North of Fort Craig is Mesa Contadero...
Transcribed from the placard...

...directly ahead, across the Rio Grande, on February 21, 1862.
Below the small village of Valverde, Confederate forces led by Colonel Henry Hopkins Sibley
clashed with Colonel E.R.S. Canby's Union troops posted at Fort Craig. Fighting in arroyos and gullies of a dry riverbed,
both sides found their regiments physically cut off from one another, and often unable to communicate with their leaders.
Communication and trust among Union troops were hampered because of the language barrier
between Anglo regulars and New Mexico Hispanic volunteers.
Control of the battlefield moved back and forth between North and South, but the engagement culminated in a Confederate tactical victory.
However on the following day, when Sibley demanded the surrender of Fort Craig and its supplies,
Canby adamantly refused, placing the Confederates in a difficult position, because they had neither enough food nor military supplies
to launch a direct attack or to return to Texas. The Confederates spend several days
burying their dead and transporting the wounded to Socorro, and then pressed northward...

October 2, 2015