This Week in the West: George McJunkin

George McJunkin stood at the summit of the Capulin Volcano in northern New Mexico and looked over the valley below. He had long since left his boyhood in slavery; he had made his own way. He was a Cowboy.

To his west were the Sangre de Christo Mountains and spreading out in the valley below the volcano was the land that had become his home: The Dry Cimarron. He called it his “Promised Land.”

What he would discover in the earth beneath him would create a legacy for the cowboy and rewrite the history of the continent.