Editing Socorro County, New Mexico (section)

==History==
Socorro County's history is intimately linked with the rich history of the surrounding area. Basham noted in his report documenting the archeological history of the Cibola National Forest's Magdalena Ranger District, which is almost entirely within Socorro County, that “[t]he heritage resources on the district are diverse and representative of nearly every prominent human evolutionary event known to anthropology. Evidence for human use of district lands date back 14,000 years to the [[Paleoindian]] period providing glimpses into the peopling of the [[New World]] and [[Megafauna#Megafaunal mass extinctions|megafaunal extinction]].“<ref name=Basham>{{cite book|last=Basham|first=M.|title=Magdalena Ranger District Background for Survey|year=2011|publisher=US Forest Service}}</ref>
Much of the now Magdalena Ranger District were a province of the [[Apache]]. Bands of Apache effectively controlled the Magdalena-Datil region from the seventeenth century until they were defeated in the [[Apache Wars]] in the late nineteenth century.<ref name="Basham" />

Outlaw renegades [[Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch|Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch]] and notorious Apaches like [[Cochise]] and [[Geronimo]] have ties to Socorro County's San Mateo Mountains. Vicks Peak was named after [[Victorio]], “a Mimbreño Apache leader whose territory included much of the south and southwest New Mexico.”<ref name="Julyan 2006">{{cite book|last=Julyan|first=Robert|title=The Mountains of New Mexico|year=2006|publisher=University of New Mexico Press}}</ref> Famous for defying relocation orders in 1879 and leading his warriors “on a two-year reign of terror before he was killed,” Victorio is at least as highly regarded as Geronimo or Cochise among Apaches.<ref name="Julyan 2006" /> Perhaps most famous outlaw was the [[Apache Kid]] whose supposed grave lies within the Apache Kid Wilderness. Stories of depredations by the Apache Kid, and of his demise, became so common and dramatic that in southwestern folklore they may be exceeded only by tales of lost Spanish gold.<ref name="Basham" /> Native Americans lingered in the San Mateos well into the 1900s. We know this by an essay written by [[Aldo Leopold]] in 1919 where he documents stumbling upon the remains of a recently abandoned Indian hunting camp.<ref>{{cite book|last=Leopold|first=A.|title=Aldo Leopold's Southwest|year=2003|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|editor=Brown, D. E. |editor2=Carmony, N. B.}}</ref>

<gallery widths="110" heights="160" caption="Cultural or Historic Figures with Ties to Socorro County" class="center" style="line-height:130%">
File:The Apache Kid.jpg|The Apache Kid is the namesake for a Wilderness area in the Cibola National Forest.
File:Victorio Chiricahua Apache Chief.jpg|Vicks Peak in the San Mateo Mountains is named for Victorio, an Apache warrior and chief.
File:Goyaale.jpg|Geronimo (Goyaałé), a Bedonkohe Apache; kneeling with rifle, 1887.
File:Butch Cassidy with bowler hat.jpg|Butch Cassidy poses in the Wild Bunch group photo, Fort Worth, Texas, 1901.
</gallery>

A mining rush followed the Apache wars – gold, silver, and copper were found in the mountains. It wasn't until this time that extensive use of the area by non-Native Americans occurred.<ref>{{cite book|last=Ugnade|first=H.E.|title=Guide to the New Mexico Mountains|year=1972|publisher=University of New Mexico Press}}</ref> While some mining activity, involving gold, silver, and copper, occurred in the southern part of the range near the end of the nineteenth century,<ref name="butterfield_greene">Butterfield, Mike, and Greene, Peter, ''Mike Butterfield's Guide to the Mountains of New Mexico'', New Mexico Magazine Press, 2006, {{ISBN|978-0-937206-88-1}}</ref> the prospecting/mining remnants are barely visible today due to collapse, topographic screening, and vegetation regrowth. While miners combed the mountains for mineral riches during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stockmen drove tens of thousands of sheep and cattle to stockyards at the village of Magdalena, then linked by rail with Socorro.<ref name="Julyan 2006" /> In fact, the last regularly used cattle trail in the United States stretched 125 miles westward from Magdalena. The route was formally known as the Magdalena Livestock Driveway, but more popularly known to cowboys and cattlemen as the Beefsteak Trail. The trail began use in 1865 and its peak was in 1919. The trail was used continually until trailing gave way to trucking and the trail officially closed in 1971.<ref name="Basham" />