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A River Runs Through History

by | Jan 1, 2004 | Travel & Preservation

renegade-roads
What was Juan de Oñate thinking when he named the Rio Grande in 1598? Great River? Criminy, at some places it’s not even a mediocre ditch. Explorers from Álvar Núñez Cabesa de Vaca (1535-1536) and Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (1540) to Lt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike (1806) and John Charles Frémont (1849) crossed it, but they never deemed it worthy of exploration. No one even thought enough of the Rio to map it until the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase. Be


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