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02-25-2007, 02:28 PM
New Mexico's City of Crosses Celebrates Architectural Heritage
Of 19th Century Historic Adobe Homes and Businesses
Las Cruces, NM- Down in Las Cruces members of the Las Cruces Symphony Guild are busy these days cleaning up yards from the winter and preparing to host visitors from the 16th Annual Tour of Homes which will be held on March 25, 2007 from 1:00 – 5:00 pm. The evening before, on March 24th, President and Mrs Martin of NMSU will also host a pre-tour dinner from 5:30 – 7:30p.m. at the Fulton Center; but seating for that event is limited and tickets were nearly sold out by late February.
In addition to the Saturday dinner at NMSU, the Symphony Guild is also hosting a pre-tour luncheon on Sunday the 25th at Kiva Patio Cafe from 11:30 to 2:30 p.m. Tickets for the luncheon are still available as this article is being written; but sales of luncheon tickets are expected to be brisk. So to be assured of lunch seating, it's a good idea to buy your tickets in advance. Pre-ticketed guests will be seated first on Sunday. Drop in guests will be welcomed and seated on a space-available basis.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Abkes-Brown_Home_120_S_Mesquite.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>This year’s home tour focus is in the old Mesquite Street Original Townsite Historic District of Las Cruces. Featured will be homes, churches and businesses of historical and architectural importance in the early development of Las Cruces. The tour brochure will include a brief history of New Mexico, interviews and oral histories of participants, significant elements of early construction techniques and a tour map.
Tour tickets will be just $20 with funds raised used to support the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra. Luncheon and Tour tickets will be on sale at the Kiva Patio Cafe beginning at 11:30 on the 25th. A combination Luncheon and Tour ticket is $30. Pre-event tickets are available at Glenn Cutter Jewelers & Gallery (2640 El Paseo Rd) and Enchanted Gardens (413 W. Griggs) beginning March 1st.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Entrance_to_Jardin_de_Mesquite_at_Spruce_n_Tor.jpg border=1 align=right hspace=3 vspace=3>The Kiva Patio Cafe, 600 E. Amador Ave (at Tornillo St.), will host the pre-tour luncheon. Guests who attend will enjoy a choice of tasty luncheon entrees (vegetarian and non) in this charming 1850-1860 historic building. Tickets are just $15 each and can be purchased in advance in the same locations mentioned above.
At least 14 historic homes and businesses will be featured in the tour. In addition to the photos featured in this article, Steppin Out has created a photo and history gallery covering 9 of the homes included in the tour. You can find our Las Cruces Symphony Guild Tour of Homes gallery here (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/pp-514/showgallery.php/cat/597).
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Brush_Home_at_Mesquite_n_Picacho.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>The Mesilla Valley, with its abundance of water, was populated as early as 2000 B.C. However, none of the homes in this tour date back quite that far! Traces of pit houses, the earliest known structures, are found near present day Sunland Park, and were built sometime between 2000 B.C. and 1800 B.C. by sedentary Pueblo cultures. Between 300 and 900 A.D., up and down the Mesilla Valley, permanent structures made of adobe walls and roofed by vigas and latillas evolved. This period, termed the El Paso Phase, extended to 1400 A. D. It was part of a sophisticated culture influenced by other such groups as those of Chaco Canyon to the North and Casas Grande of Chihuahua to the South. Many problems, some external like drought and some internal like nomadic deprivations and politics, caused these Puebloan peoples to vanish from the area by 1450 A.D..... The ancestors of at least one of the current homeowners may well have lived in the area during that period. :)
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Fitch-Oliver_Compound_333_E_Kansas.jpg border=1 align=right hspace=3 vspace=3>Soon after Columbus’ discovery of the “New World”, the Viceroy of New Spain became well established in the area. On some early maps, “New Spain” was also labeled “Mexico” from the Aztec “Mextilli”, or war-god. As early as 1582, lands to the north were called “New Mexico Territory” and, eventually, spanned the western United States from Louisiana to the Pacific Ocean and northward to present day Oregon and Idaho.
