The Santo Domingo Gorge and Grant County

The Santo Domingo Gorge is a local legend in Grant County, New Mexico. According to native American lore, the gorge was created when the White Painted Woman attempted to cut off the head of The Snake and gashed the earth, leaving the gorge as a mark. Snake slithered away and entered the bowels of the earth, and he was banished from the lands of the Chiricahua Apache.

The Santo Doming was probably named by missionary father Juan Perez dos Molinos (1723-?) during his epic trip around the Spanish colonies. It is said that Molinos actually wrestled with the Devil himself in the gorge when Lucifer tried his faith on a particularly dark night. Molinos claimed that his many subsequent visions were a result of this spiritual melee.

In 1823, a unit of Mexican cavalry scouting what is now Grant County was ambushed by a tribe of Apaches that they hadn't encountered before. The battle was brief, but exceedingly brutal, and the Mexican cavalry, commanded by Capitan Felipe Martinez del Mazo, pursued the Apache into the Santo Domingo Gorge, where del Mazo was impaled by fanatic defenders. The Mexicans eventually defeated the Apache, and they found a community in particularly poor shape, the result of inbreeding and zealous use of certain herbs that debilitated many of these particular Apaches. The survivors were deported, and the community razed to the ground by Tenente Martin Arreola, who died shortly thereafter, although the circumstances remain unclear.

The Santo Doming Gorge facing north.

The Santo Domingo Gorge was explored again by Herbert Longfellow, a geologist, anthropologist and gambler, in 1866. He led a small party into the gorge, and they found the ruins of decrepit buildings as well as an amazing array of petroglyphs of unknown origin. He interviewed several members of other native American tribes as well as some American settlers. They were all very wary of the Santo Domingo Gorge, and they would stay away from it. On the other hand, the countryside around the gorge is not suited for neither farming nor grazing.

Following rumors of gold being found in the Santo Domingo Gorge in 1881, the German prospector Henry (Heinrich) Altmeier and his son Eric decided to try their luck. They rode into the gorge on a chilly November morning, and they never made it out. Another prospector, Bedford "Slim" Jackson, found their corpses in January that following year. It was said that it seemed as if they had killed each other, but this was not confirmed. The official cause of death was an unexpected rockslide.

In June of 1924, twin sisters Eliza and Mildred Turner wandered off into the gorge in the middle of the night. They were only wearing night gowns, and their disappearance led to search parties being dispatched into the area of the Santo Domingo Gorge. Mildred was found after six days, but she has remained catatonic since.

Henry Farny, "Renegade Apaches", 1892.