Cooke's Spring, at the eastern mouth of upper Cooke's Canyon in southwestern New Mexico, held unusual importance because it lay at a narrow pass through a dry corridor and provided the only large supply of fresh water between the Rio Grande and the Mimbres River in the mid-19th century. Named for Philip St. George Cooke after his 1846 camp there while exploring and building Cooke's Wagon Road, it became a critical stop on the Southern Immigrant Trail. Wagon trains, stage and mail lines, and later nearby Fort Cummings depended on it, making the spring a small but decisive landmark in movement across the southern New Mexico frontier.