Regreso al río Pecos / Pecos River Return

A westbound BNSF freight crosses the new Pecos River Bridge.  The original structure watches silently from the foreground.

The Pecos River originates on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico at an elevation over 12,000 feet and flows 925 miles to its confluence with the Rio Grande near Del Rio, Texas.   The earliest settlers along the river were probably the Pecos Pueblo Indians, who arrived about A.D. 800. The first European to cross the waters was Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1541. In 1583 Antonio de Espejo called the river "Río de las Vacas" (River of the Cows) because of the bison who watered there.  Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, who followed the Pecos northward, called it "Río Salado" because of its salty taste.  The name "Pecos" first appears in Juan de Oñate's reports concerning the Indian pueblo of Cicuye, now known as the Pecos Pueblo.  Mexicans called it "Río Puerco" (Pig River).  

In east-central New Mexico, BNSF's mainline to California crosses the river at Fort Sumner, a small village located mostly in the broad flood plain.  A few, small, sun-baked houses climb the southern bluffs to overlook a distinctly Western scene -- narrow blue river running across a red desolate valley, punctuated here and there by a farmhouse or windmill, with red dust rising and settling in the air like migratory birds.  From this vantage, BNSF freights can be seen from miles away, long before they can be heard, and they can be heard sometimes 15 minutes or more before they arrive in town.

The only thing to interdict the line of sight is the curvature of the earth. 

https://blog.plover.com/law/pecos-river.html

An earlier article in this web site showcased Fort Sumner when the BNSF crossed the river on a single-track bridge running north/south, constructed in the early 20th century, a bridge that often bottlenecked traffic as trains from both east and west lined up, waiting to cross a river about fifteen yards wide.  [https://www.waltersrail.com/2015/11/pecos-river-bridge-fort-sumner-new.html]. Because the flood plain was so huge, however, the bridge itself was astoundingly wider than the small river, with broad earthen approaches from both north and south.

The original, single-track bridge across the Pecos.

In the early 21st century, BNSF constructed a second bridge across the Pecos, the longest on the Transcon from Oklahoma to California, 1,576 feet, incorporating 19 piers approximately 80 feet high, whose telescoping design mirrors the tapered piers of the original structure.  The two bridges stand about 75 yards apart, making for easy photography.  Also, the area around the structures is readily approachable from the town on gravel and dirt roads that see a fair amount of motorbike traffic.

Fort Sumner is home to about 1,000 hardy souls, most of whom stay indoors during the mid-day summer heat and wind, while trains keep rolling continuously day and night.  On your author's last visit in April of 2025, about 4 trains per hour rolled through town, an average of close to 100 per 24 hours.

Westbound on the original bridge.  If you look closely, you can see the piers of the new structure.

 

Westbound wind turbine parts on the original bridge.

 

Westbound on the new bridge.

Fort Sumner averages about 15 inches of rain per year, barely removing it from "desert" status while at the same time depriving it of enough moisture to grow anything of significance, save grasses and cacti.  The exception is the river bottom, where enough water circulates to support Cottonwoods, which leafless in winter look as dead as spaghetti before boiling.

In late fall and winter, limited precipitation falls from frontal boundaries arriving off the Pacific.  In July and August,  the "monsoon season," scattered thunderstorms rise in the afternoon sky like popcorn, triggered by convective heating of an atmosphere laden with moisture from the Gulfs of Mexico and California. 

Irrigated farming is supported along portions of the river basin, and this has led to the sort of dispute that Eastern Americans find incomprehensible and Westerners find so common as to be unnoticeable.

Since New Mexico is upstream from Texas, dams constructed there allowed farmers to siphon off most of the water for farming, leaving only a trickle for downstream agriculture.  Texans complained mightily, as Texans often do, and in 1948 the two states entered into the Pecos River Compact, requiring New Mexico to allow a certain percentage of water in any given year to flow into Texas.  Specifically, section (a) of Article III stated:

New Mexico shall not deplete by man's activities the flow of the Pecos River at the New Mexico-Texas state line below an amount which will give to Texas a quantity of water equivalent to that available to Texas under the 1947 condition.

This sounds straightforward, but as they say, the devil is in the details, and soon after execution of the agreement, the two states began arguing whether New Mexico was honoring the bargain.  And this is where the lawyers enter stage left.  

Westbound autos at dusk.  Shadows of the new bridge piers fall silently across the old concrete.

Eastbound.

