LAND, SPECULATION, AND MANIPULATION ON THE PECOS

The Pecos River of the nineteenth century, unlike its faint twenty-first century shadow, was a formidable watercourse. The river stretches some 755 miles, from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains northeast of Santa Fe to its eventual merger with the Rio Grande. Control over the public domain of southeastern New Mexico came from controlling access to the Pecos, its tributaries and springs. In the arid environment of New Mexico's Pecos Valley, corporate accumulation of land through manipulation of federal land laws followed the removal of Native Americans, the displacement of Mexican American communities, and the departure of major players in the cattle industry of the American West. The purpose of this article is to reveal some of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century speculative impulses for harnessing water.