Page 59 - Early Naturalists of the Black Range

On May 16, Bartlett’s party departed for Sonora. He returned to the copper mines on June 23, 1851, departing again on August 27 for the Gila survey, noting: “Since leaving the coast of Texas we had, except for eight days, followed a well marked and beaten road, practicable for wagons, and which was constantly followed by trains of emigrants passing to California.” (p. 355).
John H. Clark
1851: Among the type specimens that Clark collected in the Rio Mimbres in 1851, as part of the Survey, was that of Gila pulchella (now G. nigrescens [Charles Girard 1856] and at one time Tigoma nigrescens [Girard 1856]), the Chihuahua Chub, which is known only from the Rio Mimbres in the United States (Plate 34, Vol. II, Part 2, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey. See plate on following page.)
Chihuahua Chub was not collected again until 1975 in the Rio Mimbres. There is, however, another population of the species in Chihuahua. In that area it was first collected in 1854 and then periodically (1902, 1903, and 1988).* The Rio Mimbres and the Guzmán Basin were part of the same water system in the past.
However, it is believed that by the Pleistocene the two areas were “not consistently confluent.” (Distribution and Status of the Chihuahua Chub (Teleostei: Cyprinidae: Gila nigrescens), with Notes on its Ecology and Associated Species, by David L. Propst and Jerome A. Stefferud, The Southwest Naturalist, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 224-234.)
We are not focused on the natural history of this particular species here. Instead, it is worth noting that this species, even before the population was degraded by human activity, was rare and localized. The efforts of Clark (and others like him) were substantial and comprehensive, given the time and resources which were available to him.
He also collected mammals at this time. For instance, he collected the type specimen for Tamias (Neotamias) dorsalis - the Cliff Chipmunk - at Fort Webster (Santa Rita) in 1851 and what was considered a separate species of bear, the Coppermine Grizzly (Ursus horriaeus) at Santa Rita in 1852. Clark was, for a time, the astronomer, commissioner, and surveyor for the U.S. in the Boundary Survey. He was also the surveyor for the Texas/ New Mexico boundary survey (1859).
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