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A Most Singular Country A History of Occupation in the Big Bend ARTHUR R. GÓMEZ Charles Redd Monographs in Western History Series No. 18 Paperback. 251 Pages. / 1-56085-000-0 / $10.95 On the border of Mexico, just southeast of El Paso, where the Rio Grande makes a wide, graceful turn to the north and then south again, the peaks and canyons of Big Bend National Park stand as anomalies in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert. As impressive as the free-flowing springs and surrounding fauna and flora are, the human struggle for survival in this strategically important area is equally noteworthy. Competition to possess the Big Bend has more than once attained international significance. Apaches, Comanches, Seminoles, and Kickapoos; Spanish adventurers; mountain men and miners; presidio troops; buffalo soldiers; vaqueros and farmers; revolutionaries; and gunslinging bandits guided by a shoot-first-ask-questions-later dogma have all left their mark here. In the sixteenth century, ten thousand Native Americans grew watermelons, cantaloupes, and tobacco in the Big Bend's fertile floodplain. In the eighteenth century, four thousand Spanish settlers claimed the area to raise apples, peaches, and figs. Yankees replaced the Spanish when silver was discovered, but they were displaced by Mexican cattle ranchers, who later made way for American cotton growers. In the early twentieth century, it was the landscape itself, especially the hot springs, that became the region's greatest cash asset. The danger of land disputes and border skirmishes diminished, tourists began to take notice, ultimately resulting in the creation of a state park in 1933 and a national park two years later.
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