Part 14

When driving across New Mexico or when visiting some part of the state, one should be aware of the wealth of history that is always close at hand. Many people, when faced with what seems like endless miles of empty country, fail to realize that the very emptiness is one of the charms of the state. They also do not recognize that in the vast expanses of mountain and desert, people of the ancient past or a recent past have lived and worked and died. Sometimes the fruits of their labor are clear and evident and live on in cities and towns. In many instances, however, the mountains and desert have reclaimed their own and the works of man have succumbed. A mental picture must be cast over the landscape on which great historical events took place but which is almost empty of signs of man’s efforts. If travelers are fortunate, there may still be some sign—a ghost town, a ruined ranch, some old artifacts—to tell the story; if not, imagination must be given rein. The search is the adventure, and to give aid in that search, the following might suffice as a faint guiding light.

To simplify the descriptions of these reminders of the past, New Mexico is divided into seven geographical regions which a traveler might well visit:

1. _North from Santa Fe_, including U.S. Highways 64, 285, and 84, and connecting state highways.

2. _The northeast_, including U.S. 85 from Santa Fe to Raton, U.S. 66 east from Albuquerque to the Texas line, U.S. 56 from Springer to the state line, and connecting state highways.

3. _The northwest_, including U.S. 66 west from Albuquerque to the Arizona line, U.S. 666 north from Gallup to Colorado, and State Highway 44 from Bernalillo to Farmington.

4. _East-central_, including U.S. 60 east from Bernardo, U.S. 380 east from San Antonio, U.S. 70 from the Mescalero Indian Reservation to the Texas line, U.S. 285 from Clines Corners to Roswell, U.S. 54 from Three Rivers to Santa Rosa, and connecting state highways.

5. _West-central_, including U.S. 60 west of Socorro, U.S. 180-260 and State Highway 12 in Catron County, U.S. 85 from Los Lunas to Elephant Butte, and connecting state highways.

6. _Southeast_, including U.S. 70 from Las Cruces to the Mescalero Indian Reservation, U.S. 54 from El Paso to Three Rivers, U.S. 62 from Hobbs to the Texas line, U.S. 285 from Roswell to the Texas line, and numerous state roads.

7. _Southwest_, including U.S. 85 from Truth or Consequences to El Paso, U.S. 180 north from Deming to the Catron county line, U.S. 70-80 west from Las Cruces to Arizona, and state roads.

North From Santa Fe

The country north of Santa Fe is the heart of Indian and Spanish New Mexico. Here, if he looks beyond the narrow boundaries of the highway right-of-way, the traveler can see Indian and Spanish villages which have not changed significantly in two and a half centuries. Along the lush green of the Rio Grande Valley or of its tributaries dashing out of the Sangre de Cristo range to the east, these sleepy concentrations of people reveal cultural and language patterns which smack of the _conquistadores_ of the sixteenth century or of the ancient cliff dwellers. It is a slow and easy world, perhaps most representative of the “land of mañana.” In a region already worked for centuries for what it can produce, there is no hurry. It will be there tomorrow and forever. The people of this region are typically New Mexican. The hills are dotted with piñon and juniper trees which give a greenish to black cast to the land. This, too, is typically New Mexican.

There is one short trip that would be fruitful for him who wants to know New Mexico, to feel the romance of Spanish culture, and to seek adventure off the beaten track. Just north of Española, State Highway 76 strikes east from U.S. 64. Nowhere in the state can be found so much of old world charm or spectacular scenic beauty. Heading east, the traveler passes through Chimayó, a village famed throughout the world for its weaving, though seldom visited, then on through Truchas and Las Trampas to Penasco, heart of the Penitente country. The Penitentes were a religious sect growing out of long isolation from the main threads of Roman Catholicism. They gradually reverted to relatively primitive Christian practices without guidance from main church centers but within the past few years have returned to the Church. The many white crosses that can be seen in the area attest to their former activity. From Penasco, the traveler can return to U.S. 64 via State Highway 75.

The area northwest of Santa Fe, stretching some thirty or forty miles on the southeast flanks of the Jemez Mountains, is the noted Pajarito Plateau, the home of great numbers of Indian cultures, living and dead. Many of the modern Indian pueblos will be found in this region. Also, some of the most significant ancient Indian ruins are found here, such as the Frijoles Canyon (Bandelier National Monument) and Puye Cliff Dwellings.

The entire area north of Santa Fe, then, is alive with history. In every village, in every canyon, there is something that will add to the romance of Spanish-Indian New Mexico. In our Southwest, the heritage handed down by these two great cultures is held dear by the people. To the traveler will come a greater appreciation and a greater understanding of New Mexico and the Southwest if these are but understood.

