Neg.#014578)Īs in most traditional New Mexican Hispano communities, Mesilla’s plaza is the cultural and geographical axis around which the town narrative revolves. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DC. Tales of the town’s intriguing inhabitants, past and present, are perfect companions for an engaging educational visitor’s experience of the 19th-century heyday of Mesilla and El Camino Real. Buildings that best represent Mesilla’s period of historic significance reflect the town’s growth and influence in the region between 18, and many have changed only slightly since the town’s founding. Whether wandering through the plaza and commercial core, or following the acequias (irrigation ditches) that border the historic district and feed local farmlands, Mesilla is a small walking town with big stories at every turn. While Mesilla’s 2,000-plus residents might easily be overshadowed by Las Cruces, New Mexico’s second largest city two miles to the northeast, their preservation of the town’s cultural identity and architectural history makes Mesilla a don’t-miss destination. In addition to Maese, some of Mesilla’s earliest residents occupied the space, including the Guerra, Valencia and Gamboa families. With its spacious rectangular plan and central courtyard, the Territorial-style Double Eagle is an architectural metaphor for Mesilla’s upbringing. Today, sitting in the posh Double Eagle Restaurant-one of the oldest plaza buildings and the site of Maese’s two-room house-Mesilla’s evolution from a gritty, rebellious frontier town to one of New Mexico’s grandest historical communities unfolds. When the American flag was finally raised over Mesilla Plaza, the town was already well on its way to greatness as a hub of culture, transportation and trade on El Camino Real. Mesilla lingered in a virtual no-man’s land through years of political wrangling until the 1854 Gadsden Purchase officially made it part of the U.S. Though the Mexican government believed the settlers’ crossing of the Rio Grande southwest into the valley situated Mesilla in Mexico, the U.S. The U.S.-Mexico boundaries established by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo encompassed the verdant Mesilla Valley, a broad sweep of agricultural terrain that stretched north to Doña Ana, New Mexico, where many of Mesilla’s founders had previously lived. Even so, Maese and Mesilla’s other proud pioneering families would rather risk raids than lose their cultural identities as Mexicans after the 1846 Mexican-American War left their former homelands in U.S. Established on Mexico’s northern frontier in 1848, west of the Rio Grande and El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, Mesilla was an easy target for Apache Indian attacks. Maese’s vertical log and adobe plaster jacal was simple and practical, joining other jacales built along the plaza perimeter as a means of community defense. In 1849, Valentin Maese erected a two-room home for his family just east of what would become the formal plaza in the small Mexican village of Mesilla. Today, the plaza remains a lively gathering place for a variety of year-round activities and events. Since Mesilla's founding in 1848, the plaza has been the social, spiritual and economic center of town.
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