The Maxwell Land Grant Company. General Office, Raton, Colfax Co., New Mexico.

MAXWELL LAND GRANT COMPANY

Publication: Rand, McNally & CO, pRINTERS, 1896, Chicago

First and only edition. The cover title is more helpful -"A Sketch of the Gold Mining Camps and the Mining Regulations of The Maxwell Land Grant." Small pamphlet (4 x 6 inches). 16 pp. with a photographic vignette to the title and copyright pages and a full page illustration of placer mining in the Moreno Valley and another of the Quartz Mill in the Baldy District. Publisher's stapled blue wrappers. Two tiny nicks to the top edge of the rear cover and pages, else a near fine copy. OCLC only locates one copy (New Mexico State University). The Maxwell Land Grant, the largest in American history, of northern New Mexico encompasses the Elizabethtown Mining District. This was a crucial point for the purchasers of the Grant and likely the sale wouldn't have proceeded without it. The rush to Baldy Mountain, the peak on whose flanks Elizabethtown lay, began in the spring of 1867 with the discovery of placer loads in the Moreno Valley. When the Grant was sold in 1870 the mining operations were a shadow of their former strength, a mere 20% of their former yield. Still, the miners, when told that they were on private property, refused to pay rent of move. "After the new company took over in the spring 1870, the owners set about asserting their right to collect rents from the residents of the grant, none of whom had titles for the lands which they farmed or mined. Attempts to collect rents on these properties met with much resistance, and soon the company delivered eviction notices to the uncooperative parries. This was the first salvo in a decade of violence and turmoil in Colfax County... Throughout the 1880s the district limped along, and the gold fields became marginal to the Maxwell Company' operations. The grant's operators instead concentrated on the rich coal fields around Raton, and the vast range and timber lands throughout the grant." (R. D. Losebrock, Managing a Gold Rush). But in the early 1890s gold mining revived when the mines around Baldy once again became lucrative to mine. The price of both silver and gold had risen sharply. This pamphlet was issued to inform the new crop of miners the exact rules for mining on Grant property.

Inventory Number: 53350