The long approach of westbound stacks.

We will now discuss the sluggardly internal grindings of the law's mill.

The Compact established the Pecos River Commission, with one Commissioner from each State, to monitor activity along the river and file a yearly report.  A dispute soon arose over how to compute the amount of water allowed across the state line, and in 1974 (26 years after the establishment of the Commission) Texas invoked the original jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court under Art. III of the Constitution, which requires all disputes between states to be filed directly in the Supreme Court.   

Texas alleged (in lawyer-speak) that New Mexico had allowed "a cumulative departure of the quantity of water available from the flow of the Pecos River at the Texas-New Mexico State Line in excess of 1,200,000 acre-feet from the equivalent available under the 1947 condition. . . ."

The Supreme Court appointed a special master to review the dispute and file his own report.  Five years later, in 1979, he recommended that the Texas complaint be rejected.  It was now 31 years after the formation of the Compact.

The Court required the special master to make further inquiries, and three years later, 1982, he said that because New Mexico and Texas could not agree, the Supreme Court should revise the Compact and appoint a reprentative of the United States to break the deadlock.

So we are now 34 years into the dispute, and nothing has been decided. 

Dusk.

More dusk.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1983, holding first that it did not have the authority to appoint a United States representative.  The Court then stated:  

It is within this Court's power to determine whether New Mexico is in compliance with Art. III(a) of the Pecos River Compact, but it is difficult to believe that the bona fide differences in the two States' views of how much water Texas is entitled to receive justify the expense and time necessary to obtain a judicial resolution of this controversy. With that observation, we return this case to the Special Master for determination of the unresolved issues framed in his pretrial order, in a manner consistent with this opinion. 

In other words, the Supreme Court refused to rule on the matter -- 35 years after the formation of the Compact.

So the case went back to the special master, who spent three more years in intense study and then filed another report suggesting that the Supreme Court appoint a "River Master" with the power to determine how much water New Mexico should allow each year to flow into Texas.  The Supreme Court agreed (in a 1987 opinion) and referred the matter back to the special master to appoint a River Master, stating:  

The River Master's compensation shall be borne equally by the parties. The parties, as well as the Special Master, are welcome to suggest candidates for appointment as River Master.

We are now 39 years after the establishment of the Compact.  In that time, lawyers made a fortune, as did the special master appointed by the Supreme Court.  The Justices themselves were kept busy deciding these monumental issues of the century, and your author supposes that the process was, slightly on balance, superior to each state's militia attacking the other somewhere near the water.

A River Master was appointed, and each year he files a report that can be viewed on line.  Following is a small excerpt from the "Water Year 2024" report in which water flow is measured year-by-year.  In other sections of the report, arrangements are made to adjust the flow in coming years.  

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O65/364268/20250701162645661_Pecos%20River%20Final%20Report%20AY%202025.pdf

Eastbound stacks approaching the Pecos River.

This westbound grainer has just crossed the Pecos and is beginning the climb out of the river basin.  Fort Sumner is in the background.

The New Mexico-Texas dispute mirrors water controversies that have plagued the West since pre-history.  As native peoples moved their settlements across the arid land in response to rainfall, or lack thereof, so have European descendants constantly struggled with a simple fact that neither science nor prayer nor wishful thinking nor anything else can change:   the West does not reliably provide enough water to support those who wish to live there.

The railroads that built across the deserts and semi-deserts were all (with the exception of the Great Northern) given generous land grants by the federal government -- land taken from the Natives.  Wishing to capitalize, first Union Pacific and then others encouraged immigrants to settle near the tracks, to establish towns, schools, hospitals and other indices of what was considered civilization.  The federal government encouraged this by passing various "Homestead Acts" which deeded the taken land to settlers, provided they remained in place for a specified time.

The original land grants were 160 acres, more than enough to sustain a family in the East.  It soon became apparent, however, that the West was another story, and the size of the grants expanded under the misguided theory of Cyrus Thomas, who argued stupidly that agricultural development would change the climate, causing more precipitation.  "Rain follows the plow," he claimed.

John Wesley Powell argued in vain against this policy: "Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land." 

The Pecos River water rights dispute is just one of many that clog the administrative agencies and courts to this day.

Eastbound at sunset.

Eastbound approaching the original bridge.

Water flow into Texas has been and remains controversial because of the four reservoirs established in New Mexico.

