Guadalupe Pass is a mountain pass located in the

Guadalupe Mountains The Guadalupe Mountains ( es, Sierra de Guadalupe) are a mountain range located in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The range includes the highest summit in Texas, Guadalupe Peak, , and the "signature peak" of West Texas, El Capitan, both ...

Hidalgo County, New Mexico Hidalgo County ( es, Condado de Hidalgo) is the southernmost county of the U.S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the population was 4,894. The county seat and largest city is Lordsburg. A bill creating Hidalgo from the southern part ...

. It lies at an elevation of 5075 feet or 1547 m.

History

Guadalupe Pass was used first by the Spanish and then by the Mexicans for Janos -

Fronteras Fronteras is the seat of Fronteras Municipality in the northeastern part of the Mexican state of Sonora. Frontera translates as Border. The elevation is 1,120 meters and neighboring municipalities are Agua Prieta, Nacozari and Bacoachi. The ar ...

Road between Chihuahua and Fronteras, Sonora from the late 17th century. In 1846, American soldiers of the

Mormon Battalion The Mormon Battalion was the only religious unit in United States military history in federal service, recruited solely from one religious body and having a religious title as the unit designation. The volunteers served from July 1846 to July ...

led by Philip St. George Cooke used the pass and the old road for the route of

Cooke's Wagon Road Cooke's Wagon Road or Cooke's Road was the first wagon road between the Rio Grande and the Colorado River to San Diego, through the Mexican provinces of Nuevo México, Chihuahua, Sonora and Alta California, established by Philip St. George ...

between the pass and the San Pedro River. This road was heavily used by the 49ers during the California Gold Rush. It was soon after replaced by a more direct route, the

Tucson Cutoff The Tucson Cutoff was a significant change in the route of the Southern Emigrant Trail. It became generally known after a party of Forty-Niners led by Colonel John Coffee Hays followed a route suggested to him by a Mexican Army officer as a shorte ...

to the north.Leland J. Hanchett, Crossing Arizona, Pine Rim Publishing, Cave Creek, AZ, 2002, p.193

References

External links

John Russell Bartlet, Guadalupe Pass, on Cooke’s Road—Sonora, August 4, 1852, sepia and wash on beige paper
from jcb.lunaimaging.com, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. Landforms of Hidalgo County, New Mexico Mountain passes of New Mexico Transportation in Hidalgo County, New Mexico Cooke's Wagon Road {{NewMexico-geo-stub