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    Colfax County
    Colfax County
    Colfax County
    Ebook190 pages44 minutes

    Colfax County

    By Stephen Zimmer and Gene Lamm

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In 1841, Carlos Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda received a grant of land from the governor of New Mexico in the northeastern part of the Mexican province. Frontier conditions prevented colonization of the grant until 1848, when Beaubien's son-in-law Lucien Maxwell led settlers from Taos to the Rayado River where it crossed the Santa Fe Trail. Maxwell's friend Kit Carson joined him the following year, and their ranch prospered in spite of frequent attacks by Jicarilla Apaches. Later, Maxwell moved north to the Cimarron River. Gold was discovered on the western part of the grant in 1866, and miners rushed to the diggings, establishing the town of Elizabethtown. It became the first seat of Colfax County in 1869. Maxwell sold the grant to foreign investors who organized the Maxwell Land Grant and Railway Company in 1870 and founded the town of Cimarron. The Santa Fe Railroad entered the county in 1879, which precipitated the creation of the towns of Raton and Springer and also fostered large-scale ranching, mining, and lumbering.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 14, 2015
    ISBN9781439653234
    Colfax County
    Author

    Stephen Zimmer

    Award-winning author and filmmaker Stephen Zimmer is based out of Lexington, Kentucky. His works include the Rayden Valkrie Saga of a Lionheart TV Pilot, the Rising Dawn Saga, the Fires in Eden Series, the Hellscapes and Chronicles of Ave short story collections, the Harvey and Solomon steampunk stories, and the Rayden Valkyrie Tales. Stephen currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky.

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      Book preview

      Colfax County - Stephen Zimmer

      Springer.

      INTRODUCTION

      New Mexico’s Colfax County is a land rich in Western romance, legend, and adventure. Many of the roads and trails traveled by modern residents and visitors are the same ones once used by a colorful cavalcade of Indians, Spanish explorers, mountain men, miners, lumbermen, and cowboys.

      The boundaries of Colfax County and its county seat have changed many times in the past. In 1852, New Mexico Territory was first divided into nine counties. Taos County extended from the western side of the Rocky Mountains all the way to the New Mexico–Texas line. Seven years later, Taos County was subdivided, with the eastern part being set up as Mora County. Mora County itself was then split in 1869, with the northern half being named Colfax County—after the newly elected vice president, Schuyler Colfax. The boomtown of Elizabethtown in Moreno Valley was chosen as the first county seat, but this moved to Cimarron in 1872 and then to Springer in 1881. Colfax did not acquire its present boundaries until 1893, when the eastern portions of Colfax, Mora, and San Miguel along the New Mexico–Texas border were consolidated into Union County. Finally, in 1897, the Colfax County seat was moved permanently to Raton.

      The county ranges in elevation from almost 6,000 feet on the vast grasslands in the east to the 12,441-foot Baldy Mountain that soars among the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the west. In total, the county encompasses 3,768 square miles. Raton (elevation 6,680 feet) is the county seat and the largest town in the county, followed by Springer (elevation 5,795 feet), Cimarron (elevation 6,430 feet), and Maxwell (elevation 5,925 feet).

      The first settlers in the area were American Indians. Archaeological sites found in Ponil Canyon north of the village of Cimarron indicate that many people were living in the area by AD 400. Subsisting primarily on wild food plants and game, these people later supplemented their diet by growing corn, beans, and squash along the canyon bottom. A system of flood irrigation watered the plants. These people wove intricate baskets, made cooking pots, and constructed underground pit houses in which to live. For unknown reasons, the farming people of the North Ponil abandoned the canyon around AD 1400, leaving only the remains of their houses, pots, arrow points, and baskets with which to reconstruct their culture.

      Beginning in the 17th century, Jicarilla Apache Indians located campsites along the foothills and in the canyons of the area. These Native Americans rode horses to hunt buffalo. From contact with the agricultural Pueblo people of the Rio Grande Valley, they learned to grow corn and other crops to add to their primary diet of wild game. As time went on, the Jicarillas were pushed farther into the mountain canyons by Comanche and Ute Indians, their traditional enemies from the Plains.

      It was in the mountains that Spaniards, the European colonizers of New Mexico, first encountered the Jicarillas. Spanish soldiers first crossed what is now Colfax County in 1706 when an expedition under Capt. Juan de Ulibarri was sent to the area in order to subdue the Comanches and protect the friendly Jicarillas. Afterward, the Spaniards referred to their land as La Jicarilla.

      Another Spanish expedition, this time led by the governor of the province, Don Antonio de Valverde, followed Ulibarri’s footsteps in the summer of 1719. Although both expeditions failed to encounter any Comanches, they left the Jicarillas with promises to protect them in the future. However, the Indians were left to war and raid among themselves for the next hundred years. They saw few white people until the 1820s when French, British, and Americans arrived from the East and began exploring the Southwest.

      The first Americans to enter what is now northeastern New Mexico were fur trappers who came to its mountains in search of beaver. This animal’s fur was used to make stylish hats and coats worn by men in the eastern United States and in Europe.

      Merchants arrived in the Southwest soon thereafter, bringing wagonloads of manufactured goods to trade in the New Mexican provincial capital of Santa Fe. Starting in Missouri, they followed the Santa Fe Trail across the plains of Kansas along the Arkansas River valley. There, the trail split, with one route taking a direct southwesterly course toward Santa Fe, while the other, known as the Mountain Branch, continued along the Arkansas River to Bent’s Fort. From there, it proceeded over Raton Pass and along the eastern side of the mountains, winding its way to Santa Fe. Among the well-known mountain men and traders who passed on their way to Santa Fe or Taos were Kit Carson, Lucien Maxwell, William and Charles Bent, Ceran St. Vrain, Tom Boggs, and Dick Wootton.

      Mountain man Lucien Maxwell established the first nonnative settlement in what would become Colfax County when he led settlers from Taos over the mountains to the Rayado River in 1848. He represented his father-in-law, Charles Beaubien, and Guadalupe Miranda, who had been granted land in the region by the Mexican government in 1841. He was joined there for a few years by his close friend Kit Carson. In 1857, Maxwell moved his ranch headquarters 11 miles north to the Cimarron River, where he grazed large herds of cattle and sheep and farmed extensive fields of hay, wheat, corn, and oats.

      Gold was discovered in Moreno Valley in the western part of Maxwell’s Ranch in 1866. Miners rushed to the goldfields in great numbers, and a town situated west of Baldy Mountain and called Elizabethtown was established the following year with a full complement of stores, restaurants, and saloons. On the east side of Baldy, a gold quartz mine called the Aztec was opened on the south side of Aztec Ridge. Maxwell was one of the mine’s largest investors.

      In 1870, Maxwell sold his land to foreign investors who organized as the Maxwell Land Grant & Railway Company. Whereas Maxwell had allowed settlers to raise cattle and sheep and mine gold on his ranch, the land grant

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