Santa Rosa:  Originally called Los Esteros, the dam was completed in 1980 and is owned and operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Sumner:  Formerly known as Alamogordo, the dam is earthfill, completed in 1937 and owned by the US Bureau of Reclamation.  

Brantley:  A concrete gravity dam completed in 1988, Brantley Dam is owned by the US Bureau of Reclamation. This dam replaced McMillan Dam, declared unsafe by the Bureau and drained and breached in 1991.

Avalon:  Initially completed in 1891, this dam was destroyed twice by floods and reconstructed. Construction in its present form was completed in 1907. 

These reservoirs are part of three irrigation districts that devour water like an eighteen-wheeler devours diesel:

Fort Sumner Irrigation District: Fort Sumner was established in 1862 where the U.S. Government imprisoned Apaches and Navajos.  The government tried to farm 6,000 acres in the Pecos Valley, irrigating the land with river water, but much to the amazement of the jailers, the inmates did not take well to imprisonment, and the irrigation was abandoned.  The Fort Sumner Land and Canal Company, formed in 1906, began development of a private irrigation system, sold to the Fort Sumner Irrigation District in 1918 and now covering about 6,500 acres of land.  Water is released from Sumner Dam in amounts equal to the the river's natural flow, not to exceed 100 cubic feet per second. 

Pecos Valley Artesian Conservancy District:  The Pecos Valley Artesian Conservancy District was formed in 1932 to conserve the groundwater basin between Roswell and Artesia. People originally thought that the basin held a limitless supply, but those hopes were quickly dashed.  Since its inception, the district has plugged more than 1,500 wells, installed water meters and carefully monitored the flow of groundwater.  The district does not take any water from Santa Rosa or Sumner Reservoirs, but much of the Pecos flows underground, and the wells deplete the amount of water entering Texas.  

Carlsbad Irrigation District:  Irrigation in the early 19th century flourished under the Spanish land grant colonization system and was continued after 1850 by American settlers. Early irrigation systems were community ditches, which diverted the normal flow of the river without the necessity of a reservoir.  The US Bureau of Reclamation took over local irrigation in 1906, made significant  improvements and constructed Sumner Dam, which provides water for lands extending 20 miles along the Pecos River, serving more than 700 people on 155 farms. 

The Pecos River at Fort Sumner.

Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

Again.

You might think that the first Texas-New Mexico Supreme Court case, lasting 39 years, would have taught the participants that no matter how painful, compromise is always better than litigation.  You might think that, but you would be mistaken.

In 2014, Tropical Storm Odile dumped prodigious rain on the Southwest, causing the worst flooding on the Pecos in living memory. Texas asked the River Master that New Mexico be allowed to hold onto the Texas share of the water until the rain stopped, so that the river would not simply wash away into the Rio Grande and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. The River Master agreed, and New Mexico stored the Texas water in Brantley Reservoir.

The storm eventually passed, and Texas asked for its water.  New Mexico pointed out that some of the Texas water had evaporated while sitting in the reservoir and prepared to release what was left.  Texas objected.  

For years, the States tried to agree on how the evaporated water should be accounted for.  Negotiations eventually broke down, and New Mexico filed a request with the River Master, seeking credit for the evaporated water.  Texas claimed that the motion was untimely under applicable administrative procedures.  The River Master disagreed and ruled in New Mexico's favor.  Texas then appealed to the Supreme Court, which issued its ruling in 2020 -- a mere six years after the storm.

The Court pointed out that (1) the dispute was timely filed and (2) the River Master's Manual specifically established a procedure for deciding the dispute.  Specifically, Section C5 provided:

If a quantity of the Texas allocation is stored in facilities constructed in New Mexico at the request of Texas, then . . . this quantity will be reduced by the amount of reservoir losses attributable to its storage, and, when released for delivery to Texas, the quantity released less channel losses is to be delivered by New Mexico at the New Mexico-Texas state line.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.  

The water was stored in New Mexico at the request of Texas. Some of the water then evaporated before it was released to Texas. Under those circumstances, as the River Master correctly concluded, New Mexico is entitled to delivery credit for the evaporated water. That result is both legally accurate and entirely fair. 

And that was that.  It did not need the United States Supreme Court to determine that Texas was wasting everyone's time.  But Texas has done that before (wasting everyone's time) and not just over water rights. 

Justice Alito felt that the record was unclear exactly what the states had done with the disputed water and would have remanded to the River Master for further proceedings, thereby prolonging proceedings another several years.

