New Mexico, Santa Fe County, Cerrillos
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… where you will experience the tri-cultural story of New Mexico, a history of the Indians, the Spanish, and the Anglos each altering this landscape in their efforts to obtain turquoise, lead, silver, and more.
Indians mined nearby deposits of turquoise since at least A.D. 900. Most of the turquoise uncovered at area archaeological sites as well as some discovered in Chaco Canyon probably came from the Cerrillos Hills. For almost 400 years starting in the early 1300s, the people from large pueblos such as San Marcos came to these hills for galena, a lead ore they used for the detective black glaze decorations on their pots. Cerrillos galena became the preferred glaze for potters throughout the Rio Grande Valley.
The Spanish, too, valued galena, but more for its silver content. Their first reference to the Cerrillos Hills dates from the Entrada of 1581, when two miner-soldiers claim to have discovered 11 silver veins here. Although stories were told about rich cities of gold in El Norte, and silver, the early Spaniards found no evidence in the pueblos that either of these metals were mined. The oldest well-documented mine claim in New Mexico (there were older records, but they were destroyed in the uprising of 1680) is the 1709 claim for the nearby Santa Rosa galena-silver mine.
Most of the 4,000 holes, pits, and shafts visible in the Hills today are the remains of the Mining Book of 1879-1884, when Anglos living in the western territories, speculators from the East, and recent European immigrants flocked to the Hills, digging for riches they hoped would rival the California and Colorado gold strikes.
To the people of Santa Fe County, who approved the 1998 bond that funded the purchase of these 1116 acres, thank you! The New Mexico State Abandoned Mine Land Bureau secured the deepest mine shafts, and the Santa Fe County Cerrillos Hills Historic Park opened in 2003. In 2009 this park joined the New Mexico State Park system.
(Exploration • Hispanic Americans • Industry & Commerce • Native Americans) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
… where you will experience the tri-cultural story of New Mexico, a history of the Indians, the Spanish, and the Anglos each altering this landscape in their efforts to obtain turquoise, lead, silver, and more.
Indians mined nearby deposits of turquoise since at least A.D. 900. Most of the turquoise uncovered at area archaeological sites as well as some discovered in Chaco Canyon probably came from the Cerrillos Hills. For almost 400 years starting in the early 1300s, the people from large pueblos such as San Marcos came to these hills for galena, a lead ore they used for the detective black glaze decorations on their pots. Cerrillos galena became the preferred glaze for potters throughout the Rio Grande Valley.
The Spanish, too, valued galena, but more for its silver content. Their first reference to the Cerrillos Hills dates from the Entrada of 1581, when two miner-soldiers claim to have discovered 11 silver veins here. Although stories were told about rich cities of gold in El Norte, and silver, the early Spaniards found no evidence in the pueblos that either of these metals were mined. The oldest well-documented mine claim in New Mexico (there were older records, but they were destroyed in the uprising of 1680) is the 1709 claim for the nearby Santa Rosa galena-silver mine.
Most of the 4,000 holes, pits, and shafts visible in the Hills today are the remains of the Mining Book of 1879-1884, when Anglos living in the western territories, speculators from the East, and recent European immigrants flocked to the Hills, digging for riches they hoped would rival the California and Colorado gold strikes.
To the people of Santa Fe County, who approved the 1998 bond that funded the purchase of these 1116 acres, thank you! The New Mexico State Abandoned Mine Land Bureau secured the deepest mine shafts, and the Santa Fe County Cerrillos Hills Historic Park opened in 2003. In 2009 this park joined the New Mexico State Park system.
(Exploration • Hispanic Americans • Industry & Commerce • Native Americans) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
In memory of
Son of an Influential Kentucky Family
(preface)
(preface)
Arrived in 1816
Erected by the State of
The National Colonial Farm offers a glimpse into the farming and social lives of Marylanders between 1760 and 1775.
The National Colonial Farm was one of the Accokeek Foundation’s first endeavors. It offers a view into the life of a small, middle class farm family in Maryland.
You might see historical interpreters portraying people who lived and worked on the farm, including slaves. You can see buildings from that period. You can see varieties of animals and plants similar to those people used 250 years ago.
