Local tourist information and events.

Western New Mexico University Friends of Clay Pottery Sale

17th Annual Event Benefits the Ceramics Program Within WNMU Expressive Arts

Silver City, NM – Students and faculty of the Western New Mexico University clay program will hold their 17th Annual Friends of Clay Pottery Sale on Saturday, May 7, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Murray Hotel Ballroom at 200 West Broadway.

The sale will feature a wide selection of pottery and clay art works donated by current and former WNMU Expressive Arts students and faculty as well as professional potters. All proceeds from the sale will be used for the benefit of the WNMU clay program.

Sponsored by Friends of Clay, the annual pottery sales have grown in size each year since 2005 and have been an astounding success.

Funds raised by the group are used to enhance and promote ceramics and the WNMU clay program through the offering of lectures, workshops, trips and scholarships, as well as assisting in the purchase of equipment and supplies for the university clay studio.

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GCCCA presents Yjastros: The American Flamenco Repertory Company

red dancerThe Grant County Community Concert Association presents Yjastros: The American Flamenco Repertory Company Tuesday May 3, at 7:00 PM in the WNMU Fine Arts Center Theater.

Yjastros was formed in 1999 by the National Institute of Flamenco (NIF) and has become America’s most distinctive flamenco project. Its format is unique in the world with revolutionary performances that preserves the best flamenco choreography from artists around the world in order to share its cultural heritage.

“Yjastros brings to light many different facets of the profound beauty of artistic expression,” says Artistic Director Joaquin Encinias. “We need culture and art as human beings, and Yjastros is a catalyst to enact positive change in our immediate local and wider national and international communities.”

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Kiwanis 9th Annual Free Community Easter Egg Hunt

easter bunny photo at penny parkThe Kiwanis Club of Silver City is hosting its 9th Annual Free Community Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday, April 16, 2022 from 9:00 A.M. to 12 Noon in Penny Park. There will be over 4,000 plastic eggs to hunt for containing candy, prizes, and surprises, and a special Baby Space! The hunts will be coordinated in heats according to youth age groups: Ages 12 and older at 9:00 A.M.; Ages 10-11 at 9:30 A.M.; Ages 8-9 at 10:00 A.M.; Ages 6-7 at 10:30 A.M.; Ages 4-5 at 11:00 A.M.; Ages 3- and under at 11:30 A.M.; and Special Needs Youth at 12:00 Noon. Enjoy free face painting and take photos with the Easter Bunny and special friends – Darren the Lion, McGruff the Crime Dog, Smokey Bear, and Sparky the Fire Dog! You can also sign up your child for The Imagination Library! For more information, visit the Kiwanis Club of Silver City Facebook Page. 

Western New Mexico University Celebrates Great Race With Pair of Concerts

WNMU Cultural Affairs Plans GR 55 Live With Alumni, Future and Current Students In Mind

Silver City, NM – Fifty-five years ago, Great Race was founded by Western New Mexico University students who sought creative ways of involving the entire region in a festival they conceptualized and organized purely for entertainment. Today, Great Race is the university’s longest standing tradition. It returns in 2022 with a week of student-led events revolving around the customary human-powered cart races plus two evenings of music and merriments under the stars, an addition dubbed GR 55 Live. Hosted by WNMU Cultural Affairs on Friday, April 22, and Saturday, 23, the music festival features headliners Alec Benjamin and Los Lobos.

“To mark the return of the tradition generations of Mustangs have carried on, we are inviting those from near and far to come celebrate the ingenuity and drive of our student body at GR 55 Live. The festival is our way of allowing everyone — whether 1967 alumni or incoming WNMU freshmen, to revel in campus culture and dance to music by this generation’s rising stars and by an iconic rock band that many associate with fond memories and good times,” said Dr. Joseph Shepard, who is President of WNMU and a proponent of live, on-campus performances.

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CDTC Continental Divide Trail Days

Continental Divide Trail Days 2022 to take place in Silver City April 22-24.

If you'd like to volunteer for any of these events, you can sign up here! Thank you for helping us spread the word so that we can ensure this event is the most successful Trail Days yet!

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Join the fun on April 2 for Whitewater Mesa Fun Kite Flying Picnic

Coming soon, it’s time to plan your picnic !

Gather up your family and friends and come to Glenwood and join us for the 16th Whitewater Mesa Fun Kite Flying Picnic. Due to the pandemic we last held this annual event in 2019 when 163 people joined us. This is an outdoor event in plenty of wind. For the benefit of yourself and for others, please take note of whatever safe-health practice guidelines are current in April.

There is plenty of space to celebrate the wind without fences to tangle your kite strings, and room to park for your tailgate picnic.  While you are here and for a completely different experience, walk one or all six of the labyrinths and a maze across the road at Whitewater Mesa Labyrinths. For the third time we are sanctioned by the American Kitefliers Association so have joined the international world of kitefliers.

TIME:  12 noon – 5pm on Saturday, April 2, 2022. 

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Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society to Host Pandemics Symposium

Over the last two years, Americans have experienced firsthand the disruptions and new realities that have accompanied the greatest public health crisis of the 21st century. Few of us, however, understand that such pandemic crises have a long history in our country, and have impacted the course of events in profound ways. On Saturday, April 23, 2022, the Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society will host a symposium entitled “Pandemics in American History: Lessons to Be Learned.” Supported by a grant from the New Mexico Humanities Council, the event will be held in the New Deal Theater, located at Fort Bayard National Historic Landmark, six miles east of Silver City. The symposium will begin at 1 p.m., and is free to the public.

Dr. John Bell, a well known and highly respected local physician will lead off the symposium’s program with a discussion of the impact of smallpox from colonial days into the 20th century. Following  Bell’s presentation, Professors Charnelle Lee and Fran Driver, nursing program faculty from Western New Mexico University, will present a talk on the effects of the COVID pandemic on nursing education and the relationships of nursing to patients and their families.

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Grant County Community Foundation "Top Secret: Covert Event with Overt Intent"

Grant County Community Foundation
"Top Secret: Covert Event with Overt Intent"
Friday, April 29, 2022, 6 pm

When Valerie Plame moved to Silver City several years ago, one of the town's attributes she most appreciated was the its strong sense of community, friendliness and care for others. As Valerie became immersed in the local scene and met many local residents through her husband, Joe Shepard, president of Western New Mexico University, she knew she wanted to give something back to her new hometown.

What most don't realize about Valerie upon first meeting her is that she has an intriguing, even historic, personal background: she is a former covert CIA officer. In 2003, senior White House officials leaked her name to a news columnist in retaliation for her late husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, writing an OpEd in The New York Times in which he questioned the rationale used by the Administration to go to war with Iraq, and thus began the "Plame Affair." Today, Valerie shares her experiences in her current work as an American writer, spy novelist and public speaker.

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