When Spanish explorers began traversing the Mesilla Valley in the early 1500's, they met up with roaming groups of non-agricultural people, the peaceful Pir-Manso Tewa (of whom one of the tour’s homeowners is a descendent) and the frequently not so peaceful Apache. In 1595 Juan de Oňate made a contract for colonization of the lands along the Rio Grande, the Mesilla Valley north to Santa Fe. Oňate’s conquest and settlement were described in Villagra’s epic poem “Historia de Nueva Mexico”. Published in 1619 at Alcala de Henares in Spain, this was the first poem written about any section of the United States. Over the ensuing centuries colonists looking for good agricultural lands to settle continued to flow into the New Mexico Territory. After achieving its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico made grants to the settlers; the Brazito Grant of 1823 and the Doňa Ana Bend Colony Grant of 1840 are examples.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Kiva_Patio_Cafe_600_E_Amador.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>Following the Mexican American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe de Hildalgo in 1848, the United States acquired most of the Mesilla Valley. In 1851 the county of Doňa Ana was formed which included southern Arizona and southern New Mexico from Texas to California, and the village of Doňa Ana became the county seat. Two years later on December 30, 1853 these county lines were further defined when the Gadsden Purchase established the present international boundary between Mexico and the United States.
By 1843-1845 the thriving Doňa Ana Colony became overcrowded. All the available irrigated land was under cultivation and still colonists flowed in. The solution was to establish another village at the southern end of the colony grant. After petitioning the United States government, in 1848, Don Pablo Melendrez, the first justice of the peace of Doňa Ana, chose a spot 8 miles south of the village on the banks of the Rio Grande, near an old burial ground. The spot was not without its legends of sorrow and tragedy. While no one disputes the occurrence of massacres, numerous incidents, both true and fabricated, are told and retold. One popular tale concerns the complete destruction of an oxcart caravan from Chihuahua by Apaches. Several days later, a freight party from Doňa Ana found and buried the bodies and erected crosses. Another credible story comes from the pen of Susan Magoffin. In January, 1847 she wrote in her diary “Yesterday we passed over the spot where a few years since a party of the Apaches attacked Gen. Armijo as he returned from the Pass with a party of troops, killed some 14 of his men, the graves of whom, marked by crude crosses, are now seen.” Thus through common usage, “Las Cruces” or “The Crosses” became the name of the site.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Macrorie_Home_639_S_San_Pedro.jpg border=1 align=right hspace=3 vspace=3>By that time, ancestors of a few of the current owners of this year's historic home may well have been living in the area and either watching today’s historic homes of Las Cruces being built or working on the construction crews. Little did those long-ago workers or homeowners know that their work would still be being appreciated and enjoyed 150 years later or that their descendents might one day own those beautiful haciendas.
On November 7, 1848 the First Dragoons of the United States under the leadership of Lt. Delos Bennett Sackett arrived at the Doňa Ana garrison. The following spring of 1849, Don Pablo Melendres acquired federal approval to establish a new village, and directed Lt. Sackett and a detail of five men to ride south to lay out the new townsite. When they arrived they found “120 eager Las Crucens’ camped out in brush shelters.” Using rawhide as a surveyor’s “chain” to lay out the grid, they established the boundaries and marked the streets. Because the rawhide alternately stretched and shrank with exposure to water and hot sun, some of the streets were crooked and some blocks were not square. However, once the survey was completed, eager heads of families gathered in a grove of cottonwoods near what is now Griggs Street and “drew suertos (lucky lots) from a hat to determine which property each would own.”
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Phillips_Chapel_CME_Church_630_N_Tornillo.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>Immediately the new town’s citizens set to work. Houses were built of adobes and cottonwood poles; nearby, goats and other livestock grazed. Outlying fields of corn, pumpkins, chili, beans and vineyards were planted, irrigated form the adjacent acequia madre, the “mother ditch”, diverted from the nearby Rio Grande. (In 1863, after severe floods, the river changed course from the East side to the West side of Mesilla.) At this time, also, the parish of St Genevieve’s was established and a crude chapel built. In 1859 Fr. Manual Chavez was the first priest assigned to the parish. The gothic revival St. Genevieve’s Catholic Church was completed in 1886. It was demolished in 1967.
The Mesquite Street Original Townsite Historic District is the oldest neighborhood in Las Cruces and contains Klein Park and forty four of the original eighty four blocks surveyed in 1849. In 1985 the area was included in the National Register of Historic Places.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Sanchez_Home_530_E_Court.jpg border=1 align=right hspace=3 vspace=3>The histories accompanying the buildings included in the tour are from oral histories taken by members of the Las Cruces Symphony Guild with the assistance of Silvia Camuňez, President of Las Esperanzas.