Learn that farmers don’t just grow food. They also produce products for many other purposes. At the National Colonial Farm, visit a tobacco barn. For 300 years, tobacco was Maryland’s most important crop. Its cultivation structured everyday life for people in Maryland, especially in the colonial period.
For more than 10,000 years, the Potomac River has been a key to prosperity for people living within its watershed---providing water, food, recreational opportunities, and a means of transportation.
Native Americans in birch bark and dugout canoes were the first to travel on the Potomac River and its tributaries. In 1608, John Smith’s voyage heralded the European colonization of the Potomac. As the colonies grew, larger boats and sailing vessels plied the Potomac, carrying people and supplies, and stopping at large plantations like Mount Vernon to load tobacco for the journey to the Chesapeake Bay and across the Atlantic to European markets.
In time, the internal combustion engine changed transportation on the Potomac as elsewhere. But a sense of the river’s maritime history returns when sailing, canoeing, or kayaking its waters today.
In 1759, George Washington wrote that the Potomac River was “…well-stocked with various kinds of fish at all seasons of the year, and in the spring with shad, herrings, bass, carp, perch, sturgeon, etc. in great abundance.” Fisherman tossed their nets into the river and pulled their catch ashore by hand or by mule.
The Potomac River was once the most profitable fishing river on the East Coast until over-fishing, pollution, and sedimentation devastated the fish population. By the early twentieth century, the once plentiful sturgeon disappeared from the Potomac, and shad and herring were rare.
Fortunately, catch limits, clean water laws and conservation actions are cleaning up the Potomac. Government agencies and private citizens are working to replenish the shad and herring population and to reintroduce sturgeon to the Potomac River. In time these troubled species may again be “in great abundance.”
(Inscription under the photo in the upper left) You might need a bigger pole…Atlantic sturgeon like this can reach up to 15 feet in length and weight up to 800 pounds. With reintroduction efforts under way, some day it may again be possible to catch a sturgeon in the Potomac.
Before you flows the great Potomac River, a 390 mile stretch of water, forests, fields and wetlands that tells the story of ten thousand years of human habitation. The river begins as a spring at the Fairfax Stone in West Virginia, evolves to a tidal river at Washington, D.C., and eventually expands to a body of water that is over ten miles wide as it empties into the Chesapeake Bay.
When Captain John Smith made his fateful voyage past this site in 1608, he saw Native American villages and stockade forts scattered along the shoreline. A century-and-a-half later, George Washington looked across the waterway to see the same unblemished landscape that one views from Mount Vernon today.
Millions now live and work along this corridor, building upon cultural traditions laid down over ten millennia. The story of the Potomac valley is the story of colonial estates and small farmers and waterman and urban dwellers. It is an expression of the American Experience.
Vast areas of wilderness and open space remain along the river. Countless historical sites have been preserved. It is one of the prime recreational resources of the region. The Accokeek Foundation works with many other organizations to preserve the river’s past, save environmental areas important to our quality of life today, and educated the public about how crucial this precious resource is to the future of our country.
"The ultimate measure of a man is not
where he stands in moments of comfort
and convenience, but where he stands
at times of challenge..."
United States Department of Agriculture
General Ulysses S. Grant's plan for lifting the siege of Chattanooga called for the Union Army of the Tennessee under General William T. Sherman to cross the Tennessee River and strike the Confederate Army's flank on the northern end of Missionary Ridge. The crossing plans involved massing a large number of pontoon boats at a point four hundred yards from the convergence of North Chickamauga Creek and the Tennessee River. Union troops rowing downriver would secure a landing on the southern bank of the Tennessee just below the mouth of South Chickamauga Creek. The Union army engineers would throw a 1,200 foot-long bridge across the Tennessee to facilitate the crossing of the rest of Sherman's men.
Mr. Claude Moore was a philanthropist who donated $250,000 in the 1980s to keep the Turkey Run Farm alive as the only privately owned and operated national park.
The Virginia approaches to the Chain Bridge were guarded by Fort Marcy on the old Leesburg Turnpike and Fort Ethan Allen on the Military Road. The sites were occupied by Union troops on September 24, 1861, and the earthworks completed in short order. Fort Marcy was named for Brig. General Randolph B. Marcy, Chief of Staff for Major General George B. McClellan. The armament consisted of 17 guns with one platform vacant and 3 mortars.