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Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

So far, we found very little information about Spur Lake. The little that we've found leads us believe that the community is historic.<1>

We've added Spur Lake to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. If you can help us with Spur Lake, please Contact Us.

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 Spur Lake (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 Spur Lake. 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 Spur Lake ...

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.

For example, a typical abbreviation for Spur Lake: Spur Lk.

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 northwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals and doctors were in the next county to the west. 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 west 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.

Although our information shows that the community of Spur Lake is historic, it would have been located within present day Catron County.

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

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Catron County: Apache (AZ), Greenlee (AZ), Cibola, Grant, Sierra & Socorro.

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

  • Catron County     (The home county of Spur Lake)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Spur Lake, with the one closest to Spur Lake listed first.
    • Luna
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the south)
    • Cruzville
      (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southeast)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Cruzville
      • Cruzville is located in Catron County
    • Apache Creek
      (18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Apache Creek
      • Apache Creek is located in Catron County
    • Aragon
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the east)
    • Reserve
      (20 miles [32.2 km] to the south)
  • Apache County (AZ)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Spur Lake, with the one closest to Spur Lake listed first.
    • Alpine
      (18 miles [29 km] to the southwest)
    • Nutrioso
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the west)
    • Eagar
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the west)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Eagar
      • Eagar is located in Apache County (AZ)
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 4,956 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Eagar <2>
    • Springerville
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the west)
  • Greenlee County (AZ)
    • Blue
      (29 miles [46.7 km] to the southwest)

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

Newspapers Published in Spur Lake ...

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 12 newspapers that have been published in the area around Spur Lake.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Spur Lake, there are papers which were published within 25 miles [40.2 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Spur Lake.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we like to start with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These websites either 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 Spur Lake:

Cemeteries Near Spur Lake ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Spur Lake.

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 Spur Lake covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

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

  • Spur Lake Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the south)
  • Luna Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the south)
  • Alpine City Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southwest)
  • Apache Creek Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the southeast)
  • Rogers Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the west)
  • Nutrioso Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the west)
  • Maxwell Family Cemetery
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the west)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Maxwell Family Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<5>
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Maxwell Family Cemetery is located outside and to the north of Nutrioso (AZ).
    • The Maxwell Family Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Maxwell Cemetery
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Maxwell Family Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #57060 <4>
  • Reserve Cemetery
    (20 miles [32.2 km] to the south)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Reserve Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<6> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Reserve Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #38357 <4>
  • Aragon Cemetery
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the east)
  • Butler Cemetery
    (21 miles [33.8 km] to the west)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Butler Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<5>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Butler Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #56983 <4>
  • Burk Cemetery
    (24 miles [38.6 km] to the west)
    • Note: We haven't been able to verify our GPS coordinates for the Burk Cemetery. Although the coordinates have been estimated, they should be in the vicinity.<5>
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Burk Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #2216553 <4>
  • Schultz Gravesite
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the southwest)
  • Continue List   (4 more) ...

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.

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

These communities are listed based on their distance from Spur Lake, with the one closest to Spur Lake listed first.

  • Nutrioso
    (19 miles [30.6 km] to the west)
  • Springerville
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the west)

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

The official website for State of New Mexico: www.newmexico.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>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 Spur Lake, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<2>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Spur Lake) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Spur Lake. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 33.9931, Longitude: -108.8759       In this case, the coordinates for Spur Lake have been provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
<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>An 'estimated' location is one where we have been given GPS coordinates, but are unable to verify the accuracy of those coordinates. That said, we have some confidence that we have placed the marker near the actual location. A typical reason for being unable to verify a location is that it might be on private property or maybe historic and gone without an obvious trace.
<6>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.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 07 Apr 2024