User:Asiaticus/sandbox/Val Verde, New Mexico

Val Verde, (Green Valley in Spanish), is a former populated place, a ghost town, that was located along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, on the east bank of the Rio Grande, at a ford, in what is now Socorro County, New Mexico. The settlement gave its name to the nearby Battle of Valverde that was fought east of that ford in 1862, during the American Civil War.

Paraje Val Verde
Val Verde, was located nearby to the east of the site of a ford that has been a major crossing point on the Rio Grande for hundreds of years, despite the various changes in the course of the river over that time. This paraje was first called Paraje el Contadero during the seventeenth century and afterward for the reason that as the port of entry and exit from the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. There livestock particularly sheep were gathered and counted for their drive south with the annual caravan for sale in Mexico. Those animals coming into the province were counted to determine the losses of the journey and for assessment of any taxes to be levied. The narrow trail through the paraje around the Mesa made it ideal for making such counts. By the late eighteenth century the paraje on the north side of the mesa near the crossing was being refered to as Paraje Val Verde. Regardless of its name it long afterward remained a stop and resting place for those who crossed the river along El Camino Real above the Mesa del Contadero and were about to march southward through the Jornada del Muerto or for those who had come through the Jornada from the south and needed to recover from the ordeal.

Armendáriz Grant and Hacienda
Val Verde, remained a natural paraje for travelers along the El Camino Real as well as the site of the hacienda of the Armendáriz Grant in the early to mid 1820's before it was abandoned due to the attacks of the Apache and Navajo.

Val Verde Hacienda

Pedro Armendaris Grant

The Pedro Armendaris Grant Number 33

The Pedro Armendaris Grant Number 34

The Pedro Armendariz Land Grant Originally   published   in   El   Defensor   Chieftain   newspaper, Saturday, May 2, 2009By Paul Harden, na5n@zianet.comFor El Defensor Chieftain

Val Verde
Val Verde was also the site of a village, founded in the later nineteenth-century, following the establishment of Fort Conrad and Fort Craig It lay south of the ruins of the Armendáriz hacienda, and most famously, the location gave its name to an 1862 Civil War battle, known as the Battle of Valverde.