la Union, New Mexico

Everything la Union is known for

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Music in la Union

Songs About la Union

No songs reference la Union yet.

Artists From la Union

J
Joe West
americana

Rivers & Roads in Song near la Union

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near la Union.

Rio Grande / Río Bravo 163 songs Rio Grande / Río Bravo 250 songs Interstate 10 36 songs

Musical Heritage

El Paso Chicano punk scene RoadyGoat

Before the world knew The Mars Volta, before At the Drive-In blew up, there was a punk scene in El Paso — mostly Chicano kids, running from the late seventies clean into the two-thousands. By the nineties they had welded heavy metal, hardcore, and emo into something all their own. Out of that came At the Drive-In, The Mars Volta, and Sparta. And these were bands that used the noise to say something — At the Drive-In's 2000 track "Invalid Litter Dept." is about the women being murdered across the river in Juarez. A writer named Tara Lopez finally put it all down in a book, "Chuco Punk," out on the University of Texas Press. El Paso was making that racket for a quarter century. Now it has got the history book to prove it.

RoadyGoat → · 16.8 mi away

Pancho Villa's El Paso years RoadyGoat

Long before he was a revolutionary general, Pancho Villa was a broke man in El Paso surviving on less than a dime a day. Born in Durango in 1878, he first crossed into the city around 1909. A car dealer named Burkhead met him at the old county courthouse and hired him — three dollars a week to tend fighting roosters in pens down on Second Street. Within a year he was back in Chihuahua, pulled into the uprising against President Díaz, and between 1911 and 1915 he was in and out of El Paso constantly, running guns and supplies. There's no solid evidence he set foot in Texas after that. Down in Parral, nine bullets found him in his black Dodge touring car. He was forty-five. In the barrios across the river, they still sing the corridos.

RoadyGoat → · 16.8 mi away

Villa and Pershing statue, Hotel Paso del Norte RoadyGoat

Downtown El Paso, in the plaza outside the Hotel Paso del Norte, there's an eight-foot statue of two enemies shaking hands: Pancho Villa and General John J. Pershing. And Villa's cast not as some sombrero-wearing bandit, but as a military leader. The history behind that handshake is anything but friendly. In 1916, Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico — eighty miles west of here — burned the town, took horses and machine guns, and killed fifteen Americans. President Wilson ordered Pershing, the commanding general over at Fort Bliss, to march into Mexico and bring Villa back. He never caught him. Years later, in 1981, a giant Villa statue rolled through El Paso on its way from Mexico City to Arizona, and hundreds of people from both sides of the river met it at the bridge with poems, gritos, and songs. Same man. Two very different welcomes.

RoadyGoat → · 16.8 mi away

History of la Union

The Canals of the Mesilla Valley RoadyGoat

Look around Vinton and you'll see the thing that makes life here possible, and it's easy to miss: a network of irrigation canals. This isn't just a ditch, it's a century-old piece of federal engineering. Vinton sits in the Chihuahuan Desert, but it farms because of the Bureau of Reclamation's Rio Grande Project. After Elephant Butte Dam was finished upriver in New Mexico in 1916, engineers dug hundreds of miles of canals, laterals and drains to meter out the Rio Grande. Upstream, in New Mexico, that water is run by the Elephant Butte Irrigation District. Down here on the Texas side, the El Paso County Water Improvement District Number One takes over, and it moves water through more than three hundred and fifty miles of canals and laterals to over two thousand turnouts. Those gravity-fed channels turned an unpredictable river into a scheduled one, so growers can flood a field for pecans or cotton on a date they pick in advance. It's a huge hydraulic system that turned a dry valley into some of the most productive farm ground in the Southwest, and it's the hidden infrastructure that keeps Vinton green.

