Snow Is Gold for Tourist-Hungry Sangre de Cristo Mountains : New Mexico: Now revenue comes from chairlifts and resorts. Another big draw is the simple life in Red River--a town that, one resident says, so resembles ‘Mayberry RFD’ that he calls ‘Skiberry RFD.’

RED RIVER, N.M. —  Back when this town was born 100 years ago, gold is what drew people to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Today the lure is snow and down-home living.

Winifred Oldham Hamilton, 93, the local historian, grew up with the town.

The Oldhams settled here as prospectors the year Red River incorporated--1895.

Country singer Michael Martin Murphey hides out here amid the ski slopes and the Texas two-step dance halls.

“I think it’s one of the most pristine, down-home areas in the world,” Murphy said. “As far as I’m concerned, it takes the cake for being the closest thing to ‘Mayberry RFD.’ I call it Skiberry RFD sometimes.”

Like Murphey, many of Red River’s modern settlers and visitors are from Texas. On any given day in this town of about 350 permanent residents in northeast New Mexico, most license plates are from the Lone Star state.

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But before Texans discovered snow, the stream and slopes of Red River were a draw for gold panners and prospectors, including George and Read Oldham, who operated the Golden Treasure and Golden Calf mines.

Hamilton visited her uncles often. She spent summers here hiking, horseback riding and listening to her uncles’ tales of gold strikes, claim jumpers and train robbers. Now she spends her time writing local histories.

Tom (Black Jack) Ketchum and his brother, Sam, had a ranch just north of here before Black Jack was hanged in Clayton after a train robbery, she wrote in “Wagon Days in Red River.”

Shortly after George Oldham discovered the Golden Calf claim, she said, there was a claim jumper. The two rivals set out for Taos to file the claim, but George Oldham crossed the mountains and got there first, while the other man took the longer river route via Questa.

“It proved to be a mad race,” Hamilton said.

This year is also the centennial of the Oldhams’ now-defunct Golden Treasure mine and of Red River’s first schoolhouse.

The town will celebrate its centennial all year long, said Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman Paulette Kiker.

The town bustled in those days, as it does now. It was a main mail route with hotels and two newspapers--the Record and the Prospector.

Several bars currently offer live music and dancing. Murphey said that tradition also dates back awhile.

“The first time I ever played music in Red River was in high school, in the early ‘60s,” he said.

Friends from Dallas opened a coffeehouse, The Outpost, summers only, he recalled.

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“All of us from Adamson High School back in Dallas used to go up,” he said. “People in the folk scene, the alternative music scene, used to go up and perform at The Outpost. They just served pizza and Cokes. Jerry Jeff Walker came in there and a number of other singer-songwriters.”

Murphey kept coming back. He lives mainly in Taos but spends as much as one-third of his time in Red River, where he has a log cabin.

“I feel like it’s home too,” he said. “I built the cabin as a retreat for me, and the entire family retreats with me.

“These little places where you can go have a cup of coffee and put your feet up are getting harder and harder to find.”

Fans still find the writer of “Wildfire,” “Ballad of Calico” and “Cherokee Fiddle” performing most nights here through the winter.

“It’s the only town in America where I sing on a regular basis,” Murphey said.

Mayor John Tillery, a local innkeeper, moved here from San Antonio eight years ago. One of his initiatives--and legacies--has been the rapprochement of Red River with neighboring Questa, a largely Hispanic town 13 miles west.

“It’s just a small group down there and up here that’s kind of butting heads,” Tillery said.

He and Questa Mayor Robert Ortega, a Taos banker, are partners in detente.

“We got to talking at intergovernmental council meetings about our two communities,” Ortega said. “We’re trying to establish some cooperation. . . . “

Ortega acknowledges “a lot of barriers that have been there in the past that we need to overcome.”