Ida Luisa Franklin was one of the early “Americn pioneers” who stumbled upon Álamos, bought a ruin, and then restored it. An old saying among foreigners living here is that “on the third day you buy a house,” but in the case of Dr and Mrs. Franklin of Prescott, AZ, it was not until the fifth day that they purchased a 200-plus acre property on the outskirts of Álamos which included “Las Delicias.”

Ms. Franklin was an artist, but Álamos inspired her to sharpen her writing skills as well. She wrote about the purchase and restoration of her Mexican home in the first of her books, Las Delicious, published in 1964.

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“Las Delicias: the words take on the cadence of the music on the native tongue. Was it sold? Was it for sale? Could we see it?

“in a matter of minutes, eager little brown boys were dragging an old gate, too narrow to admit more than a carriage, a horseman, or a burro train with supplies. Besides the gate stood the semi-ruined gatehouse in which they lived with their father, Rómulo Castro, the (at least) third-generation caretaker to Las Delicias…… Chickens scurried away, but a small pig imprudently disputed, with contemptuous grunts, our passage toward the overgrown trail which had once been the carriage drive.

“Of the small neo-classic gem only one lofty room with a thirty-foot ceiling remained intact, its “chapel” alcove, and the tall kitchen chimney with it's abutting walls. Six lofty pillars out of an original 10 continued miraculously to front the structure, the pillars, free-standing, no longer attached to the house, held upright, only by the entablature—and therefore, ready to fall to join their fellows at the next grate windstorm. One more season of torrential rains, one more lashing storm, and little would remain to hint of its past, too few fragments to guide a restoring architect, who would then come too late.

“Other people had seen the ruins before us. They had done what was probably the sensible thing to do, wonder and marble over it, perhaps grieve over it—then leave it, and either forget or remember it.

“But there ar dreamers in the world.

“We three, my dentist husband and I approaching our sunset years, Walter in his early prime, came back again, and again to gaze at this fragment of neo, classic architecture, to prowl around over its heaps of fallen walls and roofs, to explore it's unknown number of surrounding hectors. I was enchanted, Walter was enthralled, thoughtful. My husband was, perhaps, unwillingly, perhaps only touristically, interested. Almost unconsciously will begin to study its possibilities.

“My husband was more interested in the land than the house. I too loved the land. Those nine-foot weeds testified to its fertility suspected as we trod about on the fallen leaves, the soil like springs beneath our steps. There were three wells. There were three real wells besides the ghost well under the big mango tree near the gate where, Rômulo says with the twinkle, the chains can be heard all night long, just any night, as a man draws water for people who have no well. We were “crazy food faddists who long to eat food grown on land which had never known poisonous sprays or been fertilized by anything less tha natural fertilizers and fallowing.

“We longed inexpressably to restore the ruin.“

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For the next four years she and her son supervised the reconstruction of Las Delicias, built in 1856 by Bartolomé Almada of the wealthy and powerful Almada family. It was built in the neo-classical style, and the editors of The Mexican House: Old and New state that it is the only private dwelling in Mexico of this style. Bartolomé studied at the University of Guadalajara and traveled in Europe, but the reason he chose this design as a summer retreat home is unknown. He served as a representative of Sonora to the Chamber of Deputies in Mexico City, and he regularly dined with the president and the most powerful figures of Mexico until his death in 1872.

While uprisings and political turmoil in Sonora and across Mexico began shortly after Bartolomé built the mansion, and while the fortunes of the Almada family greatly dwindled as a result, Las Delicias was a popular retreat for the Almada family for many years. Alicia López Almada de Cooper writes (Álamos and an Almada Legacy, 1993) that, according to family history, it was a popular place for picnics for the Almadas and their friends during the last half of the 19th Century. “There were orchards, vineyards, and spacious lawns. An orchestra would be hired for dancing, and great fun was had by all.” It all ended with the revolution (1910 - 1921), and Las Delicias and the stately homes of Álamos were vacated and later looted as people looked for hidden treasures of silver and gold.

When the Franklins first visited Álamos in 1956, the tiny pueblo had a dramatic, if not spiritual, effect on all of them. Ida Luisa writes as follows:

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"Emerging from the darkening passageway (of Calle Aurora, now Calle Madero), the Plaza de Armas in the glory of the sunset burst upon us like a skyrocket in the night. A sudden fanfare of music from a cantina on the corner seemed appropriate. Coronado, in the year 1540, could have been little more astonished if the town had been already built and waiting for him when on that first historic march north he camped on the site. Weary Father Kino, upon his arrival here in 1687, could have felt no more gratified with his journey thither than were we at the moment. To emerge into the town at sunset with every arch a golden frame for mysterious purple-shadowed interiors—the place will forever for me be touched with that first enchantment. The road from Navojoa has long since been paved; sometimes I wish it were not, for our first thrill is no longer to be duplicated by us or by others.

