Rincon, New Mexico

Rincon occupies a footnote in railroad history that most people drive past without knowing. In the early eighteen eighties, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway was building south toward El Paso when it reached this bend in the Rio Grande. From Rincon, it split: one branch continued south to El Paso, the other turned southwest toward Deming, New Mexico.

At Deming on March eighth, eighteen eighty-one, that branch connected with the Southern Pacific Railroad arriving from California, driving a silver spike that completed the second transcontinental railroad route in the United States. Rincon, a word meaning corner or nook in Spanish, was the pivot point of that achievement. The junction made it briefly important.

The bypass of history made it quiet again.