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Mosquero - the name |
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In Spanish, the name Mosquero means 'flypaper' but it is never used in
this sense in New Mexico. The meaning here is a 'swarm of flies,
fleas or mosquitoes'. |
| Mosquero, the county seat of
Harding County lies at an elevation
of 5,560 feet and is located on Highway 39 southeast of
Roy and Solano.
The name for the new village was given to a nearby creek long before the
village was founded. Mosquero, a relatively new village, was
founded in 1908 by
Benjamin F. Brown. |
| Mosquero Creek rises east of Mosquero and flows southeast to join
Ute Creek in South Central Harding County. |
| There are several versions of how Mosquero Creek acquired it's
name. One version is that buffalo seen below in a canyon looked
like a swarm of flies. Another version is that before the American
Occupation, Buffalo hunters traveling through this area stopped at a
nearby creek to rest and eat leaving behind bins of food, which
attracted mosquitoes and flies. Mosquitoes and flies were also
attracted to the creek when Comancheros stopped to rest. |
| Another version is that the canyon (Mosquero Canyon) below the
town is a box canyon, dead-ending in dense cedar and
pĩnon trees. The Indians used to hunt buffalo by running a herd
into the canyon when the animals were stopped by canyon walls and
in heavy brush, immense clouds of flies from the animal's backs arose
and hung in a dense swarm just over the newly formed community above.
In other words, it was named, "A whale of a lot of flies." |
| A final
version is that the creek may have been named for moscoa, little birds,
similar to humming birds that were in the area when colonists came up
from Mexico to settle in New Mexico. These birds apparently looked
like large mosquitoes. |
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Any of
these certainly make for a more interesting story than saying Mosquero
sets on the edge of a lake which harbors and breeds mosquitoes. |
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