History: Timeline

Tracing the tracks and trails of Northeast New Mexico

100 million years ago
Duck-billed dinosaurs roamed the area around Clayton, now the county seat of Union County, which was on the edge of an ancient sea. More than 500 tracks have been documented at Clayton Lake State Park along a trackway which is open to the public.

56,000-62,000 years ago
Capulin Mountain erupted, part of the last stage of a great period of volcanism that began 9 million years earlier.

10,000 years ago
Folsom Man hunted the area of present-day Colfax and Union counties. He had traveled from Asia through Alaska to America during the last Ice Age. As the Ice Age ended, the climate in New Mexico changed, becoming hotter and drier, and Folsom Man followed the bison and other game to the Great Plains.

700 to 1300 A.D.
The people commonly known as "Anasazi", known to the Navajo as "Ancient Ones," developed into a vast, civilized culture stretching from northern Mexico to southern Colorado.

500
The Anasazi migrated to regions with a more predictable water supply like the Rio Grande Valley, along the Pecos River and the present-day Zuni and Acoma lands of west-central New Mexico.

1100s
The first Puebloans began building rock and mud villages in the Pecos valley. Some two dozen villages rose here over the next two centuries, including one where Pecos pueblo stands today. Sometime during the 14th century, small villages were abandoned and the Pecos pueblo grew larger. By 1450 it was a well-planned frontier fortress, five stories high, with a population of 2,000.

1500s
Cheyenne Indian Chief Orejas de Conejo (Rabbit Ear) roamed the area around Clayton with his tribe. Killed in battle, the chief was buried on the larger peak of the mountains which bear his name today.

1540
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado left his home in one of the western provinces of Mexico to search for the golden cities of Cibola, putting New Mexico under the dominion of Spain.

1541
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado camped near modern-day Puerto de Luna in Guadalupe County on his way east in search of Quivira.

1680
The Indians drove the Spaniards back to Mexico during the Pueblo Revolt.

1693
An expedition under the command of Don Diego de Vargas retook the land along the Rio Grande. By the end of the following century the few hundred soldiers and family members who had accompanied de Vargas had grown to more than 10,000 and the trail from Mexico City to Santa Fe had become El Camino Real, the "Royal Road."

1700s
The Jicarilla Apaches began pursuing buffalo and antelope through the region's grasslands. Comanches moved into the area and the two tribes battled each other, along with a few pockets of hardy Spanish settlers, for regional control.

1715
Juan Paez Hurtado pursued a band of Faraon Apaches, writing, "I went down with the camp to the valley which is called Mora." He also noted an old house with adobe walls standing at the entrance to the valley.

1717
A volunteer army of 500 Spaniards from Santa Fe, determined to end the Comanche raids, staged a surprise attach, killed hundreds of Indians and took 700 prisoner. The result was a truce, freeing the vast open lands of the area around Clayton.

1739
French explorers, traders and trappers started working the area of northeast New Mexico.

1794
The Village of San Miguel de Vado was founded on a Spanish land grant in present-day San Miguel County. It was an important stop on the Santa Fe Trail, where the wagon trains forded the Pecos.

1803
The Louisiana Purchase took place between the new country of the United States of America and France. Explorers soon opened up trails and mapped the new lands that shifted the fur trade to American hands.

1804
Lewis and Clark set out to explore the Great Northwest.

1806
Zebulon Pike roamed the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico.

1816
The first recorded date for Hispanic inhabitants in Mora.

1821
The first celebration of the Fourth of July observed in the New Mexico territory took place at McNees Crossing, 16 miles north of Clayton in Union County.

1821
Santa Fe Trail opened. Trade between Missouri and the new nation of Mexico began, when Mexico declared its independence from Spain and William Becknell brought a pack train of goods to Santa Fe, making a profit of 2000 percent. The entire trail was 950 miles long, linking Independence, Missouri and Santa Fe between 1821 and 1880.

1822
Don Salvador Tapia and 16 other colonists built two fortress-like plazas, which are now called Upper Anton Chico and Lower Anton Chico, in modern-day Guadalupe County. In the 1870s, Anton Chico was the seat of the one million acre Anton Chico Land Grant and a hangout for many cattlemen, sheepherders and freighters.

1830s
The settlement of Colonias, in modern-day Guadalupe County, was established. It was originally called Las Colonias and is one of the oldest settlements on New Mexico's eastern plains; early villagers were farmers but hunted buffalo in the fall. A few families still live here.

1835
Mexican Governor Albino Perez gave an official grant of land to the settlers of Mora.

1835
Spanish settlers founded the city of Las Vegas as a plaza for the region, a stipulation for receiving a Mexican land grant. Las Vegas eventually became the county seat of San Miguel County.