“Álamos, like Paris, old London and hill towns of Italy has a “blue hour” at twilight. As we sat silently parked beside the Plaza, this extra magic crept about us, mysterious haunting. It was no good saying to ourselves and to each other that it was only the fragrant smoke of supper fires misting the valley. The massive, bastion-like church filled one side of the Plaza and in the faint blue haze seemed to know and to remember everything there was to know and remember. Age-old palms stirred and whispered above the heads of the youths and girls who began the evening promenade beneath them. To bring myself back into this mundane world, I counted

the palms, but sometimes there were 17, sometimes 20. The church clock struck six. Girls and women climbed the church steps and disappeared within. The clock struck the same hour again—and we were henceforth to think of Álamos as the town where the hour is told us twice. For perhaps we are noisily busy upon its first telling, or we cannot count too well the longer hours, and so we are given another chance—if we really care, which we sometimes do.”

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Rebuilding Las Delicias was an adventure. In the process Ida Luisa and her son, Walter, had to study the ruin and make architectural decisions, then find the materials and the workers to carry out the restoration. There was not even a wheelbarrow in Álamos, let alone construction tools or supplies! There was no electricity, either, and one of the first purchases was a diesel power plant which was sent by train from Tucson, and which provided light and power to the ruin and the adjacent property.

Other norteamericanos were restoring houses in Álamos during the 1950s, following in the steps of Levant Alcorn, who bought the original Almada house in 1947 and turned it into the Los Portales Hotel. They purchased these properties from the Mexican families who had owned them and had later deserted them, and in the process the foreigners learned much about the history and legends of the Álamos community. It was these legends which greatly interested Ida Luisa, and in the 1970s she published The Ghosts of Álamos, which remains the only book of its kind about the “spirits” of Álamos.

She writes about the beggar in the kissing alley who smelled like violets, a story writer John Hilton had first published in the 1940s. She wrote about the ghost said to live in Las Delicias, the “White Lady,” which people talked about and occasionally saw. These ghosts were not “scary” in the sense that Americans fear seeing them, but spirits who, through misfortune or tragedy, inhabit a building and continue living there in the spirit world. People in Álamos aren’t afraid of ghosts; ghosts are part of the community.

The Nuzum house next to the church on Comercio Street was once the home of “El Chato” Almada, who died fighting in support of the French monarch Maximilian—whose armies President Benito Juárez defeated in the 1860s. The ghost of El Chato inhabits the house and was seen by the late Pember Nuzum, although his wife Elizabeth never saw it. There is the ghost of the headless Chinaman, the ghost in Mary Astor’s house, the ghost of the unfaithful bride, and many more. Ida Luisa collected these stories from the Mexican families of Álamos, doing research for 16 years before publishing the book. Álamos cronista (historian) Juan Carlos Holguín Balderrama recently wrote that the town of Álamos was long overdue in acknowledging her contribution.

“From my point of view, Álamos owes a tribute to Ida Luisa Franklin (1895-1994). Her work as a researcher of the old ghost stories, funerals, tales from the other side of the Álamos of old from interviews in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s is an excellent work that no Mexican, then or now, has done. She should have a festival dedicated to her honor (The Calaca Festival, for example), a street named after her, or a bust at the front of the panteon,” Balderrana wrote in the spring of 2015.

Ida Luisa Franklin wrote several books in addition to Las Delicias and The Ghosts of Álamos. In 1980 she published a novel, Bride for a Silver King, which provided a glimpse of 18th Century Álamos and details of the Anza expedition to California by mingling fact with fiction. Her preparation for the novel was outlined in a bibliography of several dozen historical anthologies, but the major character, María Luisa Castana, and her life in Mexico is fictional. Ida Luisa also wrote about Álamos in a collection of stories under the title Cadillacs and Cobblestones.

But her major contribution to the community of Álamos is preserved in her collection of legends, in her documentation of the spirits who reside here. Ghosts continue to appear today, just as they did 100 years ago, or 200 years ago—even before the mines produced their precious silver. Jim Swickard of the Hacienda de Los Santos hotel, has told of family members and hotel guests in the past few years who have seen ghosts. Dolores Parker told of the ghost of a young girl who inhabited an upstairs room in her house and who once played with two children who were house guests. “Of course I don’t really believe in ghosts,” she added after telling of the incidents in great detail.

I once asked Fr. Charles Carpenter of the Missionaries of Fátima, a resident of our community for over 35 years, how a “ghost” fit with Catholic theology.”

“A ghost is a soul in Purgatory,” he told me. “If you see ghosts, you should pray for them,” he added.