Old Adobe Homes
Old Adobe buildings are a familiar part of the New Mexico landscape. Since mud was free and lumber was scarce adobe was the preferred bu8ilding material in the old days. Now days it is a preferred building material too, but it's not cheap.
The economics of building with adobe in the old style have completely reversed from the old days. In the past materials were expensive because they had to come by wagon train from Mexcico or across the Great Plains. Labor, on the other hand, was cheap. Duplicating the old style of construction is now really expensive because the labor is now Skilled labor and materials costs have shrunk to a small fraction of their former cost.
There used to be an old adobe home on the west side of Highway 84 just south of the Brazos river on the way to Chama, NM. It was abandoned and falling down when we first started goiong past and taking it's picture 30 years ago. A few years ago it collapsed to the point where it was completely removed. One of my goals is to look through all our old pictures and see if I can compile a pictoral history of the process. That will be hard beause we started out with slide file, went to color prints and have now moved to digital.