Las Cruces’s history is
mostly unwritten
The public archives hold only 2 old photos of Las Cruces. The rest are in attics, shoeboxes and the historical society. Help start the collection.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗During the Mexican–American War, the Battle of El Bracito was fought nearby on Christmas Day, 1846. The settlement of Las Cruces was founded in 1849, when the US Army first surveyed the town, thus opening up the area for American settlement. The town was first surveyed as the result of the American acquisition of the land surrounding Las Cruces, which later became the New Mexico Territory. This land had been ceded to the United States as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, which ended the Mexican-American War. The town was named Las Cruces (Spanish: "the crosses") after three crosses that its earliest settlers had reported seeing just north of the town. The crosses were thought to be "either marked graves or were similar to roadside memorials called descansos".
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowStart Las Cruces’s collection
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Las Cruces’s history is told.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewAdvert for WIA program in Las Cru…, 1898: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Las Cruces, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Advert for WIA program in Las Cruces, 30 September 1898 (1898) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Historic places
National Register · via Wikidata
From Wikimedia Commons (1), the Library of Congress (1) and the National Register (4). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.