New Mexico in 1876-1877: A Newspaperman's View: The Travels & Reports of William D. Dawson

By Robert J. Torrez

Ever wonder what New Mexico was like in the nineteenth cen­ tury? In 1876, newspaperman William D. Dawson undertook a series of journeys that took him the entire length of the territory from the D&RG railhead near Fort Garland, Colorado, to the Mesilla Valley and west to the mines of Silver City and Pinos Altos, New Mexico. Here for the first time in print since they appeared in the pages of The Santa Fe Daily New Mexican nearly a century and a half ago, are descriptions of New Mexico's towns, its agriculture, wineries and mines; farmers, merchants, vintners, miners, soldiers, Indians, outlaws, and pretty girls-all the elements that we imagine constituted this great frontier-drew Dawson's atten­ tion and found their way into his reports, leaving us an extraordinary portrait of New Mexico as it was mas antes, in the old days.WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THIS BOOK:"Just before the railroads came to New Mexico territory, the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican printed a running account of their reporter's travels up and down the Rio Grande from the San Luis Valley to Mesilla and west to Silver City and Tierra Amarilla. Lively sketches of the countryside, the towns, farms, wineries, army posts and even spas at the hot springs all found a place in his dispatches. Casual readers and historians alike are indebted to Robert Torrez for bringing these scenes of New Mexico some 130 years ago, not to be missed, to a modem audience:'-John P. Wilson, historian

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781936744633

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Copyright© 2007, 2014

by Robert J. Torrez

Rio Grande Books, an imprint of LPD Press

Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, New Mexico.

All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system, without permission.

For information:

Rio Grande Books

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Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, NM 87107-5647

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Book and cover design by Paul Rhetts & Barbe Awalt

ISBN 978-1-890689-50-6 (pb. : alk. Paper)

ISBN 978-1-936744-63-3 (ebook formats)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006937764

Cover photographs: US. Army Corps of Engineers Survey Map (1873-1878), expedition conducted by 1st Lt. George M. Wheeler. Section 84- New Mexico and The Daily New Mexican, January 12, 1877.

Contents

Introduction

Part I The Rio Abajo

Part II - On Horseback Through Rio Arriba, 1877

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

Notes, New Mexico in 1876-1877

Selected Bibliography

About the Author

Introduction

The New Mexico of the 1870s must have been an exciting place. Although the territory had been settled by the ancestors of the Pueblos hundreds of years earlier and the Spanish had colonized the region in 1598, the population was small and vast areas remained unsettled. New Mexicans were obviously intimately familiar with the land and its resources. Spanish and Mexican officials regularly compiled reports on the land and its people. At the mid-nineteenth century, however, very little published information was readily available to immigrant Americans who came to New Mexico and viewed the vast unsettled portions of the territory as a land of unlimited opportunities. Many newcomers became unabashed promoters.

The interests of these promoters were, of course, blatantly self serving. Two prominent promotional books of that period were Elias Brevoort’s New Mexico, Her Natural Resources and Attractions.... (the title continues for several lines)¹ and William F. M. Amy’s New Mexico: Its Agricultural, Pastoral and Mineral Resources...² Brevoort’s book, for example, published in 1874, promoted the availability of Spanish and Mexican land grants in which Brevoort had substantial interests. Arny, whose book was published a year earlier, did not have the extensive financial interests as Brevoort, but he may have been New Mexico’s most unabashed promoter. Arny emphasized that some of the best land in the territory was considered Indian land and advocated removal of the various tribes to reservations established in areas where they would not impede the process of opening New Mexico’s vast frontiers to new settlement.

In the 1870s New Mexico’s population had not yet reached one hundred thousand. Most of that population was concentrated in the major settlements and pueblos along the Rio Grande and the rest scattered in irrigable mountain valleys from Taos to the Manzanos and in the Mesilla Valley. As late as 1880, less than twenty per cent of the population lived in the southern and southwestern portions of the territory that constituted the counties of Dona Ana, Grant and Lincoln. To promoters such as Brevoort and Arny, the potential was unlimited. The problems and turmoil of Lincoln and Colfax counties were still in the future; in their eyes the Indian problem was on the verge of being solved, and above all, THE RAILROAD WAS COMING!

This excitement was doubtless stirred by arrival of the steel rails to southern Colorado and the numerous military surveys conducted throughout New Mexico by the United States Corps of Topographical engineers between 1873 and 1878. The coming and going of government officials and reports published by the expeditions conducted under the likes of George M. Wheeler and numerous others were eagerly anticipated by both civic leaders and private promoters, all of whom took great delight in predicting that the railroad would be coming soonest to their town or location. The extraordinary excitement generated by the advancing railroad mounted year by year and even day by day as the rails came closer and closer. ‘’Almost here;’ declared the 3 April 1880 issue of The Albuquerque Review as construction crews worked their way to within two miles of the city. The day the train finally arrived (three weeks later), the paper optimistically predicted, would be "the day from which Albuquerque may reasonably expect to date the commencement of her material prosperity and the beginning of her existence as the Queen City of the Rio Grande:’ Every town along the railroad route undoubtedly felt much the same.

