San Miguel del Vado Grant by J. J. Bowden Lorenzo Marquez, for himself and fifty-one associates, petitioned the Governor of New Mexico, Fernando Chacon, for a grant covering the lands located on both sides of the Pecos River at the ford known as El Vado. The petitioners acknowledged that…
Are you a governmental entity or non-profit organization that offers programs to K-12 students and/or teachers in the Santa Fe area? Are you tired of delivering fliers to all local schools every fall? Are you looking for an easy way of broadening your reach? Then this is the…
El Paso del Norte After the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the Spanish colonists retreat to El Paso along with members of the Tigua and Piro tribes. A century later, a garrison was founded in San Elizario. After Mexican independence, Juan Maria Ponce de Leon established a hacienda in what…
Luis Lopez The Mexican period community of Luis López first appears in a list of New Mexico settlements compiled by Manuel Armijo in 1840 (Carroll and Haggard 1942:93; Marshall and Walt 1984:278). On 29 July 1846, Wislizenus mentioned a small town named Lopez; on his map he marked it…
Los Chaves The settlement of Los Chávez, on the west bank of the Río Grande, dates to a 1738 grant to Nicolás Durán y Chávez from Atrisco. In 1790 it consisted of six plazas (Julyan 1996:78; Espinosa and Chávez 1967:41- 43). It was included in the 1802 census (Olmsted…
Pajarito A violent dispute over land between the Pueblo of Isleta and the nearby estancia of “Paxarito” was discussed during the 1663 trial of Governor López Mendizábal of New Mexico before the Inquisition in Mexico City (Primera Audiencia de don Bernardo López de Mendizábal, 1663). Juan Candelaria thought that…
Bosque de Pinos Bosque de los Pinos was created in 1769 when floods caused the Río Grande to change course approximately two miles to the west, cutting off pieces of the Sedillo and Gutiérrez grants. The tract eventually came into the hands of Francisco Xavier Chávez, who built a…
Atrisco Richard Greenleaf and Joseph Metzgar point to a 1662 attempt by Governor Peñalosa “to found a villa in the midst of the settled region, in a valley called Atrisco” as the earliest evidence for the existence of this settlement (Greenleaf 1967:5; Metzgar 1977:269). This document went on to…
Estancia Valley "About them rolled the prairie—mile upon mile of it in all directions—flat, and yet tawny from the frost of the past winter. Far to the west they could see the peaks of the Manzano Mountains, north lay the Pedernal Hills, south the long range of the…
This Navajo community was established in 1903 when the US government established the San Juan School and Agency here, on land belonging to a Navajo named Tseheyabegay. Supt. William T. Shelton was its head. Described as a "stern disciplinarian and ruthless in his prosecution of moral lapse," he also…
