Cooke's Wagon Road / Basin and Range Country

The battalion camped on November 16, 1846, at a spring in the Cooke's Range that took the colonel's name, and crossed the canyon beyond it the next day. Cooke's Spring was the only large supply of fresh water between Mesilla and the Mimbres, so emigrant trains, the San Antonio-San Diego mail and then the Butterfield stages all stopped there; Butterfield kept a station at the spring from 1858 to 1861. The pass beyond became a favored Apache ambush site, called Massacre Canyon, and the Army built Fort Cummings at the spring on October 2, 1863.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Cooke's Wagon Road In 1846, while leading the Mormon Battalion to California during the Mexican War, Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke blazed a wagon road from New Mexico to the West Coast. The potential use of the route for the railroad construction was one of the reasons for the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. Cooke entered Arizona through Guadalupe Pass. Official Scenic Historic Marker Basin and Range Country Basin and Range province of southeast New Mexico is of broad alluvial plains from which isolated fault block mountains rise like islands in a sandy sea. Indigenous peoples have used both the basin and range in their seasonal cycle. The Victorio Mountains to the South yield zinc, silver, gold, copper, lead, and tungsten.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Carlotta Thompkins Thurmond — 20 mi
• Deming — 22 mi
• Mary Ann Deming Crocker — 22 mi
• Hachita — 24 mi