The information compiled by these expeditions was eventually compiled into a series of maps by George M. Wheeler. These maps, generally referred to as the "Wheeler maps;’ were published and made widely available several decades after the expeditions took place, but undoubtedly, the information provided at the time proved invaluable in expanding the public’s knowledge of and interest in New Mexico and its resources.

An example of the promotional maps of New Mexico produced in this period was one published under the auspices of The New Mexico Livestock and Agricultural Association of Chicago, Illinois. This company was incorporated in 1872 with the expressed purpose of recruiting among and encouraging the immigrant population in the Chicago area to emigrate to agricultural settlements the company planned to establish in New Mexico. This particular company managed to entice and defraud a small group of mostly Scandinavian immigrants to northern New Mexico, where a short­ lived colony named Park View was established between 1876 and 1877.³ Among the promotional materials produced by the company was a magnificent color map of the territory drawn by Augustus Z. Huggins. While Huggins was promoting this agricultural colony, he was also an employee of the Office of Surveyor General. We can only speculate if there was a formal, if not illicit, relationship between the Surveyor General and private promoters at this time.

US. Army Corps of Engineers Survey Map (1873-1878), expedition conducted by 1st Lt. George M. Wheeler. Section 77-New Mexico. Santa Fe to Socorro: The Rio Abajo, December 12, 1876-December 24, 1876.

US. Army Corps of Engineers Survey Map (1873-1878), expedition conducted by 1st Lt. George M. Wheeler. Section 84-New Mexico. Socorro to Pinos Altos to Santa Fe: The Rio Abajo, December 24, 1876-February 14,1877.

US. Army Corps of Engineers Survey Map (1873-1878), expedition conducted by 1st Lt. George M. Wheeler. Section 69-New Mexico. The Rio Arriba, September, 1877.

Despite the many expeditions and promotional books, reliable information about New Mexico and its resources remained relatively scarce. This scarcity of information was occasionally alleviated by New Mexico’s newspapers. Papers of the time eagerly solicited and published letters and reports from anyone who managed to write about their visits and observations of even the most remote parts of the territory. When they could not obtain information from their readers, the papers sometimes arranged to obtain it more directly. Prominent among these efforts were New Mexico’s leading newspapers of the time, The Daily New Mexican and its companion publication, the Weekly New Mexican.

In its 11 December 1876 issue, owners of the Daily announced that the following day, William D. Dawson, one of their editorial staff, would embark on a trip of at least six weeks, during which the reporter would travel from Santa Fe to Silver City. Along the route Dawson would submit reports describing his experience and observations:’ The paper suggested that Dawson would gladly receive and communicateany information beneficial to the country and of interest to the general public...:’ Almost as an afterthought, the notice indicated Dawson would also accept subscriptions for the paper and advertising from businesses along the way.

William D. Dawson is a prominent but little known figure in the history of northeast New Mexico. It is not certain Dawson is related to the family after which the ranching and mining community of Dawson in Colfax County is named, but he shows up in the 1870 census of Elizabethtown. That same year he is a party in a Colfax County civil suit in which he appealed a $1,000 judgment made against him for damages related to possession of a placer mine at Grouse Gulch in Colfax County. Court records do not show final disposition of the case, but indications are the County Sheriff had confiscated his property and sold it off to satisfy the earlier District Court judgment. Colfax County assessment records show he retained property in the county at least through 1875 but he is not found in the 1880 census in Colfax County, an absence that may be explained by his presence in Santa Fe in 1876 as a reporter for the New Mexican.⁴

Regardless of where Dawson was from or where he ended up, his trip and the reports he submitted to the paper made a significant contribution to our knowledge of New Mexico’s landscape in the 1870s. Between 20 December 1876 and 15 February 1877, the newspaper published twenty two of Dawson’s reports under the pen name, "Your Reporter:’ These reports constitute an extraordinary description of the entire Rio Grande valley from Santa Fe south to the Mesilla valley and west to the mining region of Silver City in southwest New Mexico. If one reads his reports and keeps the earlier mentioned Wheeler maps handy, his trip can be followed step by step.

In September 1877, seven months following completion of his rio abajo5 trip, Dawson undertook another sojourn into the New Mexican countryside. Writing under the pen name of "W. D. D:: he turned his attention to northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, a trip that took him from Santa Fe north along the Rio Grande to the Taos Valley and through the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado to Fort Garland, then the terminus of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway. In the course of one year, he had traversed the entire length of New Mexico.

Dawson left Santa Fe on his trip to southern New Mexico late the morning of 12 December 1876. He was accompanied by, or more correctly Dawson went along the major portion of this trip with, Sergeant M. Frost (this may have been Max Frost, who later gained prominence in New Mexico territorial affairs and served as Adjutant