The annual Homes Tour is one of several fund-raisers sponsored each year by the Symphony Guild to support the Concerts and programs of the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra. In 2007, at least 14 historic homes and businesses dating back to the 19th century will be featured in the tour. Participants in the Las Cruces Symphony Guild 16th Annual Home Tour include:
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=jardin+de+mesquite>Jardin de Mesquite Property</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=Brush+Home+Mesquite>Sina Brush house</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=kiva+patio+cafe>Kiva Patio Cafe (pre-tour luncheon 11:30-2:30 PM)</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=fitch-oliver+compound>Fitch-Oliver Compound (also afternoon refreshments)</a>
Casitas de Adobe (Gilbert Herrera)
St. Genevieve's Church (altar crucifix, windows, Stations of the Cross, Beatitudes, and statue of St G., all from the original St. G's)
San Jose Cemetary
Gloria Gonzales - 150 yr. old guest house
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=phillips+chapel>Phillips Chapel (oral history from Clarence Fielder, grandson of founder of CME church in Las Cruces)</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=sunshine+grocery>Sunshine Grocery (Bestina Sanchez, Viola Loya, Harry James Sanchez)</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=abkes-brown>Abkes/Brown home</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=sanchez+home>Estella Sanchez home</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=macrorie+home>Joyce Macrorie home (old Van Patten house)</a>
Joyce Macrorie Studio
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Sunshine_Grocery_n_Grill_at_Mesquite_n_Hadley.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>To enjoy homes dating back into the pre-Columbian or the 2,000 BC periods, visitors will need to bring along their own shovels and sifting tools and plan for a several months stay in the Las Cruces area. Thankfully, taking the Symphony Guild's Homes Tour makes the process much easier for those who are interested in more recent history. ;)
In addition to the Home Tour itself, extensive oral histories have been provided by all residents, owners, etc., on the tour, paying special attention to the age of the buildings, architectural details, place in history, and family histories. All have been edited by the participants for correctness. These histories and photos of each will comprise the tour brochure. You can preview at least one photo and the oral histories of nine of the historic homes on the tour in Steppin’ Out’s Las Cruces Homes Tour gallery (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/pp-514/showgallery.php/cat/597).
For more information about the luncheon and tour, call Barbara Alford at 524-7390.
The Symphony Guild has asked that there be no cameras on the tour. Please leave your camera at home.
[Editor's Note: Steppin' Out extends our special thanks to Ruth Stovall of the Symphony Guild who provided much of the source material and background information for this article. Great job, Ruth. Thanks a bunch!]
Of 19th Century Historic Adobe Homes and Businesses
Las Cruces, NM- Down in Las Cruces members of the Las Cruces Symphony Guild are busy these days cleaning up yards from the winter and preparing to host visitors from the 16th Annual Tour of Homes which will be held on March 25, 2007 from 1:00 – 5:00 pm. The evening before, on March 24th, President and Mrs Martin of NMSU will also host a pre-tour dinner from 5:30 – 7:30p.m. at the Fulton Center; but seating for that event is limited and tickets were nearly sold out by late February.
In addition to the Saturday dinner at NMSU, the Symphony Guild is also hosting a pre-tour luncheon on Sunday the 25th at Kiva Patio Cafe from 11:30 to 2:30 p.m. Tickets for the luncheon are still available as this article is being written; but sales of luncheon tickets are expected to be brisk. So to be assured of lunch seating, it's a good idea to buy your tickets in advance. Pre-ticketed guests will be seated first on Sunday. Drop in guests will be welcomed and seated on a space-available basis.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Abkes-Brown_Home_120_S_Mesquite.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>This year’s home tour focus is in the old Mesquite Street Original Townsite Historic District of Las Cruces. Featured will be homes, churches and businesses of historical and architectural importance in the early development of Las Cruces. The tour brochure will include a brief history of New Mexico, interviews and oral histories of participants, significant elements of early construction techniques and a tour map.
Tour tickets will be just $20 with funds raised used to support the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra. Luncheon and Tour tickets will be on sale at the Kiva Patio Cafe beginning at 11:30 on the 25th. A combination Luncheon and Tour ticket is $30. Pre-event tickets are available at Glenn Cutter Jewelers & Gallery (2640 El Paseo Rd) and Enchanted Gardens (413 W. Griggs) beginning March 1st.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Entrance_to_Jardin_de_Mesquite_at_Spruce_n_Tor.jpg border=1 align=right hspace=3 vspace=3>The Kiva Patio Cafe, 600 E. Amador Ave (at Tornillo St.), will host the pre-tour luncheon. Guests who attend will enjoy a choice of tasty luncheon entrees (vegetarian and non) in this charming 1850-1860 historic building. Tickets are just $15 each and can be purchased in advance in the same locations mentioned above.
