Mexican Springs.

Some scenes of the novel are set in Mexican Springs in 1856. It is not a fictitious place but a village that really existed. Located in Hindalgo County, southwest of New Mexico, it is now a ghost village, often visited by tourists.

The place is characterized by the presence of a pool of water that favored the settlement of an Apache tribe, subsequently it was the Mexicans who colonized that place. After the Gadsen purchase, the site became part of the New Mexico Territory and in 1858 a refreshment station became operational along the line between St. Luis and S. Francisco. The Secession War stopped service and Mexican Springs became a Union troop fort. At the end of the conflict, John Eversen, representing the National Mail and Transportation Company, restored the station service and established a mail sorting center there. At the same time, the site name was changed to Grant, in honor of the Union General. Several silver nuggets were found in the nearby Pyramids Mountains. Therefore, sniffing the deal, William C. Ralston, founder of the Bank of California, acquired those territories and the site changed its name back to Ralston City. For the arrival of the miners the population had an exponential increase up to the three thousand inhabitants. Unfortunately, the mines' yield was far below expectations, so Ralston directed his investments elsewhere. Consequences Ralston City was almost completely depopulated. In 1870, the Shakespeare Mining Company made investments on the site and gave new life to mining. The city took the name of Shakespeare. In 1929 the mines were definitively abandoned and the country became deserted. Now, the ghost town of Shakespeare belongs to a private ranch. It remains the Butterfield Station - Grant's House built in 1858, the Grant Saloon, the Stafford Hotel, the Old Mail Station, the General Merchandise, the Powder Magazine, the Mine Superintender House and above all the suggestive cemetery. Although the burials with inscriptions are later than 1870, the cemetery has existed since the early fifties: so, in the chapter Souls without a name, I imagined it bare and with anonymous tombstones.