Alma, 1880: the house that held, and the lives beyond it.

The Roberts cabin, supplied by Randy Salars, grandson of Sarah Ellen Roberts Salars. The same image appeared in Desert Magazine in 1944 as an old photograph from Agnes Meader Snyder's collection. Its original date is unknown.

A valley, a warning, a house

In the last days of April 1880, news of an attack at Cooney's mine moved down Mineral Creek. Families gathered at the Roberts house near Alma. Agnes Meader Snyder later remembered the wagon ride that brought the Meaders there and the long day inside. Earlier mining history and dated military reports trace the mine deaths, the search beyond the river, and the people who never reached that shelter.

Randy Salars supplied the two Roberts family photographs. His grandmother Sarah Ellen Roberts Salars was born in 1894. The older couple proposed in the seven-person portrait are her paternal grandparents Josiah and Sarah E. McCready Roberts; George W. Roberts, her father, is one of the young men. The family tree, an 1880 census household, and a later family sketch support that generation, but no examined account names all five Roberts relatives who Agnes said were inside the cabin. The third chapter follows the portrait and that question in detail.

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.