Most of the information below has been included in various sections of this blog. This entry does include some new details not previously posted, but serves mainly as a recap and collation of previously published material.
1807: José Manrique, Capitán Presidial Comapny, El Principe Commandate, led and expedition from the Presidio of San Elizario (10 miles south of El Paso, TX). He followed the Rio Grande north, then turned west to the Gila River, following a route which approximated that later taken in 1846 by Kearney and the Army of the West. Manrique reported on all of the springs he came across on his expedition. After making the crossing of the Rio Mimbres, he names the next spring west as being “Ojo del Oxoso”. It is possible that this was what would later be known as Ojo de Vaca /Cow Springs, as this is the first spring west of the Rio Mimbres.
1851: John Russell Bartlett was the Mexican Boundary Commissioner for the United States. He led the American team sent out to work, in conjunction with the Mexican team, on fixing the position of the International Boundary between New Mexico and the Republic of Mexico after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Treaty had been signed on February 2, 1848, and brought an end to the War with Mexico, which had begun in 1846.
On May 11, 1851, Bartlett was at Ojo de Vaca and described it as follows:
The spring is but a depression in the plain surrounded by a couple of acres of grass, resembling an oasis in the desert. Several holes had been dug here by passing emigrants, in which water had accumulated, though in some of them it had a disagreeable sulfurous taste. Never the less, not knowing how soon another opportunity would present itself, it was thought best to fill our kegs.
On August 28, 1851, Bartlettt was at Ojo de Vaca again. This time he describes the difference in the surroundings after the rains. On August 29 he wrote:
From this place four roads diverge. To the north is the road to the Copper Mines [Santa Rita del Cobre] we had just traversed; eastward is the one taken by emigrants from New Mexico, and first opened to this place by Colonel Cooke [1846], which continues south-westwardly to the Guadalupe Pass; and southward runs the road to Janos.
From Ojo de Vaca, Bartlett took the fourth road, which ran west. All four roads can be identified on the April, 1877 survey map of Township 22 South, Range 13 West, where the road to the north is marked “Road to Silver City”, the road to the east “Road to Mimbres and the Rio Grande”, the road to the south as “Road to Old Mexico”, and that taken by Bartlett as “Tucson and Rio Grande road”.
1854/55: Lieutenant John G.Parke – Parke’s exploration for a Thirty-Second Parallel Railroad Route.
In December of 1853, Parke had received orders to explore the area from the Pima Villages to the Rio Grande. The United States had been given permission by the Mexican Government to run a a line through the northern part of Mexico. Parke made two journeys, one in 1854 and one in 1855, and mentions Ojo de Vaca on both occasions. In 1854, from a point in the Pyramid Range close to Pyramid Peak, he reached Cooke’s emigrant trail somewhere near Los Peñasquitos (Soldier’s Farewell). He followed Cooke’s trail to Mesilla, traveling through Cow Springs. He reported that there were only nine sources of water along the trail between Tucson and the Rio Grande, with Ojo de Vaca being the last source before the Mimbres River. This would support the idea that Manrique’s 1807 ” Ojo del Oxosos” and Ojo de Vaca were the same spring; Manrique, traveling from the opposite direction, names “Ojo del Oxosos” as the first spring after the Rio Mimbres.
1857/58: James B.Leach – Wagon Road fr0m El Paso, TX to Fort Yuma, CA
In 1857, the United States Congress approved a Bill for the construction of several Wagon Roads; the Bill included an appropriation of $200,000 for the construction of a wagon road to run from a point opposite El Paso to Fort Yuma, California, now known as Leach’s Wagon Road, In 1859, the road was described as running:
Up the eastern side of of the Rio Grande, crossing the river near to La Mesilla and continuing to Picacho [Doña Ana County] at which point it turned to the west and headed towards Cook’s Spring. After crossing the Rio Mimbres it went to Ojo de la Vaca, crossed the southern edge of the Burro Mountains and went to Ojo Excavado.
Leach’s engineers made improvements to the water storage capabilities at Ojo de Vaca, which was described as “a collection of springs welling up from a marshy mass in the center of a small basin situated on an elevated rolling plateau.” A drainage trench with a capacity of 10,692 gallons was dug to form a trough all around the center of the basin. Several smaller troughs were also excavated at the sides of the basin “for the purpose of obtaining drinking water uncontaminated by stock &c.”
It is important to note that neither Leach’s Wagon Road nor any of the other roads constructed under the 1857 Bill were military roads. They were the first roads to be constructed under the authority of the Department of the Interior – as opposed to the (military) Topographical Engineers – and were specifically intended to facilitate emigration to California.
1858 – 1861: John Butterfield – The Southern Overland Mail
Ojo de Vaca/Cow Springs was a station on the Fourth Division (Tucson, AZ – Franklin, TX) of Butterfield’s route. Ormsby, a New York Herald journalist, was a passenger on the first of Butterfield’s west-bound runs, and describes the facilities at Cow Springs as being, like those at Soldier’s Farewell and Cooke’s Spring – “one tent for the accommodation of the station men.”
1862: Colonel James H. Carleton – The Civil War and The California Column:
On January 31, 1862, Colonel James H. Carleton of the First Regiment of Infantry, California Volunteers, was given orders to organize an expedition to recapture all the forts in “Arizona and New Mexico”, thereby expelling the Confederate forces, and opening the southern mail route.” One of Carleton’s troops – Pvt. Eli Warnock Hazen of Company F, First Volunteer Infantry – kept a diary of his journey. Of Cow Springs he wrote “good adobe house roof burnt off water good no wood”. This was in the summer of 1862. The following year Colonel David Fergusson of the First Cavalry, California Volunteers, described Cow Springs Station as having a plentiful supply of water.
1870: Bisby & John – Location of Cow Springs Ranch
1874/78: Kerens & Mitchell – Mail contractors.
During Kerens & Mitchell’s contract period, the station at Cow Springs was abandoned when the mail route was changed. Silver City and Pinos Altos, previously served by a spur route, were now embraced into the main route. At Rio Mimbres, the route turned northwest along what had been the spur route to Silver City and Pinos Altos, and now, instead of returning to Rio Mimbres to continue their journey, the mail coaches continued on, traveling via Silver City to Ralston City (Shakespeare). After Ralston City they rejoined the original Mesilla – San Diego road. As a result of this route change, that stretch of road between Rio Mimbres and Ralston City, which included Cow Springs and Soldier’s Farewell, was abandoned by the mail contractors.
1880:Jack Frost & James Haggerty
In the early spring of 1880, Cow Springs ranch was owned by Jack Frost and James Haggerty, and was being run as a dairy, supplying dairy products to Silver City. At the end of October 1880, there was some speculation in California newspapers that Cow Springs would be the point at which the Southern Pacific Rail Road, being laid from the west, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Rail Road, being laid from the north, would meet. The two railroads would eventually meet at Deming Junction in early 1881.
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