The Maxwell Land Grant - The Largest Land Grant in US History

The Maxwell Land Grant - Page 2

Lucien B. Maxwell, along with Kit Carson, led explorer

Colonel Freemont, across the desert to California in

1846. Maxwell and Carson remained friends for the

rest of their lives.

He kept his best animals, continually upgrading the remaining stock, including cattle, horses, sheep and even a large goat ranch, its manager to be well known in later years as Buffalo Bill Cody.

Before Cimarron even existed, Maxwell founded the settlement of Rayado 12 miles south of where Cimarron sits today. Rayado--which means "streaked" in Spanish, was perhaps named so for the beautiful cliffs close to the settlement. Maxwell and his wife built themselves a rambling one-story hacienda at Rayado, which is now a museum on the Philmont Scout Ranch.

Kit Carson

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

Maxwell's house at Rayado, New Mexico

There were only Ute and Apache Indians in the area, and they weren't happy with Maxwell, attacking the settlement frequently. Life was risky and settlers were reluctant to come until Maxwell brought Kit Carson from Taos, 35 miles west, as a protective presence.

Kit Carson built a place only a few miles away. Rayado was the first settlement east of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and became a stagecoach and wagon stop along the Santa Fe Trail.

Maxwell and Kit Carson put together a couple of herds of sheep, drove them over more than a thousand miles of mountains and desert to California, netting them $20,000-$50,000 each for their efforts. On one such drive they reportedly made a combined $100,000, but lost it to highwaymen on the Oregon Trail. Undaunted, they assembled another herd and did it all over again.

In 1850, the United States Army established a post at Rayado, and Maxwell let the soldiers rent his first home. Partially funded by the $200 a month rent he received from the US Army, Maxwell started a second home in the area that eventually grew to 16 or more rooms.

Kit Carson's home in Rayado, New Mexico In 1857, Maxwell bought Guadaloupe Miranda's interest in the grant for a sum of $2,745. In 1858 Maxwell's father-in-law, Charles Beaubien, paid a Santa Fe law firm to petition the Congress to confirm the grant under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The lawyers mentioned in their application that the grant had never been surveyed and "no certain estimate of its contents" could be made. The petition also stated that only a small portion of the grant was "fit for cultivation." The size of the grant was in question because when Beaubien and Miranda originally applied for the grant, there was a Mexican law, which limited each grantor to no more than 11 square leagues. A league was a variable unit of measure, usually about three or four miles. It can therefore be assumed that Beaubien and Miranda intended to acquire about 22 square leagues - or about 96,000acres. The description of the grant was typically vague, which contributed to the controversy over the years and the documentation was susceptible to later "interpretation" - so much so that what came to be known as the Maxwell Grant ended up being over two million acres.

In a hearing in 1857, Kit Carson testified that Maxwell had in just ten years turned 200 acres of wilderness into farmland, put up buildings worth $15,000 and was running 15,000 head of cattle, which he provisioned both the Indians and the US troops. Congress confirmed the grant in 1858.

In 1858 Maxwell moved 12 miles north, from Rayado to the banks of the Cimarron River, where he built a third home.

In 1860 prospectors and miners began to explore the area, but during the Confederate invasion in 1861-62, all mining was suspended in the territory. The area continued to become more populated and as the number of people increased in the area, wildlife dramatically decreased, especially the buffalo, leaving the native Indians with little to maintain their livelihood. Both the Apache and Comanche Indians retaliated against the newcomers by stealing livestock including cattle, goats and sheep and sometimes resorting to killing the settlers. The Indian attacks and the bitter winters made life difficult for the first settlers. The U.S. Government stationed troops in the area after appeals from the area residents.

In 1864, after the death of his father-in-law, Maxwell and his wife bought out the five other heirs for amounts ranging from three to six thousand dollars. Eventually, the Maxwells owned the entire grant, paying a sum total of $35,245 (a little over two cents per acre) for the 1,714,765 acres and became the largest land owners in the world. He renamed the property the Maxwell Land Grant and made Cimarron his headquarters.

In the same year, he built the Maxwell House in Cimarron which was as large as a city block. This was not only his home, but a place of business which included a hotel, gambling rooms, saloon, dance hall, billiard parlor, and a an area for women of "special virtue." Maxwell's extravagant lifestyle was a marvel of the region where simple log and adobe houses were the norm. His mansion was said to have had high, molded ceilings, deeply piled carpets, velvet drapes, paintings in gold frames, and four pianos. A frequent visitor in Maxwell's home, Colonel Henry Inman, who was stationed at Fort Union, 55 miles south, was awestruck by the opulence. Maxwell, Inman wrote, "lived in a sort of barbaric splendor, akin to that of the nobles of England at the time of the Norman conquest." Old registers included several prominent names including Kit Carson, Clay Allison, Davy Crockett (the desperado, a nephew of the American frontiersman), and Buffalo Bill Cody, who organized his first Wild West Show in Cimarron.

Continued Next Page

The Maxwell House in Cimarron, 1864. Unfortunately,

there are no remains of this once beautiful home.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

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