RoadyGoat → · 3.5 mi away

Vinton, TX RoadyGoat

Vinton's history is deeply rooted in its Native American past and the arrival of the Spaniards. The site was originally inhabited by Native Americans before becoming a stopping place along the Camino Real, a road from El Paso to Santa Fe. During Spanish and Mexican colonial times, it was known as La Salinera due to the abundance of salt cedars. After the US-Mexican War, the area became part of the United States and was renamed Cottonwood. In 1857, it was used by the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line and later by the Butterfield Overland Mail, which had a stage station called Cottonwood Station. Vinton was later named for Southern Pacific Railroad surveyor John C. Vinton, who laid the cross-country route for the railroad through the area in 1881.

3.5 mi away

Vinton, TX RoadyGoat

The incorporation of Vinton as Village of Industry on August 8, 1961 originated with Border Steel Corporation, which opened a mill in town that year. Now owned by Arcelor Mittal, the mill is still in operation today.

3.5 mi away

Canutillo, TX

1823

Canutillo is a community on the east bank of the Rio Grande and on U.S. Highways 80 and 85 about twelve miles northwest of downtown El Paso in northwestern El Paso County. The community also was on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. The story of the town begins in June 1823, when the Canutillo land grant was assigned to Juan María Ponce De León and twenty-nine other citizens of El Paso del Norte (what is now Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico). A small agricultural settlement was established in 1824, but Apache raiders forced residents to abandon it in 1833. The site remained vacant until after the arrival of Anglo-American settlers in the mid-1800s. The Canutillo ranch became a principal source of income for James Wiley Magoffin , but in 1855 José Sánchez and others established their ownership as descendants of the original grantees. The state of Texas recognized their claim in 1858, and the land grant was surveyed by Anson Mills two years later. In 1874 a court order divided ownership of the grant among Joseph Magoffin , Josiah F. Crosby , William W. Mills , Anson Mills, John S. Watts, and Sánchez. The Canutillo Townsite and Land Company was chartered in 1909, and a post office was established there two years later. In 1914 Canutillo was identified as a rural post office and had four general stores to serve the surrounding population. The community's estimated population was 300 in 1925, some 400 in 1931, and 828 in 1936. By the mid-1940s the number of local residents had declined to 775, but later the town continued to grow. By the mid-1950s its estimated population was 1,326, by the mid-1960s it was 1,425, and by the mid-1970s it was 1,800. That population estimate remained constant until the early 1990s, when it was revised upward to 4,442. The population was 5,129 in 2000.

Tsha Handbook → · 4.2 mi away

Anthony, TX (El Paso County)

1884

Anthony is on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and State Highway 20 sixteen miles northwest of downtown El Paso on the Texas-New Mexico border in El Paso County. It was reportedly named by a Mexican-American woman who built a chapel to St. Anthony of Padua sometime before 1884. A post office was established on the El Paso County side in March of that year but was never in operation. The Texas community later became known as La Tuna, after the Federal Correctional Institution located there, at which a post office was open from 1932 to 1965. In the early 1940s the population was estimated at only twenty, but ten years later, after the community incorporated as Anthony, the population estimate had grown to 1,200. It declined to 1,082 in the early 1960s, then grew to 2,154 in the early 1970s, 2,640 in the early 1980s, and 3,328 in 1990. The population grew to 3,850 in 2000. A post office was established in Anthony in 1981. In 1988 the Anthony Chamber of Commerce named the town the Leap Year Capital of the World, and the Worldwide Leap Year Birthday Club, open to anyone born on February 29, had more than 100 members by 1992.

Tsha Handbook → · 4.5 mi away

Federal Correctional Institution

1932

The Federal Correctional Institution at La Tuna (now part of Anthony) in northwestern El Paso County is a medium-security prison for men. It was formally opened on May 1, 1932, and designated to house offenders from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, and southern Utah; its Spanish-mission architecture was designed to reflect the Southwestern environment. A minimum-security Federal Prison Camp was added in 1978. In 1992 the inmate population was 890 at the Federal Correctional Institution and 324 at the Federal Prison Camp; the staff numbered 359. Thomas P. White, who served from the facility's opening in 1932 until 1951, had the longest tenure of any warden. During White's service some 300 of the institution's 630 acres was irrigated, and inmates were trained in farming and dairying. Agricultural activities were discontinued in subsequent years but resumed in 1992, with the aim of supplying vegetables and some fruits for the facility and for other federal prisons. The FCI offers a variety of educational and vocational programs, including studies for the general-equivalency diploma, English as a second language, computer literacy, continuing-education courses, and training in automobile repair, building trades, and horticulture. The institution formerly served as a detention center for aliens held by the United States Immigration Service.