1840
Hay Springs Well, the nation's oldest surviving spring-fed well along the Santa Fe Trail, was dug by settlers in Las Vegas. The well was a favorite stop for travelers along the Santa Fe Trail -- and for William H. "Billie the Kid" Bonney.

1841
Mexican Governor Manual Armijo granted land to Beaubien and Miranda of Taos. In 1842, Lucien Maxwell married Luz, daughter of Carlos Beaubien, who eventually inherited the grant.

1841
The Texas-Santa Fe Expedition passed through Anton Chico (Guadalupe County) on its way to take control of the eastern drainage of the Rio Grande for the Republic of Texas. But they didn't get far before they were overpowered by a group of very serious New Mexicans and sent along back home to Texas.

1842
Lucien Maxwell and Kit Carson were hired on as scouts and hunters for the first of five major scientific expeditions led by explorer John C. Fremont to map and explore Indian lands west of the Mississippi. They also joined Fremont for at least part of the second and third expeditions in 1843-44 and 1845-46.

1846
The Mexican-American War took place.

1847
General Stephen Kearney invaded New Mexico claiming the territory for the U.S. on the Old Town Plaza of Las Vegas in San Miguel County.

1847
Mora joined the people of Taos in a loyalist revolt resulting in the destruction of their entire community by U.S. military forces.

1848
The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed with Mexico, and New Mexico became an American Territory.

1849
Lucien Maxwell convinced Kit Carson to join him at Rayado, near modern-day Cimarron. Maxwell built a large house and several smaller outbuildings with Carson adding a much smaller adobe hut to the complex. By July the inhabitants of Rayado numbered over 40.

1850
Mail and stage routes to the new U.S. western territories were laid out.

1850
The Apachean tribes had settled in northeast New Mexico along with the semi-nomadic Jicarilla Apaches. Sizable camps had been established in Cimarron, Ute Park and along the Vermejo, Ponil and Cimarron rivers.

1851
Fort Union was built near the place where the Cimarron Cut-off left the Santa Fe Trail and began defending the new territory. It was a strategic military post until its abandonment in 1891.

1860s
Mora's Church of Santa Gertrudis was the primary parish for a huge area of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

1863-1880
The coming of the railroads! On July 4, 1879, the tracks of the Atchison-Topeka stretched to Las Vegas, opening a new chapter in the history of northeast New Mexico but ending the era of the Santa Fe Trail.

1860s
Texas cattle were driven through the tall, grassy plains of northeastern New Mexico and into the sheltered canyons of the front range of the Rockies on their way to railheads in western Kansas and Colorado.

1862
A regiment of soldiers from Fort Union, along with the Colorado Volunteers, turned back Rebel Forces at the Battle of Glorietta Pass, 25 miles southeast of Santa Fe. The decisive victory was the turning point of the Civil War in the west.

1864
The Old Mill Museum in Cimarron was built to provide wheat for the Army in the Southwest and the Indian Agency. It is now a museum operated by the CS Cattle Company and is open during the summer.

1865
Former guide and trapper "Uncle Dick" Wootton constructed a toll road over Raton Pass, which made the mountains so much easier to cross that the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail became the preferred route of travel.

1865
Santa Rosa, "the city of natural lakes" and the county seat of Guadalupe County, was settled.

1865
Don Celso Baca built a hacienda and started a cattle operation in the fertile plain between El Rito Creek and the Pecos River in what is now Guadalupe County's county seat of Santa Rosa.

1866 to 1869
Charles Goodnight trailed many herds of cattle from Texas to Wyoming. Thinking the toll was too high to go through Raton Pass, he traveled north from the Canadian River toward Capulin Crater, went west and dropped down to the Dry Cimarron about 1.5 miles west of Folsom, Trinchera Pass, the Picketwire River in Colorado and on to Wyoming. An easier grade than Raton Pass and free of tolls, this became known as the Goodnight Trail.

1867
Gold discovered on Baldy Mountain, started a rush in northeast New Mexico. Settlements like Baldy Town, Elizabethtown and Virginia City sprouted like mushrooms. Elizabethtown became the first incorporated town in New Mexico, but is now a ghost town, located in the Moreno Valley of Colfax County.

1868
Ute bands left for reservations in southwestern Colorado. The "Washington Treaty" of 1880 also set aside land in eastern Utah.

1870
Lucien Maxwell sold the Maxwell Land Grant in Colfax County, consisting of 1,714,765 acres, for $1,350,000.

1875
Rev. F.J. Tolby was murdered in Cimarron Canyon, starting the Colfax County "War." Throughout the 1870s, members of the infamous "Santa Fe Ring" cast their eyes on the 800,000 acre Mora Land Grant and the almost 2 million acre Maxwell Land Grant.

1879
The Atchinson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad bought the toll road on the Mountain Route of the Santa Fe Trail from "Uncle Dick" Wootton and established a busy rail line. Raton quickly developed as a railroad, mining and ranching center for the northeast part of the New Mexico territory.