At least 14 historic homes and businesses will be featured in the tour. In addition to the photos featured in this article, Steppin Out has created a photo and history gallery covering 9 of the homes included in the tour. You can find our Las Cruces Symphony Guild Tour of Homes gallery here (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/pp-514/showgallery.php/cat/597).
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Brush_Home_at_Mesquite_n_Picacho.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>The Mesilla Valley, with its abundance of water, was populated as early as 2000 B.C. However, none of the homes in this tour date back quite that far! Traces of pit houses, the earliest known structures, are found near present day Sunland Park, and were built sometime between 2000 B.C. and 1800 B.C. by sedentary Pueblo cultures. Between 300 and 900 A.D., up and down the Mesilla Valley, permanent structures made of adobe walls and roofed by vigas and latillas evolved. This period, termed the El Paso Phase, extended to 1400 A. D. It was part of a sophisticated culture influenced by other such groups as those of Chaco Canyon to the North and Casas Grande of Chihuahua to the South. Many problems, some external like drought and some internal like nomadic deprivations and politics, caused these Puebloan peoples to vanish from the area by 1450 A.D..... The ancestors of at least one of the current homeowners may well have lived in the area during that period. :)
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Fitch-Oliver_Compound_333_E_Kansas.jpg border=1 align=right hspace=3 vspace=3>Soon after Columbus’ discovery of the “New World”, the Viceroy of New Spain became well established in the area. On some early maps, “New Spain” was also labeled “Mexico” from the Aztec “Mextilli”, or war-god. As early as 1582, lands to the north were called “New Mexico Territory” and, eventually, spanned the western United States from Louisiana to the Pacific Ocean and northward to present day Oregon and Idaho.
When Spanish explorers began traversing the Mesilla Valley in the early 1500's, they met up with roaming groups of non-agricultural people, the peaceful Pir-Manso Tewa (of whom one of the tour’s homeowners is a descendent) and the frequently not so peaceful Apache. In 1595 Juan de Oňate made a contract for colonization of the lands along the Rio Grande, the Mesilla Valley north to Santa Fe. Oňate’s conquest and settlement were described in Villagra’s epic poem “Historia de Nueva Mexico”. Published in 1619 at Alcala de Henares in Spain, this was the first poem written about any section of the United States. Over the ensuing centuries colonists looking for good agricultural lands to settle continued to flow into the New Mexico Territory. After achieving its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico made grants to the settlers; the Brazito Grant of 1823 and the Doňa Ana Bend Colony Grant of 1840 are examples.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Kiva_Patio_Cafe_600_E_Amador.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>Following the Mexican American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe de Hildalgo in 1848, the United States acquired most of the Mesilla Valley. In 1851 the county of Doňa Ana was formed which included southern Arizona and southern New Mexico from Texas to California, and the village of Doňa Ana became the county seat. Two years later on December 30, 1853 these county lines were further defined when the Gadsden Purchase established the present international boundary between Mexico and the United States.
By 1843-1845 the thriving Doňa Ana Colony became overcrowded. All the available irrigated land was under cultivation and still colonists flowed in. The solution was to establish another village at the southern end of the colony grant. After petitioning the United States government, in 1848, Don Pablo Melendrez, the first justice of the peace of Doňa Ana, chose a spot 8 miles south of the village on the banks of the Rio Grande, near an old burial ground. The spot was not without its legends of sorrow and tragedy. While no one disputes the occurrence of massacres, numerous incidents, both true and fabricated, are told and retold. One popular tale concerns the complete destruction of an oxcart caravan from Chihuahua by Apaches. Several days later, a freight party from Doňa Ana found and buried the bodies and erected crosses. Another credible story comes from the pen of Susan Magoffin. In January, 1847 she wrote in her diary “Yesterday we passed over the spot where a few years since a party of the Apaches attacked Gen. Armijo as he returned from the Pass with a party of troops, killed some 14 of his men, the graves of whom, marked by crude crosses, are now seen.” Thus through common usage, “Las Cruces” or “The Crosses” became the name of the site.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Macrorie_Home_639_S_San_Pedro.jpg border=1 align=right hspace=3 vspace=3>By that time, ancestors of a few of the current owners of this year's historic home may well have been living in the area and either watching today’s historic homes of Las Cruces being built or working on the construction crews. Little did those long-ago workers or homeowners know that their work would still be being appreciated and enjoyed 150 years later or that their descendents might one day own those beautiful haciendas.