Tsha Handbook → · 4.5 mi away

El Paso

1861

Largest U.S. city on the Mexican border. Named for the mountain pass. Historic gateway for Indians, priests, gold-seekers, traders, stages. Federal troops occupied this area longer than any other in Texas during the Civil War. Agricultural, industrial and military center. Texas Western College, Spanish missions. (1964)

Historical Marker → · 5.0 mi away

Fusselman Canyon

1890

Below is Fusselman Canyon, which follows the Fusselman Canyon Fault, a major natural cut into the Franklin Mountains. For centuries it has served as a natural corridor for the movement of people, goods and livestock between the river valley to the west and the desert basin to the east. The canyon also served as a source of seasonal water, plants and animals for the many Native Americans who inhabited this region. It is named in honor of Charles H. Fusselman (1866-1890), Texas Ranger and U.S. Deputy Marshal. In the late 19th century, El Paso was a booming town, but outlying areas were still plagued by frontier conditions. On April 17, 1890, local rancher John Barnes reported that his horses and cattle had been stolen. Later that day, Charles Fusselman was deputized and led Barnes and city policeman George Herold into the Franklin Mountains to chase the rustlers. The thieves intended to drive the horses and cattle through the canyon (along the path of today's Woodrow Bean Trans Mountain Road), through Smuggler's Gap at the top of the canyon, and then into the Rio Grande Bosque near Canutillo, Texas. Fusselman's party captured one of the rustlers before encountering the outlaws' camp. There they were met with a barrage of gunfire, and Fusselman was shot and killed. The outlaws escaped after the outnumbered Barnes and Herold left their prisoner and fled the scene. Fusselman's body was later recovered and taken to Lagarto, Texas, where he was buried. For the next ten years, lawmen pursued the rustlers. Geronimo Parra, the outlaw leader, was finally arrested, tried and found guilty of Fusselman's murder. He was legally hanged in January 1900 in El Paso. The canyon became known as Fusselman Canyon in honor of the slain deputy and ranger. 										(2002)

Historical Marker → · 11.1 mi away

Pass of the North

1536

Historically a major trade and travel artery for North America because it is the northernmost Rocky Mountain pass that stays snow-free throughout the year. Indians used pass long before Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca, thought to be first white man in area, crossed it about 1536. Juan de Onate brought first cattle into U.S. through the pass in 1598. Route was heavily traveled during California gold rush, 1849, and in later years important stage lines and railroads crossed Rockies here. Today the pass lies on one of three major travel routes across the continent. (1968)

Historical Marker → · 13.8 mi away

Things to Do in la Union

historical 23.5 mi away
Billy the Kid Courthouse

Billy the Kid was tried and sentenced to hang in this adobe courthouse in April 1881.
historical 23.5 mi away
Gadsden Purchase Flag Raising

On this plaza in 1854 the U.S. flag was raised for the last major American territorial acquisition.
historical 23.5 mi away
Fountain Disappearance

Attorney and son vanished near White Sands in 1896. Bodies never found.
historical 23.5 mi away
Confederate Capital of Arizona

Mesilla served as capital of the Confederate Territory of Arizona from 1861 to 1862.
historical 23.5 mi away
La Posta de Mesilla

1840s stage stop where Roy Bean and Kit Carson once passed through. Still serving chile.
quirky 23.6 mi away
Double Eagle Restaurant

Haunted 1849 restaurant where two star-crossed lovers were stabbed with scissors.
nature 11.1 mi away
Franklin Mountains

The Franklin Mountains rise straight out of downtown El Paso and split the city in half. The exposed rock at the core is over a billion years old -- some of…
historical 23.3 mi away
Battle of Mesilla

1861 Civil War clash where Confederates routed Union troops and captured 492 soldiers.

Everything Near la Union

280 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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