RACHEL LINDA CORDOVA   April 17, 1931 ef March 27, 2024 Rachel Linda Cordova was born Raquel Verlinda Martínez on April 17, 1931, in an adobe home, near the banks of the Huerfano River and famous Trappers’ Trail in Southern Colorado. Indeed, Rachel’s parents were proud Hispano ranchers, and her maternal and paternal grandparents were Colorado pioneers, born within twenty years of the same land becoming part of the United States. Her ancestral lines include Native Americans and members of the first permanent European settlement in the Southwestern United States, near the crossing of the Río Chama and Río Grande rivers in New Mexico in 1598, pre-dating the pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Rachel remembered her first job as herding sheep on the prairie with her sister, Della. However, she said she paid more attention to the probable and regular appearance of rattle snakes, which her father taught her to masterfully kill, each with a single bullet into the encroaching ra