In any event, it is necessary to fit together in a coherent picture the actions taken by the federal and state authorities. I would instruct the River Master to tackle that task in the first instance on remand.

The other Justices likely felt that the matter was too trivial for remand.  (Even though the case was trivial, the Constitution requires the Supreme Court to adjudicate all cases involving one state against another.)  Or perhaps the Justices, none from the West, did not really understand the significance of a water dispute.  The questions at oral argument hinted at this.

Justice Breyer:  

You know, this is very technical stuff here . . .   

Justice Alito:

What would happen if you win as opposed to what would happen if you lose?

Adam Unikowsky's "Legal Newsletter" listed this case as one of the most insignificant of the decade.  

The proper interpretation of the River Master’s Manual as applied to evaporated water earned a “0” for interesting law. It similarly earned a “0” for legal significance: remarkably, Texas v. New Mexico has not been cited a single time by any court. I gave a “1” for interesting facts because the case arose out of a tropical storm, which is the kind of thing that might be featured on the Discovery Channel.  https://adamunikowsky.substack.com/p/the-least-significant-cases-of-the 

Double occupancy.  (I waited in vain for motive power to appear simultaneously on both bridges.)

Eastbound stacks on the new bridge.

On the Transcon, the parade of stacks is endless.

We now move from the absurd to the tragic, and it has a name:  Bosque Redondo (Round Grove) after a circular stand of Cottonwoods near the Pecos River.  This catastrophic attempt at forced assimilation scarred both the land and the people who were imprisoned there (both the living and the dead) and constitutes one of the worst crimes ever committed against Native Americans in a country that has committed too many to count.

 Brigadier General James Henry Carleton, commander of the Department of New Mexico during the Civil War, was a fierce proponent of "Manifest Destiny," the idea that the United States was destined to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific, because the American form of government was "exceptional" and therefore bound to conquer all in its path, which meant conquer the Native American tribes and remove them from their homes.

James Henry Carleton

Photographs do not always speak the truth, but this one does.  Arms crossed, back stiff, eyes glaring to a spot far across the room, this is a man who did not suffer fools lightly, and who decided very quickly that you were a fool.  Once made, that decision never varied.

In 1862, Carleton commanded Union soldiers who advanced across California, Arizona, New Mexico and into Texas, fighting Apaches along the way and clearing Arizona and New Mexico of Confederates.  Carleton was then placed in charge of the Department of New Mexico.  With New Mexico and California militia, he then led a campaign against Mescalero Apaches (led by Mangas Coloradas) and established Fort Sumner to house captured combatants. 

Carleton's primary battering ram was  Christopher Houston Carson, better known as "Kit," who rose to fame through newspaper accounts and dime novels because of his exploits in the West, the Civil War and the Indian Wars that followed. 

Kit Carson

"Indian Wars" means the express policy of the United States Government (through the Union Army) to remove Native Americans from their Southwest homelands either by extermination or internment.

Carson does not look as stern as Carleton.  Rather, he looks partly bored and partly wistful, as though he has seen and done things he would have preferred not to see and do.  Or it may simply have been that he did not like the clothing he was forced to wear for this portrait.

One thing he may have preferred not to have done was organize and oversee the "Long Walk" of the Navajo from their homes to what amounted to a Prison Camp at Bosque Redondo.  He was given this task by Carleton because of his (Carson's) previous work in fighting Confederates and Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico, all under Carleton's command.

Carleton chose Bosque Redondo as the site for the internment camp because (1) it was far from white settlements, (2) it would act as a buffer for raids against whites by Kiowas and Comanches, and (3) the remoteness and desolation would discourage white encroachment.

Carleton planned to convert the Native Americans from the idea of communal ownership of property to private ownership -- although neither he nor the government used that language.  Native Americans did not own private property.  Tribes were either migratory, moving north and south with Bison, or else communal, meaning that the tribe as a whole owned property, and individuals could use portions to herd, plant, procreate and prosper, and could move from time to time throughout the community without claim to any specific plot of ground.

Natives roamed over vast stretches of the West, where scarce water made high population density impossible.  White immigrants, on the other hand, wanted to own specific tracts of ground for private use.  White immigrants wanted to erect fences and claim water rights, witness Texas versus New Mexico.  So the Natives, from Carleton's view, had to be taught to live like whites, meaning Natives had to be taught to live on small private parcels where they would grow their own food.  In this way, Carleton and others thought, Native and European Americans could live together in peace.

