Page 14 - Early Naturalists of the Black Range

José Ramón de Urrutia y las Casas
1771. José Ramón de Urrutia y las Casas was a cartographer during the period when he was in New Mexico and crafted several maps, including the Primera Parte map of 1771 which is shown on the following page.
As with many maps of this era, it takes a bit of orienting to understand what is being shown, because the geographic knowledge of the map-makers was imprecise. Note, however, that there is much which is right about this map. The map shows a river flowing across the top of the map, labeled as the Rio Gila, and it flows into another larger river before entering the Gulf. Turning to the detail, the headwaters of the Gila are shown originating from the Sierra de Gila, just north of the Sierra del Cobre and Sierra Florida. The Rio Grande and the San Diego crossing are shown correctly, as is the Jornada del Muerto. Laguna de Guzmán in Chihuahua is also shown.
Of interest to us are the rivers flowing into the Rio Grande from the west, one of which is named the S. Bernardo.
Paso del Rio del Norte is placed too far north. Many things seem right once it is moved farther south.
Juan Bautista de Anza & Don Francisco Martínez
1780. A component of the Anza expedition, led by Martínez, camped at Cooke’s Spring on November 18, 1780. He called the spring “San Miguel”. A few days later (November 28)
Anza stopped at the spring. He called the spring “Picacho”. After a stay of a few hours he crossed to the Rio Mimbres.
(Cooke’s Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui - A Focus on United States History in Southwestern New Mexico, p. 20). See right for a map of these routes and of the existing Spanish roads of the time. Martínez may have visited the current Faywood Hot Springs, which he called “Ojo Toro” (bull spring) in 1785.
In the area of the Black Range and the Mimbres, most of the Spanish activity between 1784 and 1785 was military and focused on conquest of the Apache.
The Apache called Cooke’s Peak “Dziltanatal”, which may be translated as “Mountain Holds Its Head Up Proudly” or “The Proud Mountain That Sits Alone.” The Spanish first called it “Cerro de los Remedios” (Bernardo Miera y Pacheco in 1758) and later “Picacho de las Mimbres” (Jose Antonio Vildosola, 1780).
Don José Manuel Carrasco
1800. Carrasco made the first claim to what he named “Santa Rita del Cobre”, the location of the copper mine being revealed to him by an Apache Indian guide. (This may be questioned based on Urrutia’s map of 1771 and Pacheco’s map of 1758, which clearly show “Sierra del Cobre” in the area where the mine is. Either it was known that copper came from somewhere
Cooke’s Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui - A Focus on United States History in Southwestern New Mexico, by Donald Howard Couchman, 1990 - Cultural Resources Bulletin No. 7 of the United States Bureau of Land Management, p. 15.
in the mountains here or the location of the mine was known prior to 1800.)
Don Francisco Manuel de Elguea
In 1804, Carrasco sold his rights to the Santa Rita mine to Elguea, who built a fort at the site and “employed” 600 miners. In 1809 his heirs leased the mine to Juan Onis who, in turn, leased it to Sylvester and James Pattie in 1825. By 1827 the Patties had left for California, and Estevan Courcier profitably
operated the mine until 1834.
From 1834 to 1837 Robert
13
Remains of one of the round towers of the triangular fort erected by Francisco Manuel Elguea. Photo ca. 1911.