Alamo Mucho Station

Alamo Mucho Station,[1] the misspelled name of Alamo Mocho Station[2]: 111  was one of the original Butterfield Overland Mail stations located south of the Mexican border, in Baja California. Its location is 0.5 miles south-southeast of the Mexicali International Airport Terminal building.[3]

Alamo Mocho meant trimmed cottonwood,[2]: 139  or a cottonwood with its branches cropped, mutilated or lopped off,[4] something travelers in the Colorado Desert would do to obtain wood in this otherwise desolate region. A riparian species, cottonwoods are a conspicuous indicator of water at or near the surface of the ground where they occur in the desert.

  1. ^ Waterman L. Ormsby, Lyle H. Wright, Josephine M. Bynum, The Butterfield Overland Mail: Only Through Passenger on the First Westbound Stage. Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 2007. pp.92-93.
  2. ^ a b Mildred Brooke Hoover, Douglas E. Kyle, (2002), Historic Spots in California, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
  3. ^ Tom Jonas, Wells in the Desert, Retracing the Mexican War Trails of Kearny and Cooke through Baja California, The Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 50, No. 3, Autumn 2009, pp.269-296., p.295, n.27
  4. ^ SpanishDict, mocho ,mo’-cho, adjective, meaning: 1. Dishonored. 2. Cropped, shorn. 3. Lopped, having the branches cut off. 4. Maimed, mutilated. from www.spanishdict.com accessed November 25, 2011