Northeast New Mexico

The section designated as northeast New Mexico is an area of mountains and plains, and its historical mosaic shows elements of both: the rugged Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque and the southernmost parts of the extensive Sangre de Cristo range, which thrusts north from U.S. Highway 85 far into Colorado, and part of the famed buffalo plains. The area is drained by two main river systems; the Canadian River flows east to join the Arkansas and the Mississippi and the Pecos River flows south to join the Rio Grande.

Through this vast area ran one of Americas greatest highways, the Santa Fe Trail. Beginning in Missouri communities, the Trail hurled itself into the intricate patterns of the Great Plains with all of their dangers—Indians, boredom, violent storms, treacherous rivers, and prairie grass fires. Then on into the foothills of the mighty Rocky Mountains and the steep and backbreaking approaches to Raton Pass in New Mexico. The new highway across this pass (U.S. 85) and the nature of our vehicles have made this an easy passage. But the traveler should pause at some high point, or perhaps leave the main highway for a moment, and try to imagine crossing this rugged land in Conestoga wagons. From Raton, the Santa Fe Trail continued south to Las Vegas and thence into Santa Fe via Glorieta Pass (current route of U.S. 85). Over this trail passed the goods of the world. In part, these were intended for the people of New Mexico, but over other trails they also found markets in Mexico and in California. For the curious and adventurous, sections of the Santa Fe Trail can still be seen. Local inquiry will elicit directions to remaining parts of the wide rutted Trail, scene of so much of the American westward movement.

While passing through the mountains between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, the traveler should be aware that a critical Civil War battle was waged in the fastness of these passes. In 1862, Confederate forces, which came up the Rio Grande from Texas and won a series of victories over Union troops, met a combined force of Colorado Volunteers and New Mexico Union troops in a decisive contest over the control of the American Southwest. The Union troops were successful, preserving New Mexico and the West for the Union.

These, then, are some of the things to look for in this region of plains and mountains. Picture buffalo by the tens of thousands pushing up the Canadian River, or long lines of wagons winding their way along the Santa Fe Trail carrying goods and people into new lands, or the Blue and the Gray locked in deadly combat far from the thunder of the main Civil War battles. The mosaic here is sharp and vividly different.

Northwest New Mexico

Northwest New Mexico is typified as ancient Indian country. While seemingly a harsh land, it is only this to the uninitiated, to those who lock their minds to beauties of history and lands unlike their own. The Indian found this country good and productive. Some of the finest ruins of Indian antiquity are in this region—Chaco Canyon and Aztec, both National Monuments, and hundreds more that remain unnamed. The Indians of the Four Corners area (named thus because New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona meet here, the only place in the United States where the lines of four states intersect) created levels of culture unsurpassed in what is the continental United States; only the Indians of Mexico and Peru claim a higher culture. This is a land whose ancient people reached their great peak at the same time as the later Romans, as Charlemagne in ancient Frankish Europe, and as Mohammed and his successors in the Middle East.

But ancient Indians hold no monopoly on this vast region. Today many of the Indians of New Mexico still find homes here. The Navajo Reservation lies between Gallup and the Colorado line. Part of the Ute Reservation lies along the northern edge of New Mexico, and the Jicarilla Reservation is in the eastern part of this region. Many of the pueblo people are found between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. At Gallup each year, the famed Indian Ceremonials bring together peoples from many of the tribes in the United States.

This region is also renowned as an oil and natural gas producer and is one of the booming areas in New Mexico. But this is only one aspect of the mineral riches of the northwest; the mines near Grants, between Albuquerque and Gallup, produce tremendous quantities of uranium ores. The atomic energy capability of the United States begins at Grants. And near Gallup and Fruitland are huge open-pit coal mines.

The northwest is drained by the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado River, and is therefore a part of the Pacific watershed. The Navajo Dam project, just east of Farmington, is a part of this drainage pattern.

Thus the region is characterized by Indians old and new, ancient things buried deep beneath the earth, and great beauty in pastel colors and subtle contrasts—the mosaic of the land.

East-Central New Mexico

East-central New Mexico, like the northeast, is an area of plains and mountains. Here the buffalo roamed, and in their place, cattle now utilize the hardy and nutritious grasses of the High Plains. Mountains are the Manzano, southeast of Albuquerque, and Sierra Blanca, near Carrizozo, as well as numerous minor ranges. Also in this region is some harsh and desolate country, seared by the southwestern sun and lacking in rainfall, but supporting the exotic plants and wildlife typical of the Sonoran desert regions.

While the desert regions may not be attractive to the eye, they should be appreciated for their part in the historical mosaic. In the area east of the Rio Grande is the northern half of the well-known White Sands Missile Range, one of the significant test centers in the rocket and space age. It was also in this arid region that the first atomic bomb was exploded (southeast of Socorro).

