Professor Feather managed to visit about 2,000 populated places in about 10 years of travel. He would drive up and down the streets of each place until he saw a person on a front porch, then he'd stop, ask for a glass of water, and engage the person in small talk, finally asking questions about the history of the community and about its population.
In a 1961 article in New Mexico Magazine, Betty Woods noted that "low-grade ore and Indians and richer strikes elsewhere discouraged any large operations...in Gold Dust." On her visit to the area, she saw an endless maze of rock piles stacked in pointed peaks--the result of dry dredging for gold by hopeful miners reworking the old diggings. She found a few house ruins and the ancient cemetery, "utterly abandoned with the wind whipping across the rocky graves."
"Only one grave has a wrought iron fence around it." Of the other 36 graves, the wood markers were toppled among cactus plants and greasewood. From the cemetery, she looked westward toward the spruce, aspens and pines of the Black Range.
Below her was Gold Gulch where miners were at work when Chief Victorio and his band of Apaches swept in to raid their tents, intending to attack the women and their children at home in the tents. As planned, the women and the children laid down on the dirt floors, and none were injured by the shots fired. The men raced back, guns at the ready, and the Indians galloped away.