Cooke's Spring Station, located near

Cooke's Spring, New Mexico Cooke's Spring, or Cookes Spring, is a spring in Luna County, New Mexico at an elevation of 4839 feet. Cooke's Spring is located at the eastern mouth of the narrow upper Cooke's Canyon, part of what was called Cooke's Pass, a narrow gap, running ...

was a stage station of the

Butterfield Overland Mail Butterfield Overland Mail (officially Overland Mail Company)Waterman L. Ormsby, edited by Lyle H. Wright and Josephine M. Bynum, "The Butterfield Overland Mail", The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1991. was a stagecoach service in ...

stage route from 1858 to 1861 and of subsequent stage lines until made obsolete by the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

. Cooke's Spring was located at the eastern mouth of Cooke's Canyon, part of Cooke's Pass a narrow gap in the

Mimbres Mountains The Black Range (also called the Devil's Mountains or Sierra Diablo) is an igneous mountain range running north–south in Sierra, Grant, and Catron counties in southwest New Mexico, in the Southwestern United States. Description The range's ...

running east and west. Cooke's Spring was named for

Philip St. George Cooke Philip St. George Cooke (June 13, 1809 – March 20, 1895) was a career United States Army cavalry officer who served as a Union General in the American Civil War. He is noted for his authorship of an Army cavalry manual, and is sometimes calle ...

, 2nd U.S. Dragoons, the former commander 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 Jul ...

, that was exploring this area of New Mexico in 1853. It was the only large supply of fresh water between

Mesilla, New Mexico Mesilla (also known as La Mesilla and Old Mesilla) is a town in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 1,797 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Las Cruces Metropolitan Statistical Area. During the Civil War, Mes ...

and the

Mimbres River The Mimbres is a river in southwestern New Mexico. Course The Mimbres forms from snowpack and runoff on the southwestern slopes of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness in the Black Range at in Grant County. The river ends in the Guzmán Basin, a s ...

for wagon trains heading to

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

as well as the later Butterfield Overland Mail Stage. The Cooke's Spring Stage Station of the Butterfield Overland Mail stage route was located near Cooke's Springs from 1858 to 1861. Between 1848 and 1861 the pass was a dangerous place. Travelers were occasionally ambushed and killed by the

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

as they passed through it. However following the Bascom Affair things were even worse until the end of the

Apache Wars The Apache Wars were a series of armed conflicts between the United States Army and various Apache tribal confederations fought in the Southwestern United States, southwest between 1849 and 1886, though minor hostilities continued until as l ...

as the Apache, formerly friendly to the Americans and the stage company destroyed most of the stations and destroyed many coaches and killed their passengers. Thereafter Cooke's Pass was a favored location for these ambushes and it acquired the name ''Massacre Canyon'' after many incidents like the

Battle of Cookes Canyon The Battle of Cookes Canyon was a military engagement fought between settlers from Confederate Arizona and Chiricahua Apaches in August 1861. It occurred about northwest of Mesilla, in Cookes Canyon. The exact date of the battle is unknown ...

. Near the end of the Civil War Fort Cummings was established near the spring and stage station to protect travelers along the stage route and as a base of operations in the Apache Wars in the following decades. William Thornton Parker, Annals of old Fort Cummings, New Mexico, 1867-8, Published by Author, Northampton, Mass., 1916.
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References

{{Butterfield4 History of Luna County, New Mexico Geography of Luna County, New Mexico Butterfield Overland Mail in New Mexico Territory American frontier San Antonio–San Diego Mail Line 1858 establishments in New Mexico Territory Stagecoach stations in New Mexico