The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-29
WILL OBLiTERATE
 SOME OLD TOWNS
Elephant Butte Dam to Wash
 Out Old Places
ON THE SANTA FEE TRAIL
Fort Craig. Once Noted Frontier Gar rison to Be ObIitcrated-Ex- perIenccs of old
 Freighters

| A hafIln III ltle godH -AilbOliiO LA pA So'
 Fl Paso-Six villages, one of them of great historical importance in the pio- neer days of the West will be wiped out of existence when the Elephant Butte dam is completed, one hundred and twenty-five miles north of El Paso. and the water reaches its full height in the lake to be formed above 1t. Fifteen hundred people will be made homeless altogether. The lake will be forty miles long and will completely obliter- ate the settlements of Paraje, Canta- dero, San Jose. Alamociteand Zapata. The site of old Fort Craig, one of the most noted of Western frontier garri- sons, will also be covered with the water In this artificial lake. which is being built to water the fertile lands in the valley below
 Paraje, the largest of the settlements to be obliterated. is now the home of about two hundred people, but at one time it was the home of two. thousand and was a post of great importance on the Santa Fe Trail. over which freight trains and stage coaches made theiI way between California and St. Louis in the days when every trip meant sev eral battles with Indians and required several months to complete.
 The government is to inundate forty thousand acres with the waters to be impounded in the great lake above the dam. and the greater part of the land has already been secured. Thirty thou- sand acres were secured through con- demnation proceedings against the Vic toria Land and Cattle company. and in cluded the settlement of Zapata, which has already been dismantled and the inhabitants ordered away. The other settlements are on private land, most of it held in small tracts by the native owners, and all of this the government has either purchased or will purchase from the individual owners. P. ". Dent of the United States Recla ima tion Ser vice has this work in charge and has just returned from a tour of several days through the region affected. He had to carry a Mexican interpreter with him, and on the entire trip he found but one person who spoke the English language. This was an American who conducts a small store at Cantarecio, Fred Hanna. Many of the inhabitants of these small villages have lived there since children and it is with tears in their eyes that they learn the edict that they must depart from the little acreage which they have titled life time and in many instances which they parents and grand parents have titled. Some are living in the adobe houses built by their forefathers who came to the region shortly after Coronado mar ehed through the territory. Others have built new homes on the ruins of paren- tai homesteads and many have several times had to reconstruct their homes because of the damage from floods and heavy rains. All irrigate their small patches from the river when it holds sufficient water. and most of them add to their livelihood by raising a few sheep and goats or herding sheep, goats and cattle for the big ranches sur rounding.
 Land Grants From New Spain Most of the residents of the terri tory in question, acquired title through ancestors. who received land grants from Mexico and New Spain, while some merely obtained title as "squatters," the land becoming theirs by limitatian after a certain period of residence. The government is treating all alike, how ever, and every family elected receives proper payment on being able to fur nish the government with a sufficient title to the land.
 The government is not forcing any of the inhabitants of these villages to move; they are all being allowed to re- main until the water drives them out
 
 years in building. the Mexicaps are not making and rush preparations to get away. The principal thing that is trou bling some of them Is the removal of their dead. In every one of these vil lages there is a regulation Cath ollie cemetery and generally a email church. They can remove the church fixtures, crude, though sacred, but the cemeter- les cannot be moved without expense, and the natives claim not to have the money to take up the bodies of their dead and have them inferred elsewhere, and there are few. once visiting them, who will doubt the truth of their state ments. The government now has this matter under consideration, and 1t is possible. that the reclamation service will let the contract to some official | undertaken" to disinter all the bodies buried along the river between San Marchial and the dam site a distance of about forty-five miles. and remove to some higher altitude, out of danger | and re-enter them. Altogether there l old town is mentioned these days many i Like Tombstone. once the metropo- lis of Arizona, Paraie. once the great est point in the territory on the Santa Fe Trail. soon became but a memory with the new Mexicans and, with all her former luster and glory when the old town is mentioner these days, many have to ask where it is and what it ever amounted to. But in the days when | Paraje was at the Zenth of it's fame it l was at the beginning of the tornado del