This book is about a place that has seen much, but now lies in obscurity and silence. It is an example of how nature, sooner or later, will reclaim its dominion over the best that man builds and admires. This place is not about a single point in space, but rather an area, on the west side of the Rio Grande River in New Mexico, just north of Mesa de la Contadera (Black Mesa) and at the end of the Jornada del Muerto (Way of the Dead) on the Camino Real. It has witnessed the Battle of Valverde in the Civil War, coming of the railroad (ATSF), community-building, disaster (fire, earthquake, floods), and the birth of the atomic age at nearby Trinity Site. Its stones could tell much more history than this book can possibly comprehend. And yet, to the human eye, today it is little more than 50 acres of scrub and wasteland. A place that cars zip past on the nearby freeway and freight trains pass without stop at all hours of the night. A place whose story must be told, dedicated to all those who, through the centuries, have passed this way and found this Place by the River to be an oasis on a Spanish Trail, a place for which soldiers died, a place where a mighty railroad established its home base, and a place where all types of people - from Mogollon-culture natives to Spanish colonists to American families - called home.