University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Summer 2008 Land, Speculation, and Manipulation on the Pecos Stephen Bogener West Texas A&M University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Bogener, Stephen, "Land, Speculation, and Manipulation on the Pecos" (2008). Great Plains Quarterly. 1352. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1352 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. LAND, SPECULATION, AND MANIPULATION ONTHEPECOS STEPHEN BOGENER The Pecos River of the nineteenth century, manipulation of federal land laws followed the unlike its faint twenty-first century shadow, removal of Native Americans, the displace was a formidable watercourse. The river ment of Mexican American communities, stretches some 755 miles, from the Sangre de and the departure of major players in the Cristo Mountains northeast of Santa Fe to its cattle industry of the American West. One eventual merger with the Rio Grande. Control of the most ambitious engineering and irriga over the public domain of southeastern New tion ventures in nineteenth-century North Mexico came from controlling access to the America developed here from a simple idea Pecos, its tributaries and springs. In the arid in the mind of lawman Pat Garrett, better environment of New Mexico's Pecos Valley, known for slaying William Bonney, a.k.a.