History & Treasure · Narrative history series
Alma, 1880: the house that held, and the lives beyond it.
The attack near Alma reached a mine, the Frisco Valley, sheep country, and a Roberts family home where neighbors sheltered. Three researched chapters follow the event and the memories that kept it alive.
The Roberts cabin, supplied by a descendant of Sarah Roberts. The same image appeared in Desert Magazine in 1944 as an old photo from Agnes Meader Snyder's collection. Its original date is unknown.
The story and its sources
Agnes Meader Snyder's 1937 eyewitness recollection, preserved by the Library of Congress, names the Roberts ranch as the shelter. A descendant says the parents of his grandmother, Sarah Roberts, were there and supplied photographs of the cabin and family. The names of Sarah's parents and the photographed people have not yet been confirmed.
The family also remembers an irrigation ditch diverted through the cabin for water. Agnes's interview confirms that a ditch near the house supplied water and that the people inside feared its flow might be cut; it does not specify a channel through the building. The articles state those distinctions directly, along with differing reports of dates and deaths.
Three longform articles
Read the series
- The House Beside the Frisco: The Roberts Family and the Alma Attack of 1880
A source-grounded account of the 1880 attack near Alma, New Mexico, and the families who took shelter at the Roberts ranch, drawn from Agnes Meader Snyder's eyewitness recollection.
- Beyond the Roberts House: Miners, Herders, and Apache Families in the Alma Campaign
The wider history of the 1880 Alma attack follows the dead and missing beyond the famous ranch defense, the Chihenne struggle under Victorio, and the uncertain casualty record.
- Agnes Meader, the Roberts Cabin, and the Long Memory of Alma
How an eyewitness's 1937 oral history, a 1944 magazine story, and Roberts family photographs preserved—and changed—the story of the 1880 Alma attack.
Locate the Alma events
Explore Alma on the Apache Wars map. The map marks the Roberts ranch as a broad vicinity because its exact location has not been established.
Follow the wider history
The Victorio campaign history traces the Chihenne struggle around Ojo Caliente and the war's later course. The Apache Wars history series covers named leaders and encounters across southwestern New Mexico. The Apache Wars fiction cycle offers clearly labeled imagined viewpoints.