November 10 arrives in Red River with frost on the rooftops, wood smoke in the cold morning air, and the ski mountain waiting for its first real storm of the season. On this day in 1875, in Cimarron, a man who was about to tell what he knew about a murder was himself killed, and a mystery that still hangs over Cimarron Canyon was sealed for good. Here is November 10, and the season around it, across the Circle.
Click to see more photos of Cimarron, New Mexico
Red River Town & Main Street
No exact November 10 anniversary survives for Red River's own Main Street, so this section is seasonal context, plainly labeled. In the town's early years, mid-November was the hinge of the year: the summer visitors were long gone, the mines and mills above town were racing the first lasting snows, and storekeepers stocked flour, coal, and lamp oil against a winter that could isolate the valley for days at a time. Those Novembers taught the town the value of a good stove, a full woodpile, and close neighbors.
Mining & the Gold Rush
The killing at the heart of today's lead grew directly out of the Circle's gold country. Gold had been found on Baldy Mountain in 1866, and the rush that followed raised Elizabethtown in the Moreno Valley and tied every mining camp in the region to Lucien Maxwell's enormous land grant and its headquarters at Cimarron. By the autumn of 1875 the grant's new owners were pressing settlers and miners to pay for land they believed was theirs, and the argument had turned violent. The Reverend Franklin J. Tolby, who sided with the settlers, was shot in Cimarron Canyon on September 14, 1875, while riding between Cimarron and Elizabethtown, and the gold towns spent that November waiting to learn who had ordered his death.
Founding Families, Characters & Legends
Here is today's exact-date anniversary. On November 10, 1875, Manuel Cardenas was killed in Cimarron, in the short distance between the Colfax County jail and the courtroom, as he was being taken to tell a justice of the peace what he knew about the Tolby murder. Cardenas had implicated others in the killing, and his evidence was the best hope of solving it. His death, one day after newspapers reported that Cimarron was in the hands of a mob, ended that hope: the Tolby case was never solved. Around him swirled the era's famous names, including gunman Clay Allison, who had killed Francisco Griego at the St. James Hotel on November 1, and the story remains the defining legend of the Colfax County War.
Skiing & Winter
November 10 brings no exact ski anniversary, so consider this the season's standing context. This is the month the Circle's ski towns live for: Red River Ski Area, founded by Oklahoma businessman Stokes Bolton and first opened in December 1959, built its modern tradition on opening around Thanksgiving, often the day before the holiday. At Taos Ski Valley, Ernie and Rhoda Blake opened their first run, Snakedance, in 1956. Every November since, the ritual repeats: snow guns tested, lifts inspected, and eyes on the forecast.
Enchanted Circle Towns & Places
Cimarron, the setting of today's lead, was the working capital of the Maxwell Land Grant, and its stone Aztec Mill, built by Lucien Maxwell to grind grain for the region, still stands as a museum in the old town. It fed the world Cardenas knew: freighters, miners bound for Elizabethtown, and Santa Fe Trail travelers. The town that the Santa Fe New Mexican described on November 9, 1875, as being in the hands of a mob is today one of the quietest, most walkable historic towns in New Mexico, its courthouse, jail, mill, and the St. James Hotel all preserved within a few blocks of one another.
The Land, Weather & Wildlife
For this category, a seasonal record from the Circle's own building history. When crews raised Eagle Nest Dam across the Cimarron River beginning in 1916, November marked the closing of their working year. The National Register nomination for the dam records that severe winter freezes in 1919 and 1920 made it impossible to lay cement during a large part of the year, so each autumn the men raced the cold to finish another lift of the great curved wall. The lake behind it, named for nesting eagles, still draws ospreys, eagles, and anglers to the Moreno Valley.
Roads, Stage Lines & Travel
A same-week item, with its real date stated plainly. On Monday, November 8, 1875, two days before Cardenas was killed, a cavalry detachment from Fort Union reached Cimarron, dispatched at the territorial governor's request to keep order in a town coming apart. Their ride along the Santa Fe Trail corridor shows how travel worked in 1875: news, troops, and freight all moved at the speed of a horse. Tolby himself died on that road, ambushed in Cimarron Canyon.
Living History & Heritage
Finally, a same-week anniversary from living memory, again with its real date. Tomorrow, November 11, is Veterans Day, and on November 11, 2005, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire became a New Mexico state park, the only state park in the nation dedicated solely to Vietnam veterans. Dr. Victor and Jeanne Westphall had begun its Peace and Brotherhood Chapel in 1968 after their son David was killed in Vietnam, and it was dedicated on May 22, 1971. A memorial born of one family's grief now stands permanently protected above the Moreno Valley.
So November 10 in the Enchanted Circle holds a witness silenced in Cimarron in 1875, cavalry on the trail two days earlier, dam builders racing the November freezes, and, one day ahead, a Veterans Day anniversary at Angel Fire. Red River's own part is the enduring one: a mountain town that still gathers, remembers, and tells these stories each winter. Walk Main Street this week, and you are walking the same Circle those men rode.