The Westernmost Battle of the Civil War

As I mentioned in my post on the Civil War in Arizona, the year 1862 saw the westernmost fighting of the war when a group of Texas Confederates made it all the way to the western New Mexico Territory (what's now Arizona) and were pushed out by the Union California Column.

The main "battle" happened on April 15 at Picacho Peak, 50 miles northwest of Tucson at 111° 24' 17'' W longitude, when the advance guard of the column clashed with Confederate pickets. This is often called the westernmost land battle of the Civil War.

Well, it wasn't really a battle but a skirmish with only 23 soldiers involved, and there was a skirmish even further west than that one. On March 30, while the California Column was still headed for Tucson, it came upon a group of ten Confederates at Stanwix Station led by 2nd Lt. Jack Swilling, pictured here in this Wikimedia Commons image. They were burning hay that had been left out on the column's route to supply the horses. Swilling's men were greatly outnumbered and after firing a few shots, one of which wounded Private William Frank Semmelrogge, they wisely withdrew. Semmelrogge later recovered.

But we're not done yet! You see, Stanwix Station was about six miles southwest of Agua Caliente, which is at 113° 19′ 28″ W. Almost a year later on May 20, 1863, there was a shooting at La Paz, Arizona, which is at 114° 25′ 35″ W. Confederate sympathizer William Edwards fired upon a crowd of Union soldiers, killing Privates Ferdinand Behn and Thomas Gainor and wounding a civilian bystander. Edwards fled into the desert, where he later died of thirst. There was no exchange of fire and Edwards wasn't in the Confederate army, so whether you want to call this a skirmish or not is up to you.

In California there was a band of robbers who called themselves Confederate Partisan Rangers. Holding up a stagecoach doesn't count as a skirmish, though. There was also a standoff between Union soldiers and Confederate sympathizers with no shots fired, so let's strike that one out too.

None of these are battles. If you want the westernmost BATTLE of the Civil War, you have to go all the was east to Valverde, New Mexico, where on February 20-21 at longitude 106° 54' 53" W, several thousand men in blue and gray had a real, proper, standup battle.