Box Canyon, originally known as Picacho Pass,
[Ormsby, Waterman L., edited by Wright, Lyle H. and Bynum, Josephine M., The Butterfield Overland Mail, Only Through Passenger on the First Westbound Stage, The Huntington Library, San Marino, 2007,pp.81-82] is a
canyon
A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...
in
Doña Ana County, New Mexico. Its mouth lies at an elevation of . Its source is at .
History
Box Canyon, was known as Pecatch Pass, to Waterman L. Ormsby, who traveled westward through it on the first westbound stage of the
Butterfield Overland Mail. This was a mistake of Picacho Pass, the name derived from the
Picacho Mountain
Picacho Mountain ( es, Cerro Picacho) is a mountain located on the western side of the Province of Panama in the district of San Carlos. At the base of the peak there is a green lagoon named "Laguna de San Carlos" and the private mountain devel ...
nearby to the south of the canyon as was the village of
Picacho where Ormsby's coach changed horses at the
Picacho Stage Station just south of the mouth of the canyon.
Ormsby described the pass:
:"Our road lay through what was called the Pecatch
icachoPass, and, I walked nearly all the way through it, it seemed to me rather mountainous. It was about two miles long and had some very bad hills. In comparison with other passes and cañons on the route, it was not very bad, though quite bad enough and all up hill. When however we reached the summit, we were upon the border of a broad and level plain extending as far away as the eye could reach. At our backs were the ranges of the
Oregan rganMountains, the debris of the
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...
, forming the eastern boundary. Off in the distance
Cooke's Peak, rising from the plain in bold prominence from among the surrounding hills."
[
]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Box Canyon (Dona Ana County, New Mexico)
Landforms of Doña Ana County, New Mexico
Valleys of New Mexico