The largest nugget ever found, so far as is known, was picked up by Fernando Cuebas in Santo Domingo. It was as large as a hen’s egg and contained very little quartz. It was sold to Mr. J. L. Rollins, then of St. Louis, as a specimen for the sum of $200.00. The Cleveland Group was owned and operated by George H. Utter for a number of years. Although they are in the Pinos Altos district they were not regarded as “belonging” since most of the laborers and supplies came from Silver City and the ore was taken there over a mule-powered railroad. Many families lived at the Cleveland and at one time the camp had its own school. Of late years the scarcity of water has led to the use of dry washers which supply a topic of conversation, if little more. Water and gold may give out but hope never does. Men and women still prospect. Mr. Richard Allen, who wrote a history of Pinos Altos, published by The Silver City Enterprise in 1889, estimated that $3,000,000.00 in gold had been produced, and he predicted that that much a year beginning with 1890 would come from the mines. The Bureau of Mines’ Bulletin No. 5, states that: “Over $8,000,000.00 worth of gold, silver, zinc, lead and copper has been produced in the Pinos Altos mining district.” Much of the gold produced probably never reached the government’s great safe-deposit box at Fort Knox, Ky., but what did is but an infinitesimal fraction of the $19,000,000,000 worth, about one-half the world’s gold, hoarded there. If there is gold permeating the rocky Pinos Altos hills, and, of course, there is, it is as safely buried as that at Fort Knox. During the years 1947-1949 the U.S.S.R. Co. conducted an explorative project, the object of which was to investigate the possibility of lead and zinc ores at a greater depth than earlier work had revealed. At that time the company drilled 28 diamond drill holes in the Pinos Altos district aggregating 21,000 feet. The holes range in depth from less than 100 feet to nearly 2,000 feet. Since 1949 the company has done a limited amount of work, mostly as assessment work to hold the claims on the eastern edge near the Atlantic and on another group in the vicinity of Pinos Altos Mountain. Many of these claims have since been patented. The exploratory work revealed ore at the depth of 500 feet which can be mined when the need arises. This may mean that Pinos Altos will again be an active mining community, producing lead and zinc, with gold and silver recovered as a bonus. The Family There was a time when asking a person in the West where he was from was a shooting matter. Visitors today have no hesitancy about asking that or about how long one has lived here or what brought one here in the first place. Is it more eccentric to spend one’s life here than in a small hamlet in Vermont or elsewhere? Lack of initiative or drive may be partly responsible and surely sentiment is. Some of us just love the home place.