Thomas Benton Catron and the Age of Capital in the Hispano Borderlands, 1840-1921 Bryan W
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 6-26-2015 An Empire of Dust: Thomas Benton Catron and the Age of Capital in the Hispano Borderlands, 1840-1921 Bryan W. Turo Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds Recommended Citation Turo, Bryan W.. "An Empire of Dust: Thomas Benton Catron and the Age of Capital in the Hispano Borderlands, 1840-1921." (2015). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/76 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Bryan W. Turo Candidate History Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Samuel Truett, Chairperson Durwood Ball Jason Scott Smith Phillip B. Gonzales i AN EMPIRE OF DUST: THOMAS BENTON CATRON AND THE AGE OF CAPITAL IN THE HISPANO BORDERLANDS, 1840-1921 by BRYAN W. TURO B.A., History, Binghamton University, 2006 M.A., History, University of Arizona, 2008 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy History The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May 2015 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very fortunate to have received assistance and support from so many people and institutions during the conceptualization, research, and writing of “An Empire of Dust.” I would like to begin to express my appreciation here, by thanking my distinguished committee, starting with my dissertation Chair, Sam Truett, who patiently directed my scholarly pursuits from coursework through comps, and this dissertation from prospectus to final product, as well as Durwood Ball, who stimulated my interests in New Mexico history ever since taking his research and writing seminar in the History of the American West, Jason Scott Smith, who guided me through the jungle of the history of capitalism, and Felipe Gonzales, who recognized the value in my project well before I did and challenged me to think long and hard about the local circumstances and local populations here in New Mexico. I have been academically blessed to have a committee such as this, full of encouraging advisers who emboldened me through the dissertation process and who ultimately share in this achievement. The Center for Regional Studies at the University of New Mexico provided valuable assistance to help get the project off the ground, as did the New Mexico Office of the State Historian through its rewarding Scholar Program. For their gracious funding I owe sincere gratitude to the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California. In their Ahmanson Reading Room I conducted significant early research. In their sprawling botanical gardens, I strolled, and though I sometimes got lost, I plotted out this project along the way. iii The outpouring of support I have received from the University of New Mexico sustained my activity as I proceeded with research and early chapter writing. Through the Dorothy Woodward Memorial Fellowship, the Dudley-Philips Dissertation Completion Fellowship, and by extending the opportunity to gain invaluable classroom experience, the UNM Department of History, under our Chair, Melissa Bokovoy, provided crucial financial and professional backing. Also on campus, the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, and especially Manuel Garcia y Griego, Jacobo Baca, and Maurice Kivlighan, deserve my unending appreciation. I am not sure I would have ever made it through the daunting correspondence series of the Catron Papers had it not been for the synergy of interest as a researcher for the SHRI. My thanks extend to the Center for Land Grant Studies, which provided unique assistance in the form of Thomas Catron’s land grant ownership maps. I am eternally indebted to the UNM-Mellon Fellow Program for their kindness, community, and generosity during my final year of writing and revision. I would like to offer my special thanks in this regard to Program Coordinators Adriana Ramírez de Arellano and Michael Graves. Also, thanks to Gina Urias-Sandoval and Gabe Sanchez of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for supplying my UNM-Mellon cohort with precious office space. Besides providing financial assistance, the UNM-Mellon Fellow Program was instrumental in my ability to complete this dissertation by allowing me the time to fully focus on the tasks of writing and revision as well as a surrounding me with a cohort of venerable scholars including Maurice Crandall, Melanie Yazzie, C. Estela Vasquez Guzman, Louis Alvarado, and our writing coach/group therapist, Santhosh Chandrashekar. iv I would like to acknowledge the many archivists and librarians who have substantially aided me in my long journey. First and foremost, I want to thank the archivists and support team at the Center for Southwest Research at UNM, including Nancy Brown-Martinez, Chris Geherin, Samuel