One of the more confusing aspects of the geography of the
Southwest is the fact that there are two completely different
rivers with the exact same name, and they’re quite close to each
other. The name is “Rio Puerco,” meaning “dirty river” in the
New Mexico dialect of Spanish. It’s an apt name, since rivers in
the area tend to carry a lot of sediment and the water in them
tends to look rather dirty. Nevertheless, the use of it for both
rives can lead to considerable confusion, and while in technical
and scholarly contexts they tend to be carefully distinguished,
in more accessible public contexts there isn’t much
clarification out there. One Rio Puerco originates in the Jemez
Mountains and flows south through the village of Cuba, then
parallels the Rio Grande for a considerable distance before
joining it south of Belen. In contexts where careful
disambiguation is necessary this river is generally called the
Rio Puerco of the East, on maps and signs where highways like US
550 cross it it’s usually just labeled