Off The Beaten Path - Albuquerque, TX

[joe817]

ALBUQUERQUE, TEXAS. Albuquerque was on the Clear Fork of Sandies Creek two miles south of the junction of Gonzales, Wilson, and Guadalupe counties in Gonzales County. The site was believed to be in Wilson County until a 1914 survey showed it inside the Gonzales county line. Probably the settlement was named by South Texans who had fought in New Mexico under Henry H. Sibley. The town's official life spanned the years 1870 through 1883.

A United States post office, with William W. Davis as postmaster, operated from 1870 to 1877; later that year it was reestablished by Mrs. Martha H. McCracken and operated until 1883. Henry S. Hastings and Samuel McCracken-Mississippian brothers-in-law-were the earliest settlers. At one time the town had a cotton gin, a blacksmith shop, a mercantile store, a saloon, a post office, a school, and several dwellings. On May 17, 1873, John Wesley Hardin killed Jack Helm in Albuquerque, one of a series of violent acts of the Sutton-Taylor feud. Albuquerque quickly declined after business activities shifted to a new village, Union (sometimes referred to as Union Valley), two miles south of the Albuquerque site. By 1912 only deserted structures remained at the town site.