Spanish Attempts to Open a New Mexico-Sonora Road

In the fall of 1644 Don Pedro de Perea, governor of the province of Sonora, arrived in Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. Don Pedro was seeking Spanish colonists to settle and serve as soldiers in his recently created jurisdiction. During the preceding decade, prospectors from the mining towns of Parral and Santa Barbara in Nueva Vizcaya had traveled west, crossed the Siera Madre, and found evidences of rich silver and gold deposits near the headwaters of the Bavispe, Sonora, and San Miguel rivers in northeastern Sonora. News of these discoveries was welcomed in New Mexico, for the inhabitants depended upon limited trade relations witht he merchants of Parral and saw the mineral districts as possibly offering new markets for their products. During the years that followed, New Mexicans – merchants and govenrment officials in Santa Fe – sought to develop trade with Sonora, but found their efforts hampered by the absence of a highway, hostile Indians, and vast distance. Although no direct road was opened between New Mexico and Sonora during Spanish times, the repeated attempts that were made to establish such a route revealed a great deal about the rugged terrainand the ongoing Apache problem on the Sonora-New Mexico border.