Mt. Chalchihuitl is the largest known prehistoric turquoise mine in North America, with turquoise artifacts found from the site dating from around 1000 AD. Native miners excavated thousands of tons of waste rock at Mt. Chalchihuitl before Spanish invasion in the 16th century. Archeologists have recovered cultural materials at…
New Mexico's Anglo Protestant women were late to organize influential women's clubs, which were not started until the 1890s. However, this movement left out large sectors of women in the state who were of Indian or Mexican American ancestry. The Catholic Church, openly opposed to women's suffrage in the…
By Rick Hendricks Ohio native Thomas Casad arrived in southern New Mexico around Christmastime in the year 1874. He and his wife, Sarah Van Winkle Casad, and their numerous children settled in Mesilla. In a very short time Thomas's fellow mesilleros recognized him as one of the leading…
By Rick Hendricks In The El Paso Salt War of 1877, C.L. Sonnichsen, described what he called the Salt Ring as being made up of W.W. Mills, A.J. Fountain, Louis Cardis, and Father Antonio Borrajo, the parish priest of San Elizario, Texas. Sonnichsen went on to describe Father Borrajo…
Cathy Williams or William Cathay? Source: St. Louis Daily Times, January 2, 1876 "My Father was a freeman, but my mother a slave, belonging to William Johnson, a wealthy farmer who lived at the time I was born near Independence, Jackson county, Missouri. While I was a small girl…
By Robert Torrez New Mexico's history began long before the first Europeans set foot in the Americas. In fact, New Mexico's unique environment, which contains six of the world's seven life zones, first attracted human beings and then persuaded them to remain in this area over 12,000 years ago….
By William H. Wroth In the summer of 1846 General Stephen Watts Kearny marched with 1750 troops over 850 miles across the Plains from Fort Leavenworth and invaded the Mexican territory of New Mexico. On August 18 the American forces took possession of the city of Santa Fe without…
By Denise Holladay Damico The Albuquerque Land and Irrigation Company, incorporated on December 31, 1897, and dissolved in 1921, was only one of many irrigation corporations which sprang up in New Mexico Territory in the 1880s and 1890s. Like most of the others, this company’s leaders had grandiose schemes…
by Robert Torrez Less than two generations after Christopher Columbus set foot on the shores of an obscure Caribbean island and claimed this New World for the Spanish kingdoms of Leon and Castille, Spanish conquistadores such as Hernando Cortes and Francisco Pizarro had conquered Mexico, Peru, and much of…
Senator Dennis Chavez and J. C. Morgan The moment he clasped the firm handshake and locked eyes with the intense and confident gaze of the stocky, bowlegged Navajo in the three-piece suit, Senator Dennis Chavez sensed that this man was the connection he had been looking for. It was…
