Mesilla Plaza, Three Nations in One Town Square
New Mexico
La Mesilla is a small village southwest of Las Cruces that has been claimed by three different nations within living memory. Mexican settlers from Chihuahua founded it in the eighteen forties. After the Mexican-American War of eighteen forty-six to eighteen forty-eight, many Mexicans living on the American side of the new boundary relocated to Mesilla, which sat in Mexican territory.
Then the Gadsden Purchase of eighteen fifty-three flipped it to the United States. During the Civil War, Mesilla served briefly as the Confederate capital of the Arizona Territory. And in eighteen eighty-one, Billy the Kid was tried for murder in a building on this plaza and sentenced to hang, though he escaped before the sentence was carried out.
The plaza's adobe church, San Albino, has been in continuous use since eighteen fifty-two.