On November 7, 1848 the First Dragoons of the United States under the leadership of Lt. Delos Bennett Sackett arrived at the Doňa Ana garrison. The following spring of 1849, Don Pablo Melendres acquired federal approval to establish a new village, and directed Lt. Sackett and a detail of five men to ride south to lay out the new townsite. When they arrived they found “120 eager Las Crucens’ camped out in brush shelters.” Using rawhide as a surveyor’s “chain” to lay out the grid, they established the boundaries and marked the streets. Because the rawhide alternately stretched and shrank with exposure to water and hot sun, some of the streets were crooked and some blocks were not square. However, once the survey was completed, eager heads of families gathered in a grove of cottonwoods near what is now Griggs Street and “drew suertos (lucky lots) from a hat to determine which property each would own.”
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Phillips_Chapel_CME_Church_630_N_Tornillo.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>Immediately the new town’s citizens set to work. Houses were built of adobes and cottonwood poles; nearby, goats and other livestock grazed. Outlying fields of corn, pumpkins, chili, beans and vineyards were planted, irrigated form the adjacent acequia madre, the “mother ditch”, diverted from the nearby Rio Grande. (In 1863, after severe floods, the river changed course from the East side to the West side of Mesilla.) At this time, also, the parish of St Genevieve’s was established and a crude chapel built. In 1859 Fr. Manual Chavez was the first priest assigned to the parish. The gothic revival St. Genevieve’s Catholic Church was completed in 1886. It was demolished in 1967.
The Mesquite Street Original Townsite Historic District is the oldest neighborhood in Las Cruces and contains Klein Park and forty four of the original eighty four blocks surveyed in 1849. In 1985 the area was included in the National Register of Historic Places.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Sanchez_Home_530_E_Court.jpg border=1 align=right hspace=3 vspace=3>The histories accompanying the buildings included in the tour are from oral histories taken by members of the Las Cruces Symphony Guild with the assistance of Silvia Camuňez, President of Las Esperanzas.
The annual Homes Tour is one of several fund-raisers sponsored each year by the Symphony Guild to support the Concerts and programs of the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra. In 2007, at least 14 historic homes and businesses dating back to the 19th century will be featured in the tour. Participants in the Las Cruces Symphony Guild 16th Annual Home Tour include:
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=jardin+de+mesquite>Jardin de Mesquite Property</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=Brush+Home+Mesquite>Sina Brush house</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=kiva+patio+cafe>Kiva Patio Cafe (pre-tour luncheon 11:30-2:30 PM)</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=fitch-oliver+compound>Fitch-Oliver Compound (also afternoon refreshments)</a>
Casitas de Adobe (Gilbert Herrera)
St. Genevieve's Church (altar crucifix, windows, Stations of the Cross, Beatitudes, and statue of St G., all from the original St. G's)
San Jose Cemetary
Gloria Gonzales - 150 yr. old guest house
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=phillips+chapel>Phillips Chapel (oral history from Clarence Fielder, grandson of founder of CME church in Las Cruces)</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=sunshine+grocery>Sunshine Grocery (Bestina Sanchez, Viola Loya, Harry James Sanchez)</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=abkes-brown>Abkes/Brown home</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=sanchez+home>Estella Sanchez home</a>
<a href=/pp-514/showgallery.php?si=macrorie+home>Joyce Macrorie home (old Van Patten house)</a>
Joyce Macrorie Studio
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/pp-514/data/597/medium/Sunshine_Grocery_n_Grill_at_Mesquite_n_Hadley.jpg border=1 align=left hspace=3 vspace=3>To enjoy homes dating back into the pre-Columbian or the 2,000 BC periods, visitors will need to bring along their own shovels and sifting tools and plan for a several months stay in the Las Cruces area. Thankfully, taking the Symphony Guild's Homes Tour makes the process much easier for those who are interested in more recent history. ;)
In addition to the Home Tour itself, extensive oral histories have been provided by all residents, owners, etc., on the tour, paying special attention to the age of the buildings, architectural details, place in history, and family histories. All have been edited by the participants for correctness. These histories and photos of each will comprise the tour brochure. You can preview at least one photo and the oral histories of nine of the historic homes on the tour in Steppin’ Out’s Las Cruces Homes Tour gallery (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/pp-514/showgallery.php/cat/597).
For more information about the luncheon and tour, call Barbara Alford at 524-7390.
The Symphony Guild has asked that there be no cameras on the tour. Please leave your camera at home.
[Editor's Note: Steppin' Out extends our special thanks to Ruth Stovall of the Symphony Guild who provided much of the source material and background information for this article. Great job, Ruth. Thanks a bunch!]