Ambush site SE of Magdalena SW of Socorro

[Highmountain]

Someone went to a lot of trouble to set up an ambush here. The pics below are the 1/3 of it to the east. The rise to the north has another and a rock outcrop about the same distance away SE has another. Three fortified and well-hidden rifle pits [interestingly also set up in such a way as to offer the possibility of having cover and shooting ports to the rear. Evidently the horses were hidden at the head of a draw just north of the pictured pit. At my feet where the picture was taken was a long-time-ago grave, flat with the ground.

These folks knew someone was coming, knew what route he was going to take, knew where he'd be stopping to water the stock or camp, and took a lot of trouble setting up the ambush.

I can't swear this is the exact location. It's been a long time since I was up there. But driving south on that main track watch for a tank about a quarter-mile east off the main road on a flat with a large rock outcrop on the north side of it and a two-track to allow you to get directly to the tank. About 200 yards north of the tank there's an open flat surrounded on three sides by rock outcrops to the north, east and southeast. The grave is roughly centerpoint in the flat.

So far as I'm aware the site has never been MDed.

 

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[Springfield]

Always been curious about the 'painted lady' face in the Magdalena Mountains as related by Baxter in Black Range Tales. Got a picture of it? It's a bit beyond my range.

 

[Highmountain]

Always been curious about the 'painted lady' face in the Magdalena Mountains as related by Baxter in Black Range Tales. Got a picture of it? It's a bit beyond my range.

Hi Springfield: I've got the 'search' feature grinding trying to find a pic I took a few years ago of the Magdalena cameo face. I'll put it up when I get it located. It's difficult to get a picture of it anyone can make sense of because it depends somewhat on seasons, foliage, [and I'll confess, imagination - people who see dragons and wagon trains in clouds are usually better at seeing the lady on Magdalena Mountain than those who don't. I've taken a lot of folks over there through the years and found about half-simply can't see it, though having each feature pointed out piece by piece. They just shrug and shake their heads wondering why the big deal].

As for Baxter's and Jake Shaeffer's connection to Magdalena, probably there isn't one. It is on the east face, which is the wrong direction for Shaeffer to have seen it. Baxter and everyone else trying to figure out the Shaeffer mystery just didn't have a lot of ladies on the mountain to choose from. Everyone's always assumed if there was truth to the Jake Shaeffer lady, it had to be the Kneeling Nun, or Magdalena.

There's another, far better option, exactly as Shaeffer described, but I didn't find it and the person who did isn't quite ready to release the pics. Hopefully his book will be coming out within a few months.

Thanks for the reply,
Jack

 

[Springfield]

Thanks. The formation being on the east side of the range made no sense to me either - so I always defaulted to the Kneeling Nun. Of course, there could well be another formation known to the teller.

 

[Highmountain]

Springfield: Yep, it's a tough call either way.

Shaeffer/Young's woodcutting party was on the Mimbres when they were attacked. East of, or west and south of, and both ladies on their respective mountains well outside any path leading to Fort Craig where Jake Shaeffer landed six weeks later after his horrors and exhuberations involving Apaches, starvation, ten pounds of gold.

It was never a good match, either the Kneeling Nun, or the Magdalena one. Something that met his description needed to be somewhere within even a beeline path from where the woodcutting party was attacked to where he ended up [Fort Craig].

That route/woman-location problem has caused a lot of people, including me, to doubt the importance of the entire Shaeffer tale [and McKenna].

I get a lot of phone calls from people who want to talk about LAD. Frequently it's a bit irritating because they want to tell me where it is or want me to climb a mountain for them [though they've never been inside the State of New Mexico and figured it out studying Frank Dobie, a topo map, and a satellite image].

But I got a call from a man in Colorado once and began to brush him off when he said, "I know where the woman on the mountain is, and it's not Magdalena or Kneeling Nun. I have pictures."

"You have my attention."

"Could I drive down and talk to you tomorrow? Show you the pictures?"

"Give me a call when you get to Santa Fe and I'll head for town."

He was telliing me the truth.

 

[Highmountain]

Afterthought about the ambush site pictured above:

The partner and I who found that place always intended to put up a stake next to the gravesite and one of us go each one of the rifle pits, the other move around in relation to the grave location to try to establish where the missed shots might have come to earth and metal detect there. We reasoned we'd know a lot more about the ambushers if we knew the types of firearms they used.

By dating it in that way our thought was we might be able to search the country records to find out who the victim was and whether anything might hint why someone wanted to kill him badly enough to create such a lead-pipe cinch setup.

Jack