Silver City is a town in Grant County, New Mexico, United States. It is the county chair and the home of Western New Mexico University. As of the 2010 census the population was 10,315. As of the 2020 census, the population was 9,704.

The valley that is now the site of Silver City afterward served as an Apache campsite. With the beginning of the Spaniards, the Place became known for its copper mining. After the American Civil War, a settlement developed and became known as “La Ciénega de San Vicente” (the Oasis of St. Vincent). With a salutation of American prospectors, the pace of amend increased, and Silver City was founded in the summer of 1870. The founding of the town occurred hastily after the discovery of silver ore deposits at Chloride Flat, on the hill just west of the farm of Captain John M. Bullard and his brother James. Following the silver strike, Captain Bullard laid out the streets of Silver City, and a busy tent city speedily sprang to life. Although the trajectory of Silver City’s money taking place front was to be exchange from the hundreds of additional mining boom towns normal during the thesame period, Captain Bullard himself never lived to look even the beginnings of permanence, as he was killed in a confrontation later than Apache less than a year later, on February 23, 1871.

The town’s violent crime rate was substantial during the 1870s. However, Grant County Sheriff Harvey Whitehill was elected in 1874, and gained a sizable reputation for his abilities at controlling trouble. In 1875, Whitehill became the first lawman to arrest Billy the Kid, known at the time under the alias of Henry Antrim. Whitehill arrested him twice, both times for theft in Silver City (Sheriff Whitehill testified to the Justice of the Peace that he believed Henry Antrim did not get the actual stealing the second era arrested, but assisted in the hiding of the property stolen by Sombrero Jack. Whitehill would later affirmation that the juvenile man was a likeable kid, whose stealing was a result more of necessity than criminality. His mother is buried in the town cemetery. In 1878, the town hired its first town marshal, “Dangerous Dan” Tucker, who had been committed as a deputy for Whitehill past 1875. Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch were next reported to frequent the Silver City saloons in the late 1800s.

Mrs. Lettie B. Morrill, in a chat given to the Daughters of the American Revolution chapter in Silver City upon September 19, 1908, stated, “John Bullard was placed in the first grave dug in Silver City, having been killed though punishing the Indians for an attack upon the further town; the brothers were prospectors virtually the country for many years. The last one left for the old house about 1885, saying, ‘It is lonely a matter of grow old until the Indians gain me if I stay here.'” Silver City was afterward the starting narrowing for many expeditions hunting treasures, such as the Lost Adams Diggings.