Pics: 1) Pronghorn antelope; 2) the salt flats on the way from El Paso to the Guadalupe Mountains; 3) El Capitan in the Guadalupe Mountains; 4) the site of the old Butterfield Station.
5-7-07-Monday-64884-160-El Paso, TX-Sunny-low +56-high +87
Saw 5 Pronghorn Antelope, 3 rabbits, a lizard, and a few bats
We drove to Carlsbad, N.M. today. On the way we saw a distant mountain range that we would be traveling through. The salt flats we saw just before the mountains were originally controlled by the area Indians but were taken over by the white settlers who moved into the region. There was a brief, bloody war over the control of the flats in the late 1800's for this invaluable mineral. There are very little of the salt left in the area now and it is not being mined any longer.
The most prominent point of the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, the mountain range we were approaching, is El Capitan. We decided to stop at this park, which neither of us had heard anything about before, but the visitor center was closed. However, we walked a short trail behind the center to the remains of a Butterfield stagecoach way station called Pinery Station, which was the first overland mail route in the area during 1857 & 1858. There wasn't very much left of the station now, but the stagecoaches traveled through this area on their way from St. Louis to San Francisco in 25 days - a great feat at that time. This location is the only company-built station that you can get to from a major highway.
We camped at a KOA north of Carlsbad.
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