1880
Billy the Kid, in the custody of Pat Garrett, was served his last Christmas dinner at Grzelachowski House in Guadalupe County while being transported to trial.

1880s
Stephen W. Dorsey acquired access to the site where Clayton, the county seat of Union County, was eventually situated. A townsite was laid out, named after Dorsey's son Clayton.

1880
The Santa Fe Railroad built Montezuma Hotel as a luxury resort outside of Las Vegas, now the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West.

1880
Senator Stephen W. Dorsey completed a magnificent log and masonry Victorian mansion at Chico Spring just off the Santa Fe Trail in Colfax County. Surrounding the mansion, which is open to the public today, are the remains of a unique combination smoke house and greenhouse (believed to be the first in New Mexico).

1880
Both Pat Garrett and Sallie Chisholm (daughter of Chisholm Trail founder) got married in the San Jose Church of Anton Chico in modern-day Guadalupe County.

1882
Frank Springer brought Hereford Cattle from Muscatine, Iowa to Colfax County.

1884
New Mexico's first public high school opened in Raton.

1886
The Jicarilla Apaches were assigned to their own reservation in the northwest part of the state.

1887
Title to Maxwell Land Grant was upheld in U.S. Supreme Court.

1890s
During the early part of this decade, cattlemen and posses broke up the gang of outlaws and cattle thieves hanging out on Mesa Redondo near Tucumcari in Quay County.

1891
Guadalupe County was created by the Territorial Legislature. The county seat of Guadalupe County is Santa Rosa. The name honors Our Lady of Guadalupe, the vision of the Virgin Mary, who appeared to Juan Diego near Mexico City in 1531.

1893
New Mexico Highlands University was founded in Las Vegas as the formal college for New Mexico. It continues to serve the state as one of its major universities.

1898
Las Vegas provided 21 Rough Riders to Teddy Roosevelt, most of whom were at his side during the famed charge up San Juan Hill. The town hosted the first Rough Riders Reunion, attended by the soon-to-be President himself, and reunions continued until the 1960s.

1900
Two men stayed with A.D. Goldenberg during a bad snowstorm which lasted three weeks. In return for the hospitality they indicated that a railroad would be going through the area soon -- four miles from the Goldenberg home. The Goldenbergs and two partners purchased property where they felt the railroad would have to lay its tracks. This property became Tucumcari, the county seat of Quay County, established in 1903.

1900
Mora County had the third largest number of homesteads registered in the New Mexico territory, 15,652.

1901
Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum was hung -- and inadvertently decapitated, but a doctor carefully reunited his head with his body -- in Clayton and buried in the Clayton Cemetery. Ketchum and his brother Sam were outlaws who robbed the train near Folsom three times.

1908
10,000-year-old "Folsom Man" was discovered when cowboy George McJunkin found some bison bones with embedded spear points near the present town of Folsom in Union County. Few were interested until 1926, when scientists excavated and found 23 more ancient Bison skeletons and 19 projectile points.

1908
A disastrous flood washed away most of the town of Folsom in Union County. Sarah Rooke, the telephone operator, stayed at her switchboard warning people of the coming flood until her building was swept away. She was honored as a heroine. Seventeen people lost their lives and most of the businesses were gone, never to be rebuilt. Sarah Rooke's monument at the Folsom Cemetery was provided by small donations from telephone operators all across the country.

1910
The Coal Camp of Sugarite in Colfax County was built, supplying home heating-type coal to as far away as Kansas and Oklahoma until it closed in 1941. At its height, approximately 1,000 people of many nationalities lived here.

1912
New Mexico became the 47th state of the United States of America.

1915
Early filmmakers shot movies in Las Vegas, making it a silent film capital.

1916-18
Eagle Nest Dam was built by CS Cattle Company. Eagle Nest Lake is home to some of the best trout fishing in the state.

1926
The "Mother Road," Route 66, was finished, connecting the country from Chicago to Los Angeles. Northeast New Mexico still has 93 miles of the Old Route 66 open to explore.

1930s and 1940s
The barren and eroded lands in The Kiowa, Rita Blanca, McClellan Creek and Black Kettle National Grasslands were purchased by the federal government and taken out of cultivation to be rehabilitated and returned to grassland agriculture.

1941
Waite Phillips gave Philmont to Boy Scouts of America.

1955
Clayton Lake was created by the New Mexico Game and Fish Department as a fishing lake and winter waterfowl resting area.

1965
Angel Fire Ski Area opened.

1981
The main embankment of Santa Rosa Dam and Lake was completed to conserve irrigation water and help sedimentation and flood control.

1996
Angel Fire Ski Area added New Mexico's first high speed quad chair.

1998
Angel Fire Ski Area added New Mexico's second high speed quad chair.

more »