Peralta

The rout the panel describes was closer to an escape. Colonel Thomas Green's Texans dug into Peralta's adobe houses and irrigation ditches, and the two sides traded artillery fire at long range. Canby judged the position too strong to storm and forbade an attack that Major John Chivington, later the commander at Sand Creek, wanted to make. After dark, in a long sandstorm, the Confederates crossed the river and kept going south, leaving howitzers and wounded behind on the retreat. Among the prisoners taken was William Pelham, the territory's former surveyor general.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Peralta One of the last skirmishes of the Civil War in New Mexico took place here on April 15, 1862. The Sibley Brigade, retreating toTexas, camped at the hacienda of Governor Henry Connelly, a few miles from Peralta. Here the Confederates were routed by Union forces under Col. Edward R.S. Canby.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroglyph National Monument — 21 mi
  Some 24,000 images pecked into the dark basalt of Albuquerque's West Mesa, protected in 1990 and then crossed by a city boulevard.
• Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument — 28 mi
  Three Spanish mission churches raised over Tiwa and Tompiro pueblos east of the Manzano Mountains in the 1600s, each of its own stone, and one never finished.

More markers nearby

• Valencia — 2.0 mi
• Vásquez de Coronado's Route — 2.6 mi
• Nina Otero-Warren (1881-1965) — 3.7 mi
• Pueblo of Isleta — 4.6 mi