Description

The Spanish word cimarron meaning wild or untamed refers to a region in the southern Rocky Mountains where control of timber gold coal and grazing lands long bred violent struggle After the United States occupation following the 18461848 war with Mexico this tract of nearly two million acres came to be known as the Maxwell Land Grant When Cimarron Meant Wild presents a new history of the collision that occurred over the regions resources between 1870 and 1900 Author David L Caffey describes the epic latenineteenthcentury range war in an account deeply informed by his historical perspective on social political and cultural issues that beset the American West to this day

Cimarron country churned with the tensions of the Old Westland disputes lawlessness violence and class war among miners a foreign corporation local elites Texas cattlemen and the haughty Santa Fe Ring of lawyerly speculators

Caffey draws on new research to paint a complex picture of these events and of those that followed the sale of the claim to investors in 1870 These clashes played out over the following thirty years involving the new English owners miners and prospectors livestock grazers and farmers and Native Americans