The early use of this desert, however, emphasized its harshness. For centuries, the Spanish suffered across this waterless waste on their way from Chihuahua in Old Mexico to Santa Fe, for this was the Jornada del Muerto, journey of death, the hardest and most dangerous part of the trip over the Camino Real. The Camino Real was the lifeline of New Mexico from 1598 until the Santa Fe Trail was opened in 1821, and all visitors during that period were obliged to cross this arid section. A modern rocket crosses in mere seconds what took the Spaniards many days.

In the Manzano Mountains, there are numerous Indian ruins which represent the eastern fringes of the pueblo-building Indians of New Mexico. These ruined villages have been given the name by historians of “cities that died of fear,” fear of the vicious Apache and Comanche tribes. For centuries, these brave village people tilled their crops and lived peacefully on the land. Then, in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, the great migrations of Plains Indians that pushed into the Southwest gradually did their deadly work. One by one the villages succumbed, until by 1700 few people remained, and these were ultimately killed or driven into the sanctuary of the Rio Grande pueblos. It is awesome to stand mid the rubble of one of those ancient cities and imagine the circumstances of its demise.

In the eastern part of this section was the heart of the High Plains cattle empires. Here is a land that once belonged to the great cattle barons, a land of free range, the home of the cowboy. Although it is fenced today, it is still a land of cattle and is still very close to the early days of the cattleman.

Again, there is an intricate and varied mosaic. No simple land this, but a complexity of plains, mountains, and desert, all of which color its history. The Indians no longer inhabit their villages, the Spanish no longer struggle along the Jornada del Muerto, and the free range of the cattle baron is gone, but if the traveler sees it through its historical past, it will again come alive.

West-Central New Mexico

This section is a complex and colorful mass of landforms scattered helter-skelter across the western part of the state. It stretches from the green Rio Grande Valley, with its irrigated lands, quaint farms, and picturesque agricultural villages, up the Valley’s steep western slopes to the rolling grassland and mesas and alluvial fans, ending in precipitous and treacherous canyons in the rugged mountains. Socorro Mountain, the Magdalenas, the San Mateos, the Ladrones, and countless others seem always to ring the horizon. Some of them are timbered and abound in cool, refreshing shade and springs; some are harsh and dry. In the west, the famed San Agustin Plains stretch to the sunset, a wide carpet fringed by black, timbered hills, site of fabulous cattle drives of a bygone day. The complexity of the region’s geology, scenery, and terrain is matched by an equally complex history.

The history is a mosaic of many hues, some harsh and stark like its dry desert mountains, some inviting like the shade and coolness of its timbered canyons and mountain springs. First were the many diverse and sometimes hostile Indian cultures. There were peaceful pueblo peoples tilling their lands, using the Rio Grande’s flowing water to produce abundance. Also, prehistoric village dwellers struggled to create agricultural societies along the banks of now-dry rivers in the western part of the region. And there were the fearsome Apache Indians who founded their homes in the broken mountain fastnesses and added their excitement and tragedy to the mosaic. So, too, did the Spaniard make his mark and the Mexican who followed close behind. The place names of the eastern part of the region are primarily Spanish, although the Spanish found the area a difficult one in which to maintain themselves. And then the American came to dominate this land, adding realism and technology.

Finally, two major economic factors left a profound imprint: stock raising and mining. The first began with the Spanish, was continued by the Mexicans, and commercialized by the Americans. Everywhere are signs of this heritage. Mining also played a dominant role, although of a shorter duration. One can hardly lift his eyes to the hills without seeing signs of the prospectors shovel or the miner’s work. One can hardly converse with local citizens without discussing mines of the past or mines of the future. Livestock and minerals, then, are woven through the historical pattern and are never far from any part of the story.

Let the traveler be aware of several important facts when he passes through this region. First, this is empty country, an area that has fewer people now than it had eighty years ago. Its mines are mostly closed and the towns that grew with the mines are ghosts. One of the most famous of these is the town of Kelly, a short distance from the community of Magdalena. Another is Mogollon, off U.S. Highway 180 in the southwestern part of this region. Either of these will give to the viewer a vivid picture of the mining camps of the nineteenth century.

To the average tourist crossing the San Agustin Plains, they seem desolate and uninteresting. To the traveler with imagination and knowledge of the history of this once great inland lake, the trip can be exciting. He pictures this great basin full of water, forty-five miles long and fifteen miles wide, and sees mountains covered with blue spruce surrounding the great lake. His mental motion picture rolls on thousands of years, watching the water evaporate and the forest of spruce die, to be replaced eventually by the piñon and juniper now dotting the hills. Grass grew in the old lake bed, except in the last areas to evaporate, for these had an alkali content too high for most grasses. The traveler then watches the Indian enter the scene—not the pueblo builder, except as a transient, for no water is available. The nomadic warrior uses the pathway later. In 1774 and in 1776, he sees several important battles between the Spanish and the Apaches fought on these Plains. Later, the American cattleman dominates them, as he does today....

