Lenore Dils, author of HORNY TOAD MAN, published in El Paso by Boots and Saddle Press, in 1966 notes:

"Railroads hauled supplies for Black Range camps but only as far as Engle. There they were transferred to mule trains to be hauled to Chloride, Fairview, Kingston, Hillsboro, Lake Valley and Grafton...where mining camps were springing up almost over night."

In his THE STORY OF MINING IN NEW MEXICO, published by the Bureau of Mines, Socorro, 1974, Paige Christiansen quotes a miner who wrote in 1882:

"We approached the Black Range from Engle, a station on the AT&SF, fording the Rio Grande near old Fort McRea, and then crossed the Cuchillo Range about halfway to Grafton. In Grafton, I saw a powerful vein which I followed for more than 2 miles commencing at the Ivanhoe and passing the Buckeye, Surprise, Alaska, Montezuma and Wild Horse."

After the Black Range area boom of the 1880's ended in the 1890's the towns settled back to quiet pastoral simplicity.