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The Commemorative Quarter for California







Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Mesa Verde (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Mesa Verde. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Name Variations for Mesa Verde ...

When searching records, keep in mind that names and their spelling can change over time. Our sources include documents like maps, railroad schedules, Travel, Express and Shipping Guides. Many of these documents date from the 1800's and it's common to find spelling differences.

Although we can't give a definitive list, hopefully the following will give you a feel for the variations that might have occurred.

Mesa Verde was originally named Nicholls Warm Springs

If you have information about these names (such as the reason for the change, date of change, the origin of the name), please Contact Us.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors and hospitals were in the next county to the east. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the north.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the east contained birth and death records; the county to the north contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Mesa Verde is located in Riverside County.

To see how the shape of California's counties have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Riverside County: La Paz (AZ), Imperial, Orange, San Bernardino & San Diego.

Below are the counties that are near Mesa Verde. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Mesa Verde:

  • Riverside County     (The home county of Mesa Verde)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Mesa Verde, with the one closest to Mesa Verde listed first.
    • Blythe
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Blythe
      • Blythe is located in Riverside County
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 19,673 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Blythe <1>
    • East Blythe
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for East Blythe
      • East Blythe is located in Riverside County
    • Midland ‑ Historic
      (18 miles [29 km] to the north)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Midland
      • Midland is located in Riverside County
  • Imperial County
  • La Paz County (AZ)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Mesa Verde, with the one closest to Mesa Verde listed first.
    • Ehrenberg
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
    • Olive City ‑ Historic
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Olive City have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Olive City
      • Olive City is located in La Paz County (AZ)
      • Olive City has also been known as:
      • Bradshaw's Ferry
      • Olivia
    • Morgantown
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the east)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Morgantown
      • Morgantown is located in La Paz County (AZ)
    • Cibola
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the south)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Cibola have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cibola
      • Cibola is located in La Paz County (AZ)
    • La Paz Valley
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the east)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for La Paz Valley
      • La Paz Valley is located in La Paz County (AZ)
    • Quartzsite
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the east)

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Mesa Verde, see our County-by-County Page for Mesa Verde.

Newspapers Published in Mesa Verde ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 13 newspapers that have been published in the area around Mesa Verde.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Mesa Verde, there are papers which were published within 29 miles [46.7 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Mesa Verde.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These helpful websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Mesa Verde:

Cemeteries Near Mesa Verde ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Mesa Verde.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Mesa Verde covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Mesa Verde, with the one closest to Mesa Verde listed first.

  • Palo Verde Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the east)
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Palo Verde Cemetery is located outside and to the north of Blythe.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Palo Verde Cemetery
  • Ehrenberg Pioneer Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the east)
  • Hi Jolly Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the east)

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<5>

While we didn't find Mesa Verde in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Mesa Verde.

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Mesa Verde. See our List of 1890's Communities around Mesa Verde.

Unfortunately, we don't know of a website for Mesa Verde. If you can help, please contact us through our Feedback Page.

The official website for Riverside County: www.co.riverside.ca.us/

The official website for State of California: https://www.ca.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<2>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Mesa Verde) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Mesa Verde. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 33.6055, Longitude: -114.7275    
<4>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<5>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Mesa Verde, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.









 

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In closing, please keep in mind that we can not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of the information on this website, so use with care. We encourage you to double-check the information that is critical to you.

If you've found an error or have additional information that you would like to share, please don't hesitate to write: Click here to contact us.

This page was last modified/updated: 09 Mar 2024