And so the mosaic grows—Indians, Spanish, Americans, cattle, and mines—and the spectacular vistas and the vast emptiness add color and excitement for the traveler who sees the past with the present.

Southeast New Mexico

Much of southeast New Mexico is an extension of the Great Plains, but it has some rugged mountains and a severe desert in the middle of which lie White Sands National Monument and the White Sands Missile Range. Mountain ranges include the Sacramento east of Alamogordo and the Guadalupe Mountains, in which are located Carlsbad Caverns.

The plains part of this region are devoted to cattle, potash, and oil. Like the other plains regions of New Mexico, the heritage passed on from the great cattle empires of bygone days is very strong and detectable in the people. Since the early 1930’s, oil has come to play an increasingly important part in the history of this section. This is especially true near Hobbs.

The desert region in the western part of this section has clearly defined aspects of the old and the new. The southern part of the dread Jornado del Muerto swept across this arid land and only returned to the river near modern Hatch, or sometimes farther south, near modern Las Cruces, according to the whim of the river. Here also lies the White Sands National Monument, a desert spot of unusual beauty and interest. Near the Monument, the White Sands Missile Range stands as an advanced scientific test center for the most modern of vehicles, the rocket. Near Alamogordo, another advanced space development and testing facility is located at Holloman Air Force Base. So the desert is useful, and it is beautiful, and it is full of tragic history.

This is also Indian land. East of Tularosa is the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation. In a way, this region has always belonged to the Apache, at least since he migrated into New Mexico. The area contained no sedentary groups and the Apache appropriated it as his own. His strongholds were in the Guadalupe and Sacramento mountains. The forts along the Rio Grande, like Forts Fillmore and Selden, were located to control the Mescalero and other Apache groups. All that remains today are the Mescaleros.

There was little Spanish influence in this area except near El Paso and in the Rio Grande Valley. The Spanish were more attracted to the upper Rio Grande Valley because of the sedentary nature of the Indians of that region. The southeast underwent its greatest development in the American period.

Again, sense the mosaic: These are not blends of land and history; they are sharp and distinct, each with its own character. Search for the history and the beauty, for they do not come automatically.

Southwest New Mexico

Finally, the southwest, another region of harsh desert and cool refreshing mountains, part of New Mexico’s unusual contrast. The country south of U.S. 70 is Sonoran desert, thinly populated and poorly watered. To the north of the highway lies one of the most spectacular beauty spots in the Southwest, the mountains and forests forming the headwaters of the Gila River. The Gila River flows west across Arizona until it joins the Colorado River which empties into the Gulf of California.

The Indians in this part of the state fall into two distinct categories: The builders, known as the Mimbres culture, constructed homes in caves and along the watercourses of the Gila and Mimbres rivers. They reached extremely high levels of culture, and then they disappeared. The Apache Indians, who entered this country at the same time as they did the rest of New Mexico, were responsible for the end of the farmers and builders, at least in part. The Apaches were predators and the farmers were peaceful, unversed in the arts of war. Finally the Apache ruled supreme, and this region became the most important single stronghold of the Indian. It was here that Geronimo found sanctuary. But the Apaches, too, were forced to surrender their claims and were placed on reservations outside this area.

Mining is and has been the main source of wealth. The great open-pit operation of Kennecott Copper Company is at Santa Rita, east of Silver City. This is one of the largest open-pit copper mines in North America. To look into that huge man-made pit is a thrilling experience. This mine was first opened in 1803 by the Spanish who needed copper badly as a circulating currency in New Spain (Mexico). For a number of years, the coins used for money in Mexico were from copper mined in southwestern New Mexico.

Copper represents only a part of the mining activity in this region. Famous mining districts in earlier days were at Kingston and Hillsboro, just east of the Black Range on State Highway 90. These areas produced considerable quantities of silver. There is some activity yet, but the boom has long since passed them by, although they are interesting towns to visit. The trip from U.S. 85 to Silver City via State Highway 90 is one of the most scenic routes in the state.

In the region north of Silver City lies high mountain country, much of it preserved as the Gila Wilderness Area. Here a person who wishes the solitude of forest and mountain, the thrill of trout fishing in a clear cold stream, and a wealth of wildlife can find his heart’s desire. In the heart of this wilderness, the traveler might well find some of the ancient homes of the Mimbres people. History and recreation blend into one.

These complete the mosaic. Everywhere one travels in New Mexico is enchanting history, in the land and/or in the people. This has not been an effort to acquaint anyone with the intricate detail of all the history of every nook and cranny of this land, but these broad strokes made on the canvas may help the traveler, transient or native, to enjoy himself. Let him accept the challenge, stop to investigate, search out evidence of the history that is there in the colorful and changing land itself, the Indian heritage, the Spanish past, the cattleman’s range, the miner’s endless search—and become enchanted.