Canada de Ancha Grant

Cañada de Ancha Grant

 

by J.J. Bowden

Salvador Gonzales, a resident of Santa Fe, petitioned Governor Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza, stating:

I find myself with a large family, and not having a spot of land to enable me to plant a cornfield for the support of my charge, is a motive compelling me to seek a piece of land, and having found one, which is on this side of the river, and is uncleared up to the river, I register the same.

The tract was described in the petition as being bounded:

On the north by a road leading up toward a bald mountain; on the east by the mountains; on south, by the lands of Jose Antonio Lucero and on the west by the edge of a Canada.

17. Title Standards of the Santa Fe Bar, No. 20 (1945).

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on August 22, 1742; Governor Mendoza granted the land to Gonzales and directed Antonio Ulbarrj, the Alcalde of Santa Fe to deliver possession of the grant. Four days later, Ulibarri, in response to the governor’s decree designated the following as the boundaries of the grant and placed Gonzales in royal possession thereof:

On the north a road at the head. of this land leading to the Bald Mountain; on the east some black hills; on the south the lands of Jose Antonio Lucero; and on the west, a small canada with pines.

Gonzales promptly moved to the grant and he and those holding under him at all times thereafter remained In peaceful possession and enjoyment of the premises, cultivating portions of the grant and grazing their livestock on the balance.

The claim was presented to Surveyor General James K. Proudfit for an investigation on June 13, 1873. A sketch map was attached to the petition which indicated that the grant covered an area of two hundred forty thousand acres. During his examination of the claim Proudfit took the testimony of three witnesses who briefly and in general terms described the grant and nature of the use made thereof the grantee and his descendants. In a very short opinion dated January 5, 1874, Proudfit stated:

I have no doubt of the regularity of this grant as made under the Spanish law, the genuineness of the original Spanish papers, or of the good faith of the present claimants. I therefore recommend very

1. Archive No. 132 (Mss., Records of the A.N.M.).

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respectfully that Congress do confirm said grant of lands to the original grantee, Salvador Gonzales, and his legal representatives.2

A preliminary survey of the grant was made during the months of September and October 1878, by Deputy Surveyor Robert Marmon. The survey depicted the grant as being a tract of land about thirteen miles from north to south and fourteen miles from east to west, and comprising 103,959.31 acres, The Santa Fe River ran nearly through the center of the grant and not only were both sides of the river included, but also the various tributaries of that stream and the lake which is its fountainhead. A large portion of the grant was mountainous, and it included Old Baldy, which is the highest peak in New Mexico. The road fixed as the northern boundary crossed the mountains from east to west north of Old Baldy and had no connection whatever with the road mentioned in the grant papers. This eastern boundary was designated as a range of black hills located east of the Pecos River. To get to those hills, Marmon had to cross the Rockies. Surveyor General Henry M, Atkinson approved the survey on February 22, 1879, subject to a further investigation. Protests and charges of fraud were filed by a number of adverse parties. whereupon the Commissioner of the General Land office recommended that Atkinson make his “further investigation” at an early date. After a personal examination of its eastern

2. H. R. Exec Doc No. 206, 43d Cong., 1st Sess., 21-28 (1874).

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boundary, Atkinson set the survey aside in April. 1882. Pursuant to an order from the Commissioner of the General Land office instructing him to commence an immediate investigation to determine the location of the boundaries of the grant. Atkinson, on January 22, 1883, began taking further evidence. The government presented six witnesses and the claimants four. Atkinson was succeeded by Clarence Pullen before he had a chance to render a decision concerning the location of the grant’s boundaries. On February 19, 1885, Surveyor General Pullen held that the weight of the evidence showed that the east boundary of the grant was situated along the base of a group of black hills lying about three miles east of Santa Fe, that the west boundary was the Canada Ancha; that the north boundary was the road to Bald Mountain, which was situated about four miles northeast of Santa Fe and then called Sierra Blanca; and that the southern boundary was the Jose Antonio Lucero Grant which was hounded on the north by the Santa Fe River. He instructed Deputy Surveyor Jacob F. Laderer to resurvey the grant in accordance with these findings. Laderer resurveyed grant during the months of April and June of 1885, His work showed the grant as containing 23,661.00 acres. The north boundary was about three miles long, but on the south the grant was seven miles wide, It still measured about twelve miles from north to south.

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The owners of the Jose Antonio Lucero Grant protested the approval of the Laderer Survey on the ground that the Salvador Gonzales Grant covered only a “small cornfield” north of their grant. They contended that the north boundary of the Jose Antonio Lucero Grant was located north of the Cerro Gordo. John Ayers, who had a homestead entry within the area of the Laderer Survey, also protested the approval of the survey on the ground that the eastern and southern the area of the Laderer Survey, boundaries were not located in accordance with the calls set forth in the grant papers.

These protests, which sought the further drastic reduction in the size of the grant, caused Commissioner of the General Land Office, William A. J. Sparks, no little concern. Therefore, on January 7, 1886, he remanded the claim to the Surveyor General, George W. Julian, for a thorough re‑examination. Julian had one of the deputies, Major C. G. Coleman, to make a personal investigation of the boundaries of the grant. Coