Santa Fe Trail, El Camino Real, Montana, Arizona &Washington State
(Pictured is the home of Thomas & Kim Ray's home on Fir Island [Mt. Vernon] Author currently visiting and house sitting here, May 2010.)
I started to update my blog in March but got side tracked due to computer problems. I wound up purchasing another so now a couple of months later I am back after it. It has been over a year since my last posting and I have traveled many miles from the Mexican Border to Northern Montana and Washington State. I am really into the history of our country and I would like to share and some historical points I visited. I hope to post another blog to cover many more places that I visited during the past fifteen months but didn't have time to cover here.
As this update is quiet lengthy, I have put places visited in bold so if you want to scan my writings here, you pick out places that might interest you. Also, some of the things that I copied from Wikipedia Dictionary has some words linked if you want more detailed information.
Back in March of 2010, I was camping in Poncho Villa State Park (PVSP), Columbus, New Mexico. It was March 1st, my birthday. I treated myself to a nice lunch in town at the Patio Cafe. Columbus is the border town that Poncho Villa raided March 16, 1916. he burned several building and killed a number of the local citizens. He in turn lost about 250 men. General Pershing was sent by President Wilson on a punitive mission into Mexico to find Villa. Within two weeks, 10,000 and equipment began to arrive in Columbus. It was a bustling place. After ten months in Mexico State Chihuahua, Pershing never was able to find and engage Villa. Villa knew the countryside hiding places and was much more nimble than the general. Pershing was recalled to the US so that he could prepare for the European Theater.
Now, many years later the raid is remembered in March. It is called Ft. Furlong Days. This yea
r Mexican horseback riders retracted Villa route to Columbus. They rode for thirteen days. Riders also came from Deming and Las Cruses. Officials estimate that several thousand people attended the event. It is billed as an event to foster cultural understanding between cultures and for the Mexicans, it is a time to pay homage to their folk hero, Villa.
I personally met one of Villas great nephews and had a picture taken of him.
(Pictured is José Doroteo Arango Arámbula (5 June 1878 – 20 July 1923), better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa, was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals.)
I spent almost six months in Southern New Mexico this past winter visiting towns, cities, historical sites, the Gila National Cliff Dwellings National Monument, and Las Polumbus Mexico. Las Polumbus is just 3 miles from PVSP. I located a dentist there to perform some dental repairs. Doctors Lam and Cisneros, a couple, have been practicing in Las Polumbus for seventeen years. A couple days a week, dental specialists from Juarez visit the Lam Dental Clinic for periodontal, implant and root canal procedures.
After returning from Mexico in March 2009, spent a month at the Twin Buttes Trailer Park located between Douglas and Bisbee, Arizona. I had met the camp hosts in a trailer park in San Carlos, Mexico. Later we camped on the beach together. Douglas is a border town. Hundreds of Border Patrolmen watch the border night and day and they arrest thousands of illegal immigrants each year. Still, more come across the border than they arrest, I was told. Some die in the desert. Outside of Douglas there is a large facility where the Mexicans are processed. First and second time offenders are sent back across the border. Third time offenders are convicted in our courts and become felons. They serve jail time before they are sent back to Mexico. So our tax dollars pay to feed and house them while visit our penal system. Many of the illegal immigrants caught will attempt to cross the border more than once. One day, the Border Patrol arrested two young Mexican men right in from of my motor home in the trailer park. It is impossible to keep the illegals out. There are large sections of the border in Arizona that has no fencing. As Janet Reno says, show me a fence and I will show a latter that is taller. But there are other problems with border control. In Arizona, there are inter-governmental squabbles about turf rights. Most of the area on the border is BLM land, but there is also The Organ Pipe National Monument and The Papago Indian Reservation. The Indian Agents don't particularly get along with the Border Patrol, I was told. The National Monument has it's own park police and ideas about the use of off road vehicles, fences, airplane, helicopters and technology gizmos like blimps, drones and cameras. Right now, because of the economic conditions in the United States, fewer Mexican are coming across the border. There aren't any jobs for them. Nevertheless, the drug business is still doing well and the violence in Mexico is getting worse despite efforts of the US and Mexican governments.
Bisbee is an old mining town. It is about thirty miles northwest of Douglas. At one time it was the largest town west of St. Louis. Now it has an eclectic group of artists, old hippies and dropouts that reside there and up in the hills. A huge open pit copper mine greets visitors
After returning from Mexico and Arizona last spring (2009), I spent the summer principally in Montana. In visited Yellowstone National Park in the spring and again in the fall. I also visited Glacier National Park a couple of times. One of the visits was from the east side of the park with entrances near Browning. Browning is on the Blackfoot Reservation and the town is rather bleak. A couple years ago, my son Evan and his wife Kristin spent an April working at the clinic in Browning. They especially liked the spring cross-country skiing in Glacier, which was so close by and in the park. Most of the roads, including the Road to the Sun are still closed so it makes for a great park experience, no cars, trucks or travel tours. Evan and Kristin got to know the pharmacist at the clinic who was an avid cross country skier. He had lots of extra equipment and was always looking for people to go with him on an outing. They would go out after work and ski for several hours in the dark before adjourning at someone's house for dinner, wine and beer. What fun.
(Pictured is Glacier National Park)
I made a couple of trips to Washington State to visit my brother Tom at his vacation home in Seven Bays. Seven Bays is on the Lake Roosevelt, that body of water backed up behind Grand Coolee Dam. Evan and I visited the dam (some say the damn dam) that same year he and his wife worked in Browning. Interestingly, Evan's great grandfather, Leslie M. McClellan, was one of the chief engineers on the dam. We found his name on a plaque at the interpretative center in Grand Coolee.
The dam was built to control the flood waters that would roar southwest from Canada flooding everything in it's path all the way to Portland, Oregon. Love the dam or hate it, it provides a huge amount of electrical emery, irrigation waters and recreation opportunities. I asked one of the Park Rangers about the effects on the fis
h populations, especially the salmon. He told me that it wasn't a problem as the didn't migrate that far north as the water got to cold. I have talked to others that say that this isn't true. So the dam is controversial. Back when it was built, it provided work for a huge labor force.
(Pictured is tunnel on the Hiawatha Trail)
On one of my trips back to Montana from Washington, I bicycled the Hiawatha Trail.
During the summer, I decided to visit Montana's “high line”. It is so called because the Northern Pacific Railroad build a railroad high up north across Montana. It follows the Missouri River west to Fort Peck where it diverges from the river and continues west to Malta, Havre, East Glacier, White Fish, Cut Bank and into Idaho. What a wonderful trip it must have been to come out Glacier National Park in a wonderfully appointed dining and lounge railroad car. At the East Glacier Park entrance, the railroad built a beautiful lodge to house their guests. It still stands and is a wonderful place to visit when you go to the park. Amtrac now uses this line coming from points east to Seattle and Portland.
A number of years ago, I read a book entitled Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose. It was all about the Lewis and Clarke expedition up the Missouri River over mountain range after mountain range, up and down a series of rivers until they finally discovered the Columbia River. They were able to ride this last big river all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It turns out that the headwaters of the Missouri River is at Three Forks, Montana. This is what I call my base camp. I still own a vacant lot in town. Someday, when the real estate market recovers, I hope to sell it and buy something else. It is where I keep my stuff now, in a storage locker. When I am in town, I go to the health club and check my post office box. I can camp at nearby quarry lakes and fishing access spots. I stay registered to vote.
In Ambrose's book, Undaunted Courage, I learned about the Indians and places the Corps of Discovery, as it was called, visited. One of those places was Ft. Benton. As I had not yet visited this town or the “high line” are of Montana previously, I decided to make a trip to the far north portion of the state. I traveled through Helena and Great Falls but didn't spend any time in these two cities as I have visited them before. Helena has a wonderful museum of Charles Russell paintings. The Senate Chamber has a mural that covers the wall was painted by Russell. I plan to visit the Russell Museum later this year. In Great Falls, there is a wonderful Lewis and Clarke interpretive center that was build for the recent Lewis and Clark bicentennial.
When I arrived in Ft. Benton, I discovered that it was their weekend for the annual event dubbed, Summer Celebration. What a terrific celebration it was too! At the fort itself, there was a city wide pot luck dinner, a Bar-B-Q hosted by the Boy Scouts, period dressed mountain men and a Calvary unit. The latter camped at the fort and marched in the parade with their horses, wagons and cannon. One bank had a pig roast and another had an ice cream social. The theme for last summer's celebration was Irish. It was not to celebrate St. Patrick's day but to honor an Irish Gentleman buy the name of Thomas Francis Meagher.
Thomas Francis Meagher (pronounced /ˈmɑrh/) (August 3, 1823 – July 1, 1867) was an Irish nationalist and leader of the Young Irelanders. He immigrated to the United States, where he became a Union Army general during the American Civil War and an American politician. Meagher became a revolutionary as a young man, fighting for Ireland's independence from British rule. He was known as "Meagher of the Sword" due to his fiery revolutionary speeches urging war to achieve the goal of independence. In 1848, the British charged and convicted Meagher and several colleagues with sedition; they were sentenced to death. Their sentences were commuted to penal transportation to Van Diemen's Land (the present-day state of Tasmania in Australia.)
In 1852, Meagher escaped to the United States and settled in New York City. There he studied law, worked as a journalist, and traveled to present lectures on the Irish cause. At the beginning of the American Civil War, he joined the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of brigadier general.[1] He was most notable for recruiting and leading the Irish Brigade and encouraging Irish support for the cause of the Union. He was married twice and had one surviving son, from his first wife.
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Following the Civil War, Meagher was appointed acting governor of the Montana Territory. In 1867, Meagher drowned in the swift-running Missouri River after falling from a steamboat at Fort Benton.
It has long been debated whether he was pushed off. It was possibly a murder. He had his enemies, especially one of the Indian Agents. During the celebration one evening, an incursion was held with a real judge presiding. A jury was appointed from the audience and some learned individuals acted as lawyers, witnesses and widow of the deceased. The jury called it a murder. The audience voted too and the majority called it a murder. Sunday after noon, the Irish Society, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, made a presentation of a bust of General Meaher. It is located on the River's berm closed to where he died. A large statue of the general is at the state capital in Helena.
Ft. Benton was really the western outpost that opened up the Montana Territory. As the Missouri River gets more shallow the further one travels up river, it is impossible for the steam ships to navigate the waters. In fact, they could not make it all the way to Ft. Benton after the spring run off. Goods had to be off loaded down stream and brought into town in wagons. From Ft. Benton these goods were taken to settlements and mining camps like Helena, Virginia City and Bannack. One trail went north into Canada.
When I first moved to Montana, about six years ago, I visited the Bannack National Monument and The Big Hole Battlefield
On the way to visit the battlefield site, I had a blowout in the front right tire of my motor home. I had purchased an older second hand tire from a Mexican tire guy in Douglas in April. The tread looked OK but the sidewalls where dry rotted. Before I left for my trip to the high line, I had checked the air pressure in my tires. I filled this used tire to the amount printed on the tire but it couldn't take the pressure on that hot Sunday afternoon. I was in a very desolate place but luckily a farmer came by. He knew the Firestone tire guy in town, so we were able to contact him with his cell phone and he came out and got me. We had to go back to town to get a tire that would work as a temporary one then back out to the RV with a temporary tire. He didn't have the right size in stock. The tire guy and his father also owned a small RV park next to the tire store so they let me stay there free until the next day. On Monday, the father drove 30 miles into Havre to acquire the properly sized tire to get me back on the road. The farmer, the tire guy and his dad where quiet nice and accommodating but it was an expensive ordeal. A Sunday rescue isn't cheap and I didn't get any special pricing on the tire especially since the had to make a 60 mile trip to get it. Insurance only covered the service call but not the tire, of course. Yet again, an unexpected expense.
A short time after the Utes surrendered just south of Chinook
It is just southwest of Havre. I visited the fort after securing a guide. This fort had over 100 brick buildings. Many of them still stand and are used by Montana State University's agricultural department. So the university has been maintaining the buildings over the years. Some of the staff live on site in the original buildings. The Ag department is getting some new buildings soon and they will be moving out of the old fort's buildings thus allowing the Ft. Assinniboine Historical Society access to them. Then they will be able to maintain staff and volunteers at the site making it easier for the public to gain access to it.(Pictured is the old officers residencies at Ft. Assinboine now used by Montana State University Ag Dept.)
As the fall weather grew colder, one night it finally got below freezing. My motor home's plumbing froze and I had to put it in a heated garage to thaw it out. No real damage was done but I wasn't able to open the dirty water valve to empty the tank. So, it was time to start heading south. I quickly scooted south. I spent several days in Denver visiting friends and my brother Loren. Actually, Loren lives in Longmont.
Then I headed south again, trying to stay ahead of the cold weather fronts. I decided to go out to Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site located in La Juanta, Colorado. The fort sits on the Arkansas River and had been wonderfully restored to original condition. It was not a military fort. It was built by the Benton brothers to provide supplies and shelter to the travelers coming west on The Santa Fe Trail.
While in La Juanta, I looked up my old Eagle Valley roommate and friend, Ray Shafer. Ray was Dutchess' breeder. Now, he lives back in the area where his family and relatives ranch and he is still a very serious breeder of Australian Shepards. Dutchess' brother Blue won a blue ribbon at one of the national dog shows, Dutchess died just a couple of weeks ago. She was thirteen and one-half years old. I will miss my traveling companion.
It was in La Juanta that I decided to follow The Santa Fe Trail to Santa Fe. Actually, this was the northern section of the Santa Fe Trail. It was more dangerous than the southern root because of the Indians but is had better water and grass for the animals.
The trails took me Southwest from La Juanta, through Trinidad, Colorado over Raton Pass to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Las Vegas was the place where General Stephen Watts Kearney in 1846 proclaimed that by orders of the US Government the area was to become a possession of it. Fort Union was built just north of town shortly thereafter to provide protection to travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. Santa Fe trader and author William Davis gave his first impression of the fort in the year 1857:
Fort Union, a hundred and ten miles from Santa Fé, is situated in the pleasant valley of the Moro. It is an open post, without either stockades or breastworks of any kind, and, barring the officers and soldiers who are seen about, it has much more the appearance of a quiet frontier village than that of a military station. It is laid out with broad and straight streets crossing each other at right angles. The huts are built of pine logs, obtained from the neighboring mountains, and the quarters of both officers and men wore a neat and comfortable appearance.
I visited the fort on a chilly October day. The wind was blowing and it began to rain. The area is surrounded by hills covered by trees and bushes.
(Pictured is Ft. Union)
After a few days, I pushed on to Santa Fe. I passed through Pecos. This little town is the site of the most westerly civil war battle. After it was over, the confederates returned to El Paso, not actually defeated but unable to proceed to the gold fields of Colorado and California because the Union Soldiers had caught destroyed all their supplies. Pecos is also the site of a large Spanish Mission.
One could spend weeks visiting the art galleries and museums there. The Santa Fe Opera is famous for it's summer performances. It was still cool and rainy so I didn't spend any time here, thinking I would visit later in the spring perhaps. I would be warmer.
In Santa Fe, I picked up the ol
d El Camino Real. The Royal Road from Mexico City, established by the Spaniard Onante. There is new interpretative center, just off the Interstate before you get to Truth or Consequences. It describes the clash of cultures that resulted as the Spanish settled the area, brought Christianity and civilization to the indigenous peoples of the area.
Many years before Onate's expedition, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado was sent to explore the area in 1540, because of the stories of the fabulous cities of gold they had heard about. While I wintered in Columbus, I read a very interesting book about him called Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest by Douglas Preston
(Coronado Sets Out to the North, by Frederic Remington, 1861-1909)
The Coronado Expedition 1540–1542
What I found most interesting was the fact that Coronado explored this part of North America 566 years before Lewis and Clarke's Corps of Discovery wherein they followed the Missouri from St. Louis to the Pacific Coast.