Sisneros, Audra Bellmore, Claire-Lise Benaud, Mike Kelly, and the always friendly and patient staff. A special thanks goes out to Ann Massmann, who was a tour de force at the CSWR, and who will be greatly missed. I would also like to thank the librarians of the University of New Mexico Libraries, as well as archivists at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, the Fray Angelico Chavez Library, the Huntington Library, the National Archives Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, and the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis. The scholarly community at the University of New Mexico deserves my utmost gratitude. From my arrival at UNM in 2008 until the final spring of 2015, I have relied upon our community time and time again as a wellspring of friendship, insight, and constructive criticism. I would like to extend my thanks to those faculty members who aided me along the way, including Paul Hutton, Margaret Connell-Szasz, Barbara Reyes, Liz Hutchison, Judy Bieber, Mike Ryan, Virginia Scharff, Cathleen Cahill, Erika Monahan, Caleb Richardson, Charlie Steen, Pat Risso, Sarah Cornell, and Roli Varma. My graduate colleagues deserve special thanks, especially members of the Happy Fun- Time History Group. Without my cohort of friends and colleagues, from the seminar room to the back patio of 110 Stanford, I would certainly be worse for wear. I would like to offer my appreciation to Becky Ellis, Julian Dodson, Scott Crago, Chris Steinke, Jordan Biro, Brandon Morgan, David Pafford, Cliff Hanna, Darren Raspa, Bri Stein, v Donna Peterson, Jen McPherson, Jason Stewart, and Jason Strykowski. This extends also to Max Mangraviti, Sigma Colon, Lucy Grinnell, Nydia Martinez, Robin Walden, Gabe Schrager, Tim Lorek, Luke Smith, and Mike Burns. Finally here, I wish to thank those that welcomed me to UNM, showed me the ropes, and who have helped to guide me ever since, including Kent Blansett, Elaine Nelson, Sarah Payne, Shawn Weimann, Sarah Grossman, B. Erin Cole, Sonia Dickey, and Meg Frisbee. I would also like to recognize the University staff, especially the amazing Yolanda Martinez, Dana Ellison, and Barbara Wafer of the History Department, but also many people, students, volunteers, and full time staff at the New Mexico Historical Review, Anthropology Department, Sociology Department, the University Libraries, the Graduate Resource Center, and the Satellite in the SUB. I would also like to acknowledge at this time Albuquerque and New Mexico, the most wonderful home a graduate student could hope for and our staging ground for western adventures. Thanks to the mountains, the roadrunners, and our first fixer-upper. And for sure, my appreciation for my southwestern subject has been fostered by the warm, welcoming, and passionate community of history-minded New Mexicans from all over the state who generously encourage curious minds and young scholars. In wrapping up, I am grateful to my friends, both new and old, for keeping me sane in the long process and for listening to my stories well into morning hours. My most heartfelt gratefulness goes out to my family, real and imagined. To the Turo, Stollberger, Garcia, and Rodriguez clans, and everyone who lovingly, and patiently, cheered me on from afar; thank you! To my parents, Bob and Karen, and to my siblings, Tracy, Peter, and Jenny, I could not have made it without you all. And finally, I can only begin to vi thank Liceth, my partner in life and my daily pillar of support, whose generosity of love and faith knows no bounds. With all the best hopes and dreams, may this serve as but an appetizer to the lifetime of debts I will never fully settle, and to all of those good deeds that I can only aspire to pay forward along the way. vii AN EMPIRE OF DUST: THOMAS BENTON CATRON AND THE AGE OF CAPITAL IN THE HISPANO BORDERLANDS, 1840-1921 By Bryan W. Turo B.A. History, SUNY Binghamton, 2006 M.A. History, University of Arizona, 2008 Ph.D., History ABSTRACT “An Empire of Dust” follows New Mexico’s economic history from the arrival of merchant capitalism in the early nineteenth century to the maturation of a modern, state- oriented, capitalist economy by the 1920s. Within this scope, I investigate the economic life of Anglo-Missourian-turned-New-Mexico-robber-baron Thomas Benton Catron as well as the rise and then collapse of his land-based entrepreneurial empire. Catron was a lawyer, banker, businessman, and party politician, who entered the Territory of New Mexico in 1866, and who became entangled in its fate until his death in 1921. During the Gilded Age, Catron and his cohort employed the tools of the U.S. territorial system, the legal system, and corporate enterprise to consolidate and control millions of acres of New Mexico’s private and communal land grants as well as vast stretches of the public domain.