This is the most positive light that can be shone on American policy.  In practice, most of the government and its soldiers hated the Natives and wanted them eliminated.

Carleton's orders to his subordinates were brutal:

All Indian men of that tribe [Mescalero Apaches] are to be killed whenever and wherever you can find them. … If the Indians send in a flag of truce say to the bearer ... that you have been sent to punish them for their treachery and their crimes. That you have no power to make peace, that you are there to kill them wherever you can find them.

In January 1863, Mangas Coloradas agreed to meet with U.S. military leaders, arriving under a white flag of truce.  While tied to the ground, Mangas was tortured with red hot bayonets, then shot under the pretext that his agonized flailing constituted an attempt to escape. The next day soldiers cut off his head, boiled it and sent the skull to Orson Squire Fowler, a phrenologist in New York City.  Analysis of the skull and two sketches of it appear in one of Fowler's books.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangas_Coloradas

Eventually, the Mescalero Apaches surrendered, and about four hundred were herded into the camp at Bosque Redondo.

Next Carleton concentrated on the Navajo, telling his troops that the Natives "must be whipped and fear us before they will cease killing and robbing the people." His campaign was relentless: destroy their crops, seize their livestock, burn their hogans, leave them with no means of survival. Facing starvation, thousands surrendered.

Now the Navajo, and Native Americans in general, were not angels.  They were just normal people, like all other people, with pluses and minuses, good days and bad, heroes and villains, saints and sinners.  They speak a Southern Athabaskan language, the same as spoken by Natives in Alaska and Canada.  Since there is no written record, and the oral record was lost long ago, it is impossible to know the complete Navaho history, but the circumstantial evidence is strong that sometime in the 11th-13th centuries, northern tribes came southwest, looking for food and shelter, intermixing with and to some extent displacing the Pueblo cultures already in place.  And no one has any clear idea whom, if anyone, the Pueblo cultures may have previously displaced.  So as strange as it may sound to 21st century ears, the American displacement of the Navajo may simply have continued a long history of migration and settlement, though with horribly oppressive results.

The term Navajo comes from the Spanish,  who  arrived in the 16th century, another migration and settlement, bringing sheep and horses, which the Navajo quickly adopted, revolutionizing their culture.  In a short time, the Navajo became an agricultural-pastoral society.   

First the Spanish, then the Mexicans, then the Americans, all saw the Navajo as a united tribe, but the Navajo were not organized as a nation.  Instead, they were a group of clans sharing a common language, territory and culture, which made them think of themselves as "The People," isolated groups dispersed over a huge geography, moving as the spirit willed from place to place.   

The Army sought a single leader, a "President," responsible for the actions of all, and when one could not be found, one was created.  But consistent with their lack of private property, the Navajo also lacked political solidarity, and European descendants could not understand this.  What the Army perceived as insolence was instead incomprehension.  General Carleton thought the Navajo understood him but refused to obey.  In reality, he was as foreign to them as an extra-terrestrial.

Carleton relocated the tribe through the "Long Walk," or "Hwéeldi" in Navajo, forced marches of hundreds of miles during the New Mexico winter.  Men, women and children, many barefoot, trudged through mud and snow, with little food or water, driven by the United States Army.  Those too exhausted were either shot or left to die in the wilderness.  The death toll was four figures.

 

Westbound stacks have crossed the river.

  

Westbound on the new bridge.

East on the old.

By 1865, about 10,000 Navajo and 400 Mescalero Apache were housed at Bosque Redondo.  Shelter consisted of rudimentary sheds or dugouts.  Disease spread like a strong wind -- smallpox, dysentery, pneumonia, whooping cough.  Firewood was non-existent.  To stay warm, people either burned their own shelters or walked miles along the river, looking for deadwood.

As mentioned, the military created an irrigation district to teach the captives "civilized" methods of farming.  The enterprise was a complete failure.  The Navajo had established a culture perfectly acclimated to the desert, a pastoral existence of planting (dry weather crops), herding and weaving.  They were now being forced to adopt a lifestyle totally unsuited to the Pecos River, attempting to grow Eastern crops in the arid West, forced by people who knew not the first thing about life in the desert.

Stripped of their freedom, land and culture, many prisoners sunk into despondency and ultimately death.  Unable to tolerate the confinement, the Mescalero Apaches escaped in late 1865, leaving the Navajo alone.  

