X-Nico

10 unusual facts about Pecos River


Antonio de Espejo

Rather than return to the now unfriendly Rio Grande Valley, Espejo decided to return to Mexico via the Pecos River which he called "Rio de Las Vacas" because of the large number of bison the Spaniards encountered during the first six days they followed the river downstream.

Boca de Potrerillos

It is believed that the groups occupying the zone were a branch of a larger group known by archeologists as Coahuilteco that inhabited the slopes of the Sierra Madre Oriental up to the southwest Texas in the lower Pecos River.

Clyde Kluckhohn

Clyde Kluckhohn died of a heart attack in a cabin on the Upper Pecos River near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Jusepe Gutierrez

They crossed the Pecos River, caught catfish in the Gallinas River, and six leagues (15 miles) hence, came across Apache Indians and a rancheria.

Larcena Pennington Page

The wagon train forded the Pecos River, where several of the cows drowned, then continued on to Paso del Norte.

McCamey, Texas

The town is about five miles (8 km) east of the Pecos River along U.S. Route 67.

Phantom cave snail

This species is endemic to the lower Pecos River basin, Texas, the United States.

Sheffield, Texas

The first documented Europeans to visit the area were Spanish explorer Gaspar Castaño de Sosa and his men, who traveled up the Pecos River in 1590.

Tales of the Texas Rangers

Ed Hinton, as Matt Carter in "Blazing Across the Pecos" and as Walker in "The Rough, Tough West" (both 1955)

Tom Ketchum

He worked as a cowboy in the Pecos River Valley of New Mexico, where by 1894, his older brother, Sam Ketchum, had joined him.


Gaspar Castaño de Sosa

Castaño traveled north from Almaden, crossing the Rio Grande near present-day Del Rio, Texas, and reached the Pecos River near what is now Sheffield, Texas.

Mexican tetra

The type species of its genus, it is native to the Nearctic ecozone, originating in the lower Rio Grande and the Neueces and Pecos Rivers in Texas, as well as the central and eastern parts of Mexico.

Pecos Canyon

In the 19th century, the place where the Devils River had its confluence with the creek at the mouth of Pecos Canyon was called the Head of Devil's River where the San Antonio-El Paso Road left the Devils River to go northwest, 44 miles across Johnson Draw, Government Canyon and Howard Draw to Howard Spring, then 30.44 miles on to Live Oak Creek and Fort Lancaster, 3 miles further on at the Pecos River.

Phantom shiner

A single specimen was taken from the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park in 1953 representing the only known example of the species in the river between El Paso and the mouth of the Pecos River.

Seminole Canyon State Park and Historic Site

Gaspar Castaño de Sosa is believed to have been the first European to arrive in the area, during his 1591 trek up the Rio Grande and along the Pecos River, in his effort to establish Spanish colonization of New Mexico.