The subject of this book is "The Untold Story of Bear Canyon," located in northeast NM. The story begins with a group of doctors, lawyers, merchants, and coal mining industrialists who, in the late 1920s formed the Bear Canyon Club. Our book gives a glimpse of life in Raton, NM, during that time. After starting the Club, the men acquired 2,000 acres of land east of Raton in an area known as Bear Canyon. They built individual cabins and had a clubhouse. They established roads and fishing ponds and developed a spring-fed water system. They set their own rules and regulations for hunting and fishing. It was a retreat from the stresses of their work and issues of the world. The Club disbanded in the late 1940s, and the land was sold to an investor who then sold it to a rancher. Descendants of that rancher still own the land today. Many of the cabins still stand and are privately owned. While the cabins are surrounded by a privately owned and operating cattle ranch, the water system was kept separate from the ranch lands by placing it into a trust with seven shares of ownership. This story describes each of the interesting people involved in the club's formation and those who have owned the cabins through the years to the present day. It is a story about the land and the people who have inhabited it through the years, the indigenous people who traveled through it, and the people involved in holding the land during the period of Spanish Land Grants. It describes how the high pass, known as Manco Burro Pass, leading into the canyon, was traveled by early settlers and traders. It relates a famous skirmish on the Pass between Apache Indians and Lucien Maxwell while he was leading a group of traders with their goods to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Used availability for Sandra Bolton's The Untold Story of Bear Canyon