Reports to Washington painted pictures of starvation, disease and hopelessness, as well as costs far exceeding expectations, and the government sent a commission to Fort Sumner to talk with Navajo internees, who spoke passionately of their desire to return home: 

If we are to be herded like sheep and kept in a place where we cannot live, we would rather die.

 

This westbound Z is crossing the new bridge.  The original structure is to the right of the motive power.

Eastbound in early morning sunlight.

The Commission noted that the Navajo were being held on territory claimed by the Comanches, who had repeatedly raided the Navajo livestock.  The soldiers stationed at Fort Sumner did not particularly care for their jobs nor for the Navajo and so provided little protection. 

The Commission also noted that the soil at Fort Sumner was full of alkali, making the growing of crops problematic.  And the high salt content of the Pecos River caused dysentery.

No matter how hard the military tried to corral the Navajo on a reservation and instruct them in the ways of the white man, the Commission concluded that all efforts were futile.  

Once back in Washington, in true bureaucratic fashion, the Commission requested that the Department of the Interior undertake its own investigation.  In late 1865, the Office of Indian Affairs (now the "Bureau" of Indian Affairs) appointed Julius K. Graves to investigate Bosque Redondo.  On the last day of December 1865, he met with face-to-face with the Navajo, who poured out their troubles like stagnant water from a bathtub:

Cage the badger and he will try to break from his prison and regain his native hole.  Chain the eagle to the ground, and he will strive to gain his freedom, and though he fails, he will lift his head and look up to the sky which is home.  We want to return to our mountains and plains, where we used to plant corn, wheat and beans. 

The Army could not hide the obvious.  Bosque Redondo was little more than a jail in the middle of nowhere, a prison constructed on alkaline soil with salt water to drink, the product of one man -- General James H. Carleton.  

When the Department of the Interior discovered that in one 18 months' period (March 1, 1864 to October 1, 1865) the military had spent over one million dollars ($19,954,110 in 2026) trying to feed the Navajo, and that a good portion of the food had been stolen by the Comanches, the die was cast.  Control of Bosque Redondo would pass from the Army to the Department of the Interior, signaling the end of Carleton's experiment.

He wrote to the War Department:

I beg to express the opinion that the whole of this matter of purchasing food, etc., for the Indians, and of issuing the articles thus purchased to the Indians, as well as the direction of their labor, until they are more civilized, be left in the hands of the War Department.  I know and have so written, that to do this will impose a burden upon the military not properly belonging to them, but if this matter passes out of the hands which hold the power, there will be complications, embarrassment, misunderstanding, etc., which will result, I fear, in great injury to, if not in the positive failure of the important measure of fixing forever the Navajo tribe of Indians upon a reservation.

Soon thereafter the New Mexico territorial legislature sent a document directly to President Andrew Johnson, requesting that Carleton be removed from his command and that "a more capable officer be sent to command the troops immediately."

On September 19, 1866, the Secretary of War relieved Carleton of his duties.

In 1868, Congress established a Peace Commission to review and revise the government's relationship with various Native American tribes.  General William T. Sherman (of "War is Hell" fame) and Colonel Samuel F. Tappan were appointed to negotiate a new treaty with the Navajo.  They arrived at Bosque Redondo May 28, immediately saw the miserable conditions and realized that the reservation was a failure.  The Navajo would have to move somewhere else.

Diseased and starving, the Navajo wanted only to return home.  They agreed to settle on a fraction of what they had once homesteaded but still of considerable size.  The Navajo Nation now straddles the Four Corners region of the United States and covers more than 27,325 square miles in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, an area slightly larger than West Virginia. In addition, the Navajo received 15,000 sheep and goats, 500 cattle and $150,000 ($3,435,760 in 2026).

June 18, 1868, a long column of Navajo left Fort Sumner on foot -- wagons, animals, women, children, young men and old -- escorted by the United States Cavalry, traveling in reverse to freedom the route they had followed four years earlier to confinement.

 

This westbound Z has just crossed the Pecos River.

 

Another westbound above the Pecos River valley.

The original bridge across the Pecos.

 

In the 21st century, the twin bridges of the BNSF Transcon wait silently as trains race across the Southwest like comets, clattering across the steel and concrete rising above the Pecos River, then disappearing into the red landscape.  Texas and New Mexico peer warily at each other, ready at a moment's notice to engage in more pointless litigation over water rights.  And the Navajo?  They have returned to their home to live in peaceful coexistence with the land, still bearing like a living wound the memory of their imprisonment.

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