Old Mesilla is on the outskirts of Las Cruces, NM. The plaza there reminds me a lot of Santa Fe, but not as fancy. I imagine that Santa Fe used to look like this when it was first built, since the builders are the same people.
After spending the night in El Paso, we drove through UTEP’s campus, where the buildings are modeled after the architecture in Bhutan.
Before leaving El Paso, we visited the Chamizal National Memorial.
“In 1966, Congress established Chamizal National Memorial to commemorate the Chamizal Convention (treaty) of 1963. The Chamizal treaty finally ended a long-standing border dispute between the U.S. and Mexico. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo established the Rio Grande/Río Bravo as the international boundary between the U.S. and Mexico. However, rivers naturally move over time. In this case, the river gradually, and at times abruptly, moved south, which left Mexico with less land than the 1848 treaty established. The land disputes that arose because of the river movement caused tension between the U.S. and Mexico for more than 100-years. Finally, in 1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos met to discuss the “Chamizal Issue” and through diplomatic negotiations, they solved the Chamizal Issue with the signing of the Chamizal Treaty.”
