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Socorro County Guide
Last updated on Thursday, February 20, 2003
His legendary fame was similar to that of Billy the Kid, except he was on the side of the law as sheriff, marshal, district attorney, school superintendent, and mayor. At age nineteen, he established his reputation as a quick draw with a deadly aim when he held 80 Texas cowboys at bay for thirty-six hours, killing four and wounding eight. Fall and winter are perfect times to trade the baster for the binoculars and head for the birds at Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge near Socorro, New Mexico.
Here, a temperate Rio Grande Valley climate and 57,000 acres of wetlands, wilderness and cultivated fields comprise a comfortable stay for thousands of waterfowl and sandhill cranes seeking refuge from northerly ice-covered waters, short daylight hours, cold nights and diminishing food supplies. The population starts building in September and extends through the second week of March, when the last of the cranes starts their migration northward.
The Spanish gave this Anasazi village the name of Pueblo de Las Humanas (a thriving pueblo) when Oñate first approached it in 1598 to accept the oath of allegiance to Spain. Largest of the Salinas pueblos, it was occupied for nearly nine centuries, 800 A.D. to 1672 A.D. Later, Spaniards called it Gran Quivira, the object of Coronado's and Oñate's futile search for gold. Magdalena has seen it all. From the days of lead, zinc and silver mining in the 1880s and cattle shipping when the railroad spur from Socorro reached the town in 1884 to test missies flying overhead, Magdalena has grown and shrunk and grown again. The often rocky path that leads from yesterday to today runs smooth and little changed at the Salome Store in Magdalena, New Mexico. Located on Route 60, 25 miles west of Socorro, the family-run General Merchandise store opened its doors in 1910 and hasn't closed them since. Place Names of New Mexico by Robert Julyan indicates there are 36 places in New Mexico where St. Anthony is mentioned. However, San Antonio at the junction of US 380 and one mile east of I-25 is the only one listed on the current New Mexico map. It is located ten miles south of Socorro and ten miles north of the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. In the thousands of vehicles that travel Interstate 25 between Las Cruces and Albuquerque every day, some occupants have noticed a new highway sign for the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, which spans the Rio Grande a few miles north of Socorro. Not as well-known or accessible as its more famous neighbor to the south, Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, Sevilleta nevertheless occupies a special place in the hierarchy of protected lands due to its stark beauty, diversity, and research activity. Socorro, a community of 9,000 in the sunny Rio Grande Valley, is the seat of Socorro County. While it is distinguished by history as one of the oldest settlements in the Southwest, its present and discernable future is based on the technology of tomorrow. It is late winter, a Monday afternoon, in New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande Valley. The temperature outside hovers at sixty degrees. For one person, the temptation to remove his coat and tie and play hooky from work is too compelling to resist. From Socorro, our adventurer drives south on New Mexico Highway 1 toward the entrancing and renowned Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge. He must, for obvious reasons, remain anonymous.In January 1598, Don Juan de Oñate set forth with an expedition to colonize the lands of New Mexico. Eighty-three wagons carried munitions, supplies and food for 400 men, some soldiers, some colonists. One hundred families, eight priests and two lay brothers accompanied them. Seven thousand head of livestock, grapevine cuttings, seeds and tools were brought to help settlers survive and establish new homes.Around the 4th of July every year, Roswell, New Mexico hosts a UFO festival built around the Roswell Incident. Months before, the motels in and around Roswell can be sold out. The hoopla included a parade, film festival, rock concert, costume contest, bicycle run and a glow-in-the-dark golf tournament. Any spare time the visitor had could be spent at the two UFO museums. Any spare money could be spent for T-shirts, toys, gimmicks and statues that only the outer limits of the imagination can curb.
But what about the other UFO crash in 1947, the one on the San Agustin Plains?
“These waters, they soothe me. I could stay here." With those words, hope dangled before a New Mexico frontier wracked with Indian wars. Though not within his traditional homeland of southeastern Arizona, Cochise, the venerated and feared Chiricahua Apache leader, liked what Ojo Caliente offered . . . sanctuary and soothing waters to mollify his spirit and body.
Unfortunately, in spite of evidence that the Apache had used Ojo Caliente for generations and that they were willing to settle there peacefully, the U.S. government failed to see the benefits of establishing a permanent reservation. In fact, the Chiricahua were one of the few Apache tribes in the Southwest that did not get their own reservation. The White Mountain Apache, the Jicarilla and the Mescalero all received at least some portion of their traditional homeland as a reservation. Only the Chiricahua were forever banished from the land so dear to them. They were shipped far away to prisons in Florida, Alabama and Oklahoma, never to threaten the Southwest again. One has to wonder if the relocation could have been avoided if only the government had made good on its promise to allow the Chiricahua to live at Ojo Caliente.
Where once cattle grazed and cowboys drove their livestock to market, the Plains of San Augustin near Magdalena, New Mexico, have become a mecca for hi-tech science and astronomical research. How strange it would have seemed to those ranchers of a century ago to now find this stretch of desert occupied by these strange, tall, bowl-shaped structures pointing into the sky, never dreaming of the purpose behind them.Today, this vast, arid desert valley is now home to the most powerful radio telescope in the world, the Very Large Array. With its twenty-seven dish antennas, each connected to the other, spread out over 22 miles in a "Y" formation, the Very Large Array, or VLA, is capable of detecting extremely faint radio emissions from the distant stars.
It was Cruz Baca's dream. Having grown up in the Riley area, then living around the high country, he wanted to ride the Rio Salado from its beginning all the way to Riley. Coming into Magdalena, New Mexico on horseback in time for the Old Timers' Reunion was an added incentive. In the years immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War, the Board of Indian Commissioners in Washington, D.C. had discussed a policy of removal and concentration for the Southern Apaches of New Mexico and Arizona Territories. Simply put, the policy called for the removal of the Mimbres, Central Chiracahuas, Coyoteros, Gila, and Mogollon bands from those areas where they would have potentially disruptive contact with white settlers and placement on reservations where they could become self-supporting through farming and animal husbandry.
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