Antoine Leroux Rendezvous 2022

Every year tens of thousands invade Parks Arizona and global school systems bring students to this rare learning opportunity that is a gathering of those with a passion for a pre-1840’s lifestyle and historical preservation held in honor of Joaquin Antoine Leroux, aka Watkins Leroux (1801–1861), he was a celebrated 19th century mountain man and trail guide based in New Mexico. Leroux was a member of the convention that organized New Mexico Territory.Unlike many who were recruited from the grog shops of St. Louis to make that historic voyage up the Missouri, Leroux was a member of an affluent French merchant family and educated in the finest St. Louis academies.In 1824 Leroux was trapping in the Gila watershed of Arizona and New Mexico. He trapped with and was friends with men like Old Bill Williams and Kit Carson. And he found the time to marry a beautiful young heiress to a half-million-acre land grant. By the time the Americans took over the region in 1848, Leroux was considered the most experienced, competent and celebrated scout and guide in New Mexico. He died at his home in Taos on June 30, 1881, of “asthma complicated by spear wounds,” apparently, the wounds suffered 10 years before on the Sitgreaves expedition. He was buried in the nave of Our Lady of Guadalupe or Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe at Taos, New Mexico. The grave is lost and the church was destroyed by an accidental fire July 24, 1961, by boys searching for pigeon eggs in the belfry. All graves in the old Guadalupe church burial ground have been covered up by what is now a Municipal parking lot.