Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail; By Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint Between 1821 and 1880 the Santa Fe Trail linked the supply and transportation centers of Kansas and Missouri to consumer markets in Mexico and New Mexico. Along the approximately 800-mile wagon road between western Missouri…
Cerro Tome, Tomé Hill When Otermín led his party and many Indian refugees south from Isleta toward El Paso on the east side of the Río Grande early in 1682, he noted passing “Serillo de Tome” (Hackett 1915:391). On September 6, 1692 Vargas noted that the road in the…
San Augustine Pass “At last the pavement merged into a new four-lane highway that soon was lifting in a long, easy curve into San Augustine Pass. Sarah spared as much attention as she dared to the stone spires and cliffs that formed the Organ Mountains. There were breathtaking…
Valverde Otermín described camping at a point that he called El Contadero. It was on the banks of the river across from the ruins of the pueblo of Senecú (Hackett and Shelby 1942:II.203). That description better fits later descriptions of Valverde and the location of the ruins of the…
Lordsburg Several explanations exist for the name of the town of Lordsburg. One version is that the town took the surname of a man who had a chain of eating places along the railroad. Another is that it was the name of the engineer in charge of the construction…
La Cienega La Ciénega was a seventeenth- century pueblo that was resettled by Spaniards in the early eighteenth century. Schackel notes that it was also called El Guicú, San José del Guicú, and La Cañada del Guicú in the eighteenth century (Schackel 1979:5-8). In 1777, Juan Candelaria’s 1777 reminiscences…
1584 Excerpted from Pueblo Resistance: We Are Here," Courtesy of the National Museum of American History–Smithsonian Institution. Reproducing prohibited without express permission from the Smithsonian Institution Archives.
La Joya de Sevilleta When Maestro de Campo Alonso García retreated down the river in August 1680 the natives of Sevilleta went south with him. It was later reported that Sevilleta was left deserted along with the other Piro pueblos of Alamillo and Socorro (Hackett and Shelby 1942:I, 70,II,…
Brazito This campsite, between the east bank of the Río Grande and the Organ Mountains, was used by Lafora on August 7, 1766. He located it some 20 leagues north of the place where he crossed the river. From this paraje, Lafora went to Robledillo (Alessio Robles 1939:90-91). …
Santa Ana Pueblo The original location of Santa Ana Pueblo was 5,400 feet above sea level against a craggy mesa wall on the north bank of the Jemez River. When the Spanish arrived in the 1540’s they called the pueblo (then known by their traditional name Tamaya) Santa…
