Coronado National Memorial: A History of Montezuma Canyon and the Southern Huachucas by Joseph P. Sánchez (review)

In February 1540, a remarkable expedition departed from Compostela, Mexico, just northwest of Puerta Vallarta. Led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, the governor of New Galicia (a province of New Spain made up of the contemporary Mexican states of Jalisco, Sinaloa, and Nayarit), the expedition included four hundred Spanish soldiers, around fifteen hundred Mexican-Indian allies, multiple family members, four Franciscan monks, and more than a thousand horses and mules. During the next two years, this first major European exploration of the interior of the North American continent would travel hundreds of miles, through Sonora and eastern Arizona, then New Mexico to the Rio Grande, across the Texas Panhandle, and traversing Oklahoma to central Kansas. They would be the first Europeans to describe giant herds of buffalo on the Great Plains—and the even more impressive chasm now known as the Grand Canyon.

This book focuses on the fascinatingly complex history of a tiny sliver of that journey: the section where Coronado's expedition crossed from Mexico into what, as of the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, became the United States. That story has been neglected until now. According to the author, "the history of that small corner of southeastern Arizona and northeastern Sonora has been largely ignored because it was perceived to be a pass-through area mentioned in historic documents that have long since been tucked away in archives."

The area may be tiny, about 7.4 square miles, but Joseph Sánchez points out its history is not about local perspectives, but "about the global aspects of its ties with the wider world." The story of Montezuma Canyon is also that of Spanish colonial settlement, homesteading, cattle companies, mining, and dude ranches. To this day, the pass-through is still heavily used—by drug runners, weapons merchants, and undocumented border crossers.

Scholars still argue where exactly that pass-through crossed the border, but in 1940 Congress decided to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the epic expedition with an international monument. The Coronado Cuarto Centennial Commission was established, and Sánchez follows the bureaucratic and cross-cultural tangle and the eventual decision to give up on an international peace park, settling for a national monument.

Land grants, grazing, and mining interests played major roles in determining the boundaries of what eventually became Coronado National Monument, and Sánchez tells the stories of many of the early homesteaders, prospectors, and miners. One that is particularly interesting is that of Grace Sparkes, the owner of the State of Texas Mines and on-again off-again enthusiastic supporter of the monument.

The book is meticulously researched, and each of the nine chapters includes forty to sixty references, a treasure trove for those who want to dive deeper into this intriguing tale. However, many readers will beg for a map, particularly showing the expedition's path, where the memorial is in relation to the border, and the locations of the various mining interests. It could also have used more careful editing, as several sections of text are repeated.

Despite those flaws, the book is a valuable addition to the literature for those who want to know more about this corner of southern Arizona.