Santa Cruz de Rosales is a town and seat of the municipality of Rosales, in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. As of 2010, the town had a population of 5,570, up from 5,377 as of 2005 History The Rosales region, formed by the middle and lower reaches of the San Pedro River, was evangelized during the seventeenth century by Franciscans who settled among the indigenous Conchos and founded the Misión de San Pedro de Conchos in the mid-17th century. In 1714, the Franciscans planted a new mission with the name of Santa Cruz de Tapacolmes on the eastern side of the Río San Pedro and west of what is today the city of Delicias. The mission remained at that place until 1753, when it was relocated to its current place on the western side of the Río San Pedro, to improve defensibility from native attacks. The grounds where the new settlement was founded were donated by Sergeant Major Juan Antonio Trasviña y Retes and Nueva Vizcaya governor Manuel de San Juan y Santa Cruz. The settlement received the epithet of Tapacolmes by the Indians that Trasviña y Retes brought from the Ojinaga region to populate the settlement. Santa Cruz de Tapacolmes became an important population center of the region. It was first a subdivision of the township of Chihuahua. In 1820, with the reinstatement of the Constitution of Cadiz, it was designated the seat of the new Municipalidad de Tapacolmes and a town hall was constructed. On July 12, 1831 a decree of the Congress of Chihuahua gave it the status of Villa and the town and municipality was renamed Santa Cruz de Rosales in honor of the insurgent revolutionary hero Víctor Rosales. The name was soon simplified by the locals to Rosales. In 1848, after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February, the state of Chihuahua was again invaded by the US army under General Sterling Price, claiming the existence of a state of war between the two countries and rejecting the explanations of Governor Ángel Trías Álvarez, who had participated in signing the peace treaty. Trias then retreated with his Chihuahua government to Rosales, where on March 16, 1848 Price's forces attacked the Mexican garrison under what has come to be known as the Battle of Santa Cruz de Rosales. The Mexicans resisted under the command of Trías until they were exhausted, at which