Smugglers’ Trail and The Clanton Hideout

Hidalgo County · NM Highway 338 -- Animas -- north end of Animas near high school

(SIDE 1) Smugglers once crossed this area with mule trains of contraband from Mexico, to be traded for merchandise in Arizona. In the summer of 1881, a group of Mexican smugglers was killed in Skeleton Canyon by members of the Clanton gang, including Old Man Clanton, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Curly Bill. (SIDE 2) The infamous Clanton Gang had two crude dugouts here in the 1880s that served as hideouts and a base for wide-ranging outlaw activities, particularly in connection with the Curly Bill Gang’s depredations along the Smugglers’ Trail that passed by here. Old Man Clanton was ambushed below the border in revenge for a Skeleton Canyon massacre.

The Historic Preservation Division notes that its marker spreadsheet may be out of date and in places inaccurate, and that it does not know where every marker now stands. These pages carry the spreadsheet’s record; a marker listed here may have moved or may no longer stand. the program’s page ↗

TodayHistorical map

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David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries

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under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

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Marker data: Official Scenic Historic Markers program, New Mexico Historic Preservation Division, Department of Cultural AffairsMarker texts come from the Division’s published marker spreadsheet, reproduced with the Division’s written permission. Where that spreadsheet records a coordinate, the pin is the Division’s own; where it records only a highway and mile marker, an address, a junction or a named place, or where its coordinate contradicts its own highway, mile and county, the pin is ours, resolved on public road and place data and marked approximate.

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