Modest mouse: A bevy of rodents inspired the name of this New Mexico bordertown

 

A Spanish mouse takes center stage in this month’s column as we head north to the Colorado border where the Rocky Mountains loom, the winter hits hard and the sculpting of the American Southwest unfolded.

That place is the town of Raton and where it sits today got its start as a settlement called Willow Springs, but the railroad changed that. We’ll get to how exactly a little later because the name Raton was already being used in the area years before the city of Raton was founded in 1880, and it’s from that usage that the small community took its name.

Before there was a town, there was Raton Mountain that sits on the border between New Mexico and Colorado, and the treacherous Raton Pass through it that provided a lifeline for the American trade industry.

Raton the city, the mountain and the pass all lie within Colfax County. The name means mouse in Spanish and was first given to the mountain because it was inhabited by many small rodents, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Raton Pass came next. It was part of the 19th century, 1,200-mile Santa Fe Trail that connected Franklin, Missouri, to Santa Fe, according to the National Park Service. The pass cuts through a rugged area of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and became one of the most important segments of the trail because it allowed traders to access the western territory in wagons.

According to NPS, the pass also played a critical role in Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny’s conquest of Santa Fe during the Mexican-American War and the eventual annexation of New Mexico by the United States in 1846. Kearny used the Raton Pass to reach Santa Fe during the war instead of taking the easier, drier Cimarron Route. When his troops emerged, they found the valley on the New Mexico side of the mountain void of Mexican soldiers and were able to enact a swift takeover of Santa Fe...more