Page 15 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

/% few miles north of Deming in southwestern xjLNew Mexico, a giant granite monolith thrusts 8,404 feet into the air. Standing Mountain, as the Apaches called it, rises fully two-thirds of a mile
above the surrounding plains and dominates the landscape for miles around. During the latter half of the sixteenth century the Spanish named this mountain Picacho de las Mimbres, after the lost river nearby. In 1846 the Americans, forging westward in the opening phases of the Mexican War, renamed it Cooke’s Peak for Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, the United States Army leader of the Mormon Battalion volunteers. This lonely sentinel stands vigilant over a modest but dependable water source that for eons has been the necessary focal point of many cultures in their travels, subsistence, and survival (Figure 1).
Water has always been the primary necessity for mankind’s survival, and access to it, in sufficient and reliable quantities, defines the limits to which mankind can penetrate any remote frontier, earthbound or not. For the traveler, especially in the early southwestern United States, the second most important ingredient was available forage for stock. Combustible resources and edible game place a dis- tant third and fourth on the list of priorities. The dependable source of surface water at the foot of Cooke’s Peak was the sole reason that people passed through this area or temporarily occupied nearby locations. Without the existence of this spring, the development of the southwestern United States would have been assuredly delayed and perhaps would have greatly altered the course of history.
The emphasis of this research was placed on the American far west frontier period (1846-1890); how- ever, overviews of earlier and later periods were incorporated. Few people permanently left their mark on the land here. No settlements survived, and few installations, either civilian or military, modern or ancient, remain to mar the natural ruggedness of this southwestern desert terrain. The earliest people left no records, except for their engravings on the naked rocks, a few pottery sherds, and their graves.
Many of the later travelers saw Cooke’s Spring as only a welcome overnight resting place, or at most a two-day layover to recruit their stock and prepare for the next arduous leg of a long and frequently dangerous journey. The travelers’ time spent within the Cooke’s Peak area was infinitesimal compared with the total required for their treks. Therefore, those people who did record something about the location as they passed through had little to say unless something particularly noteworthy occurred to attach a special meaning or create a strong recol- lection for the event such as an Indian attack or finding sufficient water for thirst-crazed stock.
The most consistent occupancy of the area in more recent times was by United States military forces and miners; however, this effort does not dwell exten- sively on either of these facets, because a study of Fort Cummings could, and should, be the subject of a separate and more specifically focused work, as should the mining efforts nearby. This effort depicts the Cooke’s Peak area, not as a bleak and barren element of nature but as perceived through the senses of the people who passed nearby. They char- acterized many diverse social factions: emigrants (and immigrants) searching for a new start; forty- niners blinded by the sun-bright lure of golden treasure; soldiers, mounted and on foot, White, Black, and Red; peaceful, skulking, and marauding Indians; drovers, herders, ranchers, freighters, rob- bers, and stagecoach drivers; the strong and the weak, the good and the bad. From this aspect then, emerges the title: “Cooke’s Peak — Pasaron Por Aqui (They Passed by Here).”
This area was a focal point around which the con- summation of United States Manifest Destiny pivoted, and the narrow, rugged road established through Cooke’s Canyon served first as an ex- ploratory bilateral tendril offering tenuous political and economic nourishment between the established East and the fledgling West. Later it was the neces- sary umbilical through which the gold-seekers and westering emigrants were literally fed by the hazard- ous efforts of countless freighters, cattle drovers, and sheep herders.
Introduction
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