Coronado must have passed through what is now The Gila National Forest. It is a protected national forest in New Mexico in the southwestern United States established in 1905. It covers approximately 3.3 million acres (5150 sq. mi., 13,000 km²) of public land, making it the sixth largest National Forest in the continental United States. Part of the area, the Gila Wilderness, was established in 1924 as the first designated wilderness by the U.S. federal government. Aldo Leopold Wilderness and Blue Range Wilderness are also found within its borders. The forest lies in southern Catron, northern Grant, western Sierra, and extreme northeastern Hidalgo counties in southwestern New Mexico. Forest headquarters are located in Silver City, New Mexico. There are local ranger district offices in Glenwood, Mimbres, Quemado, Reserve, Silver City, and Truth or Consequences.
Terrain ranges from rugged mountains and deep canyons to semi-desert. Due to the extremely rugged terrain, the area is largely unspoiled. There are several hot springs in Gila National Forest, including Middle Fork Hot Springs, Jordan Hot Springs, and Turkey Creek Hot Springs.
I visited the Gila Cliff Dwelling one day. A number of people lived there off and on for many years. A storm was brewing that would bring snow. In the winter, a little snow can make travel impossible as the roads are steep and can get icy. So, I high tailed it for Siver City.
One quaint old ghost town that I visited in the area was Mogollon. Mogollon, also called the Mogollon Historic District, is a former mining town located in the Mogollon Mountains in Catron County, New Mexico, in the United States.
Located east of Glenwood and Alma, it was founded in the 1880s at the bottom of Silver Creek Canyon to support the gold and silver mines in the surrounding mountains. A mine called "Little Fannie" became the most important source of employment for the town's populus. During the 1890s Mogollon had a transient population of between 3,000 to 6,000 miners and, because of its isolation, had a reputation as one of the wildest mining towns in the West. Today Mogollon is listed as Fannie Hill Mill and Company Town Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.
(Pictured is the inn in Mogollon)
In a future blog, I plan to cover my visits to Mesilla, Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, Pecos, San Juan Islands and the Olympic National Park.
In closing, I must relate to you that I lost my beloved companion Dutchess, short for Dutchess of Ray. She was a constant companion where ever I went, to the office,
on sales calls, out hiking, and on the road. Over thirteen and one
half years, we visited many places. Dutchess didn't care where we
went, and like me, I think she enjoyed not only the woods and sea
shores but she enjoyed visiting friends and family. Always making
friends, she was my social secretary. Many people would come up to me
and start a conversation. They occasionally would say that they too,
had an Australian Shepard. Often as not they would say something like,
“we have a friend who has a Healer too” or “we have a Aussie but it
has a blue eye”. Even conversations that started like, “I like your
dog, we have a dog too!” It didn't matter because, it was Dutchess
that broke the ice and got people talking and I made acquaintances as
a result.
Dutchess had papers which meant that she was registered with the
American Kennel Club (AKA). She won a blue ribbon when she was a
puppy, but she turned out to be a little big for a female so we never
showed her later in life. That didn't matter, I just wanted a nice
pet. She exceeded my expectations many times over. She had blue blood,
she was Royalty but she didn't act like anything but the very sweetest
of animals. Her breeder, Ray Schafer of La Juanta, CO. wanted that in
his dogs. He surely succeeded.
About a month ago, Dutchess had, we believe, a ruptured blood
vessel in her brain. It caused her to stumble and fall. She held her
head cockeyed and she seemed disorientated. A couple of days ago, I
let her out of the house like I always do. She always came back to the
door after doing her business. This time she didn't come back. My
brother, his wife and I looked for her for several hours in the middle
of the night. The next morning, I found her in the irrigation canal. I
think she stumbled into it and couldn't get out. The bottom of the
canal had a foot or two of black goo. Poor Dutchess, she must have
been very afraid. Such a sad ending of a wonderful dog.
She was my closest companion. I will miss her dearly.
Comments, corrections, additions and personal stories appreciate.
VKR
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