DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it — and it's a short life that deserves a slow telling. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War in 1848, and with it came a question that needed answering on the ground: exactly where does the United States end and Mexico begin? The answer, according to that treaty, was the main channel of the Rio Grande.
Simple enough on paper. Out here in the brush and the heat, it was anything but. Major William Emory took on the job.
From 1849 to 1853, he led the border survey — a long, grinding effort along some of the most unforgiving terrain on the continent. And in 1850, down at El Paso, a young surveyor out of Washington D.C. signed on. His name was Thomas W.
Jones, born around 1827, and he had no shortage of ambition for a man his age. Jones took a position as assistant surveyor with the Lower Rio Grande survey party. He was doing the work that mattered — the careful, precise, boots-in-the-dirt work of drawing a line that two nations would have to live by.
The Rio Grande itself was both the subject of that work and, as it turned out, the thing that would end it. On July 23, 1853, Thomas W. Jones drowned nearby.
He was buried here, on Dr. Eli T. Merriman's ranch.
The survey he'd given himself to was completed that same year. The line got drawn. His name got left behind.
Some stories end where the river bends.
What the marker says
(c. 1827 - 1853) The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War in 1848 and designated the main channel of the Rio Grande as the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico. Major William Emory led the border survey (1849-53). Young Washington D.C. surveyor Thomas W. Jones joined Emory's survey effort at El Paso in 1850. While serving as assistant surveyor of the Lower Rio Grande survey party, Jones drowned nearby on July 23, 1853, and was buried here on Dr. Eli T. Merriman's ranch. Recorded - 1994