Bayard, NM

Bayard is a Grant County city in the Whitewater Creek valley, east of Silver City and near the old Santa Rita mining district. Before it became a city, the place was Bayard Station: a small Santa Fe Railroad depot beside a homesteader's ranch house. An earlier depot nearby carried the name Hall's Station, with a manager's residence attached. U.S. 180 now runs through as Central Avenue and Tom Foy Boulevard, following the same east-west corridor that made the settlement useful in the first place. Bayard is a high-desert railroad town with the Mimbres River system just beyond its streets.