Regarding the front page of the Aug. 26, 1920, Pagosa Springs Journal. Contained on that page was the story of a shootout in Edith that left two men dead and a third wounded.
J. M. Archuleta and Jose Salazar died in a hail of bullets during August of 1920, sacrificing their lives in defense of a hayfield. Daniel Valdez stopped lead in the same gun battle, his family uncertain if he would live or die. Ultimately he lived, only to face murder charges.
The shooting was no surprise to those familiar with the history of events along the border between Archuleta County and New Mexico. The location of that border had been disputed since it was first surveyed in 1868. One of the principle issues was, where was the pioneer community of Edith, in Colorado or New Mexico?
Tempers flared often over that issue after Archuleta County was organized in 1885, ironically based on legislation submitted by Colorado Senator Antonio D. Archuleta of Conejos County. Because A.D. Archuleta was instrumental in the new county's formation, the legislature honored Archuleta by having the new county named for him. Jose Marcelino Archuleta, the dead man, was the brother of A.D. Archuleta and the grandfather of current Pagosa Springs resident Margaret Daugaard.
In the first days of the county, a power struggle raged over the location of the county seat. The Archuleta and Gomez families, and possibly the E.M. Biggs New Mexico Lumber Company interests, pushed to make Edith the county seat. On the other side of the confrontation, Pagosa Springs leaders fought to retain Pagosa Springs as the county seat.
We find no record of blood shed over the issue, but there was physical confrontation. At one time, combatants from both viewpoints met on a foot bridge crossing the San Juan River in Pagosa Springs, wielding clubs.
Fearing that the first elected county commissioners - C.D. Scase, J.P. Archuleta, (J.M. Archuleta's brother), and J.B. Martinez - were sympathetic to moving the county seat to Edith, a group of Pagosa men broke up the first meeting of Archuleta County commissioners ever held. E.T. Walker carried a noose in a hat box into the meeting, which he displayed ominously to the assembled commissioners. That night, C.D. Scase's home mysteriously burned. Those commissioners did not meet again for six months. In the meantime, the dissidents elected a new slate of county officials known to be loyal to Pagosa Springs. Ultimately, the Colorado Supreme Court restored office to those originally elected and warned the dissidents to "not do that again."
Bearing on the county seat dispute, a second dispute simmered down through the years. Was Edith in Colorado or was it in New Mexico Territory?
The boundary between Colorado and New Mexico Territory had been established on the 37th parallel by an act of Congress in 1867 when the territory of Colorado was organizing. E.N. Darling, U.S. Surveyor and Astronomer, surveyed the route in 1868, erecting at least 10 monuments based on celestial observations. For 31 years, the Darling line remained undisputed.
Then, during 1899, complications developed when township surveys on the Colorado side of the line did not compute properly when closed to the state line. When the old Darling line was investigated, it was discovered that a large portion of the monuments were gone. Material errors in alignment and measurement were found in the line itself in the vicinity of Astronomical Monument No. 7 near Edith. Consequently, Archuleta County appropriated money to reestablish the missing monuments between the 6th and 8th Astronomical Monuments. Unfortunately, this Colorado survey was made without representation by the United States on behalf of New Mexico, then a territory.
The federal Congress authorized a new survey of the entire boundary line between Colorado and the territories of Oklahoma and New Mexico. The work was conducted by H.B. Carpenter, a U.S. surveyor, during 1902 and 1903. Carpenter conducted an independent survey which resulted in a line sometimes a half mile south and sometimes north of the old line. Congress never ratified the new survey.
In 1919, New Mexico, now a state, brought suit in equity to the Supreme Court to decide which line to observe. Finally, in 1925, the court designated a cadastral engineer as boundary commissioner to reestablish the Darling line. The final marking of that line was not completed until 1950.
The Edith shooting in 1920 had nothing to do with the former struggle for political control of Archuleta County. It had everything to do with the wishy-washy state line. Archuleta had homesteaded in the Edith area during 1876, one of the first pioneers in Pagosa Country. His homestead plat was later recorded in the Durango Land Office. At that time, according to the Darling survey, Archuleta's Edith property was in Colorado. Archuleta, therefore, had every reason to believe his property was in Colorado.
Following the 1902 survey and before the 1925 Supreme Court ruling, many people considered the Edith area to be in New Mexico. One of those people was Dave Loman, who filed a homestead entry in Santa Fe, N.M., on the same property Archuleta had filed on in Durango. Loman was convinced the property was his and that Archuleta was trespassing.
For years, the two men quarreled over who owned the property and the hayfield. Archuleta obtained an injunction in the Archuleta County district court restraining Loman from interfering with the hay harvest. Loman obtained injunctions from New Mexico courts against the Archuletas.
During the late summer of 1920, Archuleta had the hay cut and shocked. Loman at once advised Archuleta not to remove the hay from the field. On Tuesday, Archuleta ordered two of his hired hands, Jose Maria Salazar and Daniel Valdez, to go down to the field and haul it in. They refused and quit Archuleta's employ at once.
Realizing trouble was about to happen, on Wednesday morning Archuleta sent his son, Fidel, who was a deputy Archuleta County sheriff, to Pagosa Springs after sheriff Geo. F. Dutton. Dutton was unable to leave and sent Deputy Jacob Jacobson Jr. in his stead. Jacobson had a writ for attachment of Loman's body if he could find him in Colorado.
On Wednesday afternoon, J.M. Archuleta, son Fidel, Jacobson, a man named Montgomery, and others started for the hay field from Archuleta's Edith home. As Archuleta and Montgomery approached the hay field at about 1:30 in the afternoon, they were met by Salazar and Valdez.
When about five or six feet away, Salazar said to J.M., "I have a warrant for your arrest," at the same time reaching in his inside coat pocket, pulling out a revolver, and commencing to shoot at Archuleta, as did his partner Valdez.
Archuleta was hit twice and fell to the ground, but began pulling the trigger on the shotgun he carried. Salazar and Valdez continued firing on the run. Jacobson and Fidel were in another party some distance away, but began firing at the two men and were fired upon in return. A pitched gun battled developed, with Jacobson, Fidel, and Archuleta on one side and Salazar and Valdez on the other.
Salazar and Valdez fell as though hit two or three times. The last seen of them was when they hid among some willows along a nearby creek. A large party of Mexicans (sic) across the creek, who appeared to be merely onlookers at the melee, apparently helped them to their New Mexico homes.
Jacobson and Fidel immediately brought Archuleta to Pagosa Springs in the Archuleta car, leaving Edith without knowing if either of the two men were dead or not, but positive they had been wounded.
Archuleta was not thought badly wounded at first, but it was found that he had been shot in the left side through the bowels, and in the right thigh. Despite medical treatment, he passed away about 7:30 p.m.
Officials from Lumberton, N. M., confirmed that Salazar was dead and Valdez badly wounded, shot through the right elbow by a high powered rifle.
According to "The Pagosa Springs Sun," the periodical from which this account of the shootout was taken, "With one of the victims in Colorado, the other in New Mexico, and the affair having occurred over a hay crop on territory claimed by the two states, it presents a complicated state of affairs for the authorities."
We know that Daniel Valdez recovered from his wounds and was bound over to the district court in Rio Arriba County, N.M. We don't know if he ever stood trial. Until the 1925 Supreme Court ruling establishing the Colorado, New Mexico state line, no one knew which state had the right to try Valdez. In the newspaper account of the 1925 Supreme Court decree, we learned that Valdez was still under bond in Colorado. We also learned that New Mexico asked the Supreme Court for another hearing. Then we lose track of Valdez. Was he ever tried for the murder of Archuleta? We don't know.
