmakers, painters, potters, poets, musicians, and spiritual mediums have flocked to this tiny unincorporated East Mountain village that still retains much of its Old West charm. The tight-knit community takes pride in taking care of their own. Friendly people share their stories with ease, which is just part of why thousands of visitors, many from overseas, make a pilgrimage along the Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway to Madrid each year.

These days, a new generation has begun to move in, seeking the same freedoms and remoteness that attracted earlier residents.

Standish grew up in Santa Fe and moved to Madrid three years ago, when the jazz vocalist was just starting out as a bass player. On this morning, she sings and plays an Epiphone semihollow-body electric bass guitar while Arnold accompanies her with twangy leads that mix blues, rock, and honky-tonk. “There are so many musicians that live down the street from each other,” Standish says. Late-night porch and living room jams are common, and players’ eclectic styles tend to rub off on each another. “That’s where I’ve learned and grown the most as a musician.”

“They care about music here,” adds Arnold, who’s played in several New Mexico bands over the past 15 years. “There are a lot of talented musicians here—different genres, different styles—it’s a bit of a time portal.”

Like the coal once pulled from the surrounding Ortiz Mountains—almost 200,000 tons at its peak in 1928—that creative mix of old and new fuels the quirky present.

“Madrid is a community of living artists,” says artist Jezebel, the owner of Jezebel Gallery and Soda Fountain. Housed in the original mining-era soda fountain on Madrid’s boardwalk, the store continues to serve old-fashioned drinks (like a fresh-mixed chocolate soda) in a nod to the town’s heyday. “There’s a tremendous amount of history around and about the town,” she says. “Almost every shop along the main street has become a shop that’s owned by the artists who live there, and they sell their work there as well.”

MOTORCYCLES, AIRSTREAMS, AND PICKUPS crawl along the main drag at 20 miles an hour. Visitors walk alongside the roadway, ducking in and out of shops. Pets cross the two-lane road regularly. Sometimes traffic halts to wait for a napping dog to move out of the way.

Toward the middle of town stands a newish gray building with a facade that reads “Diner.” But the establishment does not serve food. Maggie’s Diner was built as a movie set for the 2007 biker buddy comedy Wild Hogs, starring Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macy, and John Travolta. “They gave us the building when they finished the shoot,” says Hugh Hacket, who grew up in Ireland and owns the Wild Hogs store, Great Madrid Gift Emporium next door, and Ghost Town Trading Post.

The film’s success has made Hacket’s Wild Hogs shop popular. “I still get people calling me from all over the world looking to book it for lunch or dinner,” he says. “I have to inform them that we’re not a diner.” Bikers often stop to take photos and buy T-shirts, shot glasses, and other gifts. “This is one of their bucket-list items,” Hacket says. The mix of well-worn leather, polished chrome, and Hollywood glitter only add to Madrid’s legend and mystique.

A bit down the road, herbalist and musician Lori Ottino runs Moonbow Herbs and Gifts. After studying natural medicine for years and creating her own line of herbal remedies, Ottino came to town with friends in 2006. “I felt a real sense of freedom and joy among the people,” Ottino says, “like I was at a festival.”

Moonbow also sells jewelry from nearby Kewa Pueblo, like many Madrid shops have in decades past. The relationship between Madrid and the pueblo, formerly known as Santo Domingo, has become an enduring aspect of both communities. For 20 years, Ambrosio Chavez, son of renowned jewelry makers Ronald and Petra Chavez, has sold to Madrid shops. He works mostly with mussel shells he collects from riverbanks to create jewelry with intricate turquoise inlays on the shells. “That was one of my chores to help my folks,” recalls Ambrosio. “Sometimes you’ll see pictures in a stone when you cut it, almost like when you’re looking at clouds, you see animals.”

Jewelry artist Amy Lucero-Silas (Kewa/Hopi) also sells to Moonbow and likens her work to meditation. “They’re living, of Mother Earth,” she says. “So you talk to them and let them know, ‘I’m gonna create you now.’ ” Lucero-Silas’s family, too, has long-standing ties to the community. While the market for Kewa jewelry is now international, Lucero-
Silas says, “Madrid’s been a big help.”

LATE ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, THE ROAD still wet from an evening monsoon, the Mine Shaft Tavern is the only place open for miles. Known as Madrid’s living room, the establishment takes up at least a city block with a long wooden corridor, or mine shaft, running between the tavern and the upstairs cantina, which leads out to a wooden patio.

Built in 1947, the tavern was the final company building constructed in Madrid, specifically for local miners. Its run was short lived, closing around the time the final mine stopped production just seven years later. The property has lived a few lives under different owners through the decades. Today, the Mine Shaft also includes an outdoor stage and bar; an amphitheater built into the hillside, the Engine House Theater; and a vintage train engine with coal cars. Behind it, a mixed-use building currently houses the relocated Cowgirl Red vintage store, and there are plans to revive the mining museum and open a new Madrid Brewery by this year’s end.

“We’ve added a lot to create more interest,” says Lori Lindsey, who has co-owned the Mine Shaft with her partner, Melinda Bonewell, since 2007. The tavern, cantina patio, and outdoor stage host a variety of local and traveling bands every weekend, with the theater accommodating larger touring acts and special events such as the He She Bang, an annual drag show benefiting the Madrid Emergency Medical/Dental Fund.

Since moving here from Washington in 2003, the couple has worked hard to match the creative enthusiasm the community emits. Bonewell, who also serves as Madrid’s historian, has been revamping the mining museum and creating a self-guided tour through the Mine Shaft to illuminate its history. The site plan for the new brewery, which will be a first in Madrid, has also been approved. They hope to have it open by Christmas, for which the community has several new events planned this year.

“Madrid has doubled down on being an art and music haven,” Lindsey says. “I feel like Madrid’s got more people coming in with creativity as their focus.”

INSIDE THE HISTORIC TAVERN, THE BAR and tables are almost full. Large bulbs dangle in metal cages illuminating the 40-foot-long mahogany bar top. Above the bar, Ross Ward paintings depict various scenes of local history: a stagecoach on the Turquoise Trail, miners speaking to an angel, a steam engine barreling forward, Christmastime in Madrid.

I sit with a drink and watch Otis B. Goode and the Honky-Tonk Heretics play to a group of dancers two-stepping before the stage. At the set break, I meet Elizabeth Anglin, who introduces herself as Madrid’s resident spirit medium and offers to give me a reading. We head out front and sit on the steps. Anglin takes a few deep breaths, whispers an incantation, and then slowly tells me about future money-making opportunities to keep an eye out for, as well as the significance of a pair of bright red cashmere socks, which may be in my past or my future. In most other places, having my fortune read after running into the local psychic at a bar might be strange, but it’s completely in step with Madrid’s offbeat creative spirit.

In the morning, I meet sculptor, filmmaker, author, and gallerist Michael Lancaster in his Calliope gallery. A fourth-generation creative, Lancaster was born in Sarasota, Florida. “I’m a descendant of probably the most famous circus family of all time, the Ringling Brothers,” Lancaster says. “My great-grandfather was Charles Ringling.”

Of course, Madrid is the exact type of place where you could expect to run into Charles Ringling’s progeny. Lancaster and his wife, ceramic sculptor and painter Barbara Harnack, opened Calliope in 2018, with Harnack’s work as one of the gallery’s main attractions.

Aside from his creative endeavors, Lancaster has also become the point person for the newly formed Madrid Business Alliance, which has received a $40,000 grant from New Mexico’s Economic Development Department to expand this year’s Christmas festivities. “It will be more than we’ve seen in 20 years,” he says.

Christmastime in Madrid holds a special, historical place in the community. During the mining days in the 1920s, coal-powered lights decorated the whole town. This year, the community has events planned for the entire month of December as well as a new “Toyland” display for children in the ballpark at the north end of town.

Ottino has organized a music variety series, billed as “Joe West and Lori O Presents,” that runs throughout December. Madrid’s shops, which usually close by sundown, will extend their hours on weekends. Some will light bonfires in front for visitors to warm up. The annual Madrid Christmas Parade—which includes a Santa’s workshop of marchers, homemade floats, classic cars, a yak named Solo, live music, and the Madrid St. Nick—steps off at 4 p.m. on December 7. “Come here, park your car, put on a costume, and walk in the parade,” Lancaster recommends. “This is everybody’s community.”

Julian Dossett is a writer and musician living in Santa Fe. He’s performed in Madrid for close to a decade.