Heavy Metal Fan: Fred Moore By Craig Springer
I
f you were wondering where all the anvils went, you can find them on a secluded ranch some 15 miles in a southeasterly direction from Mountainair, in the care of Fred Moore. He’s been at it some 60 years and has amassed the largest collection of anvils in the world. Getting to his place isn’t too complicated coming out of Mountainair. The first turn off the nation’s first transcontinental highway, U.S. 60, comes at the blinking light at the highelevation town nested on the south end of the Manzano Mountains in the heart of the Salt Missions—the three ancient Spanish mission edifices built of native stone by Native labor in the 1600s. Stone abounds here; history abounds here. It’s even expressed in the very route to the Moore’s ranch. Each turn takes a hard right angle, 90-degrees, followed by long, straight stretches of road. The roads are at first the gray-black ribbon striped yellow that then transcends into gravel, rutted in the low places where water
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pools when the snow melts. The roads, be they paved or dirt, are laid on section lines like most anywhere in the western two-thirds of the U.S. But these lines weren’t laid by land surveyors until around 1905, quite late in New Mexico’s storied past. Once surveyed, homesteaders soon followed. “Nesters,” they were called. And in the Estancia basin, a good many of them came from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. They populated the 2,400 square-mile basin from Stanley to just north of Capitan and set about bean farming. Mountain bluebirds lit like electrified shards of the sky, flit off sun-grayed juniper fence posts as you approach Moore’s place. His ranch sits at about 6,500 feet above sea level—that point in New Mexico where the vegetation transcends from grasslands to juniper and piñon trees. Meadowlarks sing their flutey song. Moore’s 100-year-old brown stucco ranch house is nestled up against a bouldery mesa, brown in the color of
a deer’s pelt, with ancient gnarled junipers whose roots palm into the stone behind the home. The abode is well-placed and offers a commanding view greater than 180 degrees up and down Hibler Valley, named for a former, longtime ranch owner and former Central New Mexico Electric Co-op employee, Noel Hibler. A short jaunt from his porch sits a common metal building with uncommon contents—anvils of all sizes and shapes, ages, and wear. The first hint of what you are about to encounter is a sign on the corner of the barn that reads “Anvil Realty.” A muscular Doberman pincer bounces alongside the car coming onto the property. His name is Pistol. Fred Moore, seventy-something years old, appears on the concrete apron of his anvil barn. He casts a long shadow. He is a large, imposing figure with a meaty handshake. You will soon see that he and his doberman have something in common: a striking exterior but a kind and gentle interior.
