Country United States County Santa Fe Area code(s) 505 | State New Mexico Time zone Mountain (MST) (UTC-5) Population 0 (2000) | |
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Weather 16°C, Wind SW at 11 km/h, 29% Humidity | ||
Buckman is a ghost town in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, United States of America, about 5 miles (8.0 km) south of San Ildefonso Pueblo, on the east bank of the Rio Grande in White Rock Canyon.
Contents
History
About 1899, Henry S. Buckman, a lumberman from Oregon, constructed a plank bridge across the Rio Grande at the point where the narrow-gauge D&RG railroad’s Santa Fe Branch, popularly known as the Chili Line, diverged south-eastward toward Santa Fe from its route along the river bank. Buckman had contracted to have a road blasted up a side canyon onto the Pajarito Plateau, to harvest stands of Ponderosa Pine. A small community grew at the railway stop, supported by the timber harvesting, and a post office was established with Mr. Buckman as the postmaster. By 1903 Mr. Buckman’s sawmills had stripped all of the pine for which he had been licensed (and allegedly substantially more) and he departed, with the closure of the post office and the collapse of the community.
The stop on the railway, the bridge and the road remained for several years, and continued to serve a number of homesteads on the Plateau, including the Los Alamos Ranch School. After a road bridge was constructed in 1924 at Otowi, about 3 miles north, the Buckman bridge and its road fell into disuse and were abandoned. The railroad closed in 1941 and was removed during the following year.
Present Day
Virtually no trace now remains of the community or bridge.
In 2001 the site was chosen for the Buckman Direct Diversion Project, a water supply development owned by, and serving the city and county of Santa Fe. The BDDP became operational in 2011.