ANEXO Jorge Linkens

On January 24, 1848, just nine days before American and Mexican officials signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Foreman James Marshall noticed a few gold flakes in the stream near the sawmill where he worked for John Sutter. Soon people from all over the world were looking to find a quick fortune in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. Ships carrying would-be prospectors sailed around the tip of South America on their way to west coast ports. Other travelers disembarked at the Panama isthmus, and trekked through heavy jungle terrain across the relatively short distance to the west coast in order to secure spots on ships heading north. The expense of sailing to California was

prohibitive for many and soon less moneyed travelers headed out across the continent by wagon, cart, and horseback.275

At the time Marshall discovered gold, the Oregon Trail was the most used route to the West by Americans thanks to Lewis and Clark. Once travelers reached Wyoming they would cut across northern Utah and Nevada on their way to central California. Before the U.S. – Mexican War, the Santa Fe Trail ended in Santa Fe or along a spur south to Paso del Norte for all but the most adventurous. The United States military explored other routes across the desert from Santa Fe to the west coast, but found the land mostly impassible by wagon. Philip St. George Cooke, a Colonel in the “Army of the West” under order of General Stephen Kearny, set out to locate a route that supply wagons could traverse. He essentially “located” the route along the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo) from Santa Fe that indigenous peoples had traveled for centuries before Spanish missionaries claimed it as part of the Camino Real network. Once in the Paso del Norte area, Cooke headed west across the northern-most part of Mexico that would later become southern New Mexico and Arizona via the Gadsden Purchase.276 _{Later in 1849 just before the}

frenzy of the Gold Rush would begin, The Corpus Christi Star reprinted a report from The New York Courier and Enquirer describing Cooke’s route as “a most important

275 Mabelle Martin, “California Emigrant Roads through Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 28, no. April (1925): 287.

276 Ibid., 287–88. The main route General Stephen Kearny attempted ran along the Gila River Basin, which eventually drained into the Colorado River before it emptied into the Pacific Ocean. This route was impassible for the army’s supply wagons.

discovery, and must prove of great service especially if that portion of Mexico should hereafter be annexed to the United States, as a railroad would in all probability be built over the route.”277 _{The Gadsden Purchase five years later ensured that the dream of a}

southern railroad route to the West Coast would later come true.

Communities in Texas had already been promoting routes to El Paso,

foreshadowing the politics of railroad construction that would occur in the state three decades later. Before word got out about Sutter’s Mill, “the first explorations had already been made by the merchants of Corpus Christi and San Antonio, trying to find a road to Chihuahua, via El Paso, to compete with Independence, Missouri for the trade of Mexico.278 _{Boosters from Houston, Galveston, and Austin clashed with boosters from}

Corpus Christi and San Antonio regarding the convenience and ease-of-travel along two potential routes – one headed west out of the Austin area and the other further south beginning in Corpus Christi and connecting to Paso del Norte via San Antonio. The most important aspect of each route, of course, was that it led travelers through the community promoting it before the long trip across the desert to Mexico. The stakes were high for these growing communities to increase commerce and population in order to make their towns attractive to outside investment. Many of these boosters had seen the effects of the railroad upon communities in the Northeast and Midwest and expected the same as the railroad moved west. In the end, the United States Army influenced travelers and future

277 The Corpus Christi Star, January 13, 1849.

railroad routes as much as or more so than town boosters by erecting Forts Clark, Hudson, Lancaster and Davis along the southern route.279 _{The appearance of protection}

that the U.S. Army might provide during later wars with the Apache and Comanche tribes prompted travelers to primarily embark upon this southern route across Texas, while the series of fortifications along military roads offered a market for traders as well as ideal landing spots for future railroad depots.280

This short history of the Paso del Norte region up to the 1850s is included here to highlight two points about the region. First, the Paso del Norte region’s ideal placement in a mountain valley along the bend of a major river with high plains desert surrounding most of the area made it a place of respite for travelers heading in every direction. It is a landscape that can sustain settlement (and has for thousands of years), but even before European contact it also served as a stopover and trading post between major indigenous civilizations as well as a resting place for hunting parties. Since humans have populated the Southwest and Northern Mexico, Paso del Norte has been both an ideal place for permanent settlement and an ideal place for transient populations to rest and recover before moving through. Second, beginning with the Spanish Colonial period, movement through the area increased dramatically. The prospects for trade, numerous wars, rumors

279 Ibid., 192–195.

280 Timmons, El Paso: A Borderlands History, 159–169, offers an extensive look at the history and politics of scouting, mapping, and ultimately promoting various routes across Texas and other parts of the Southwest.

of golden cities, and news of the Gold Rush are just some of the reasons so many diverse groups of people moved across western North America. A healthy portion of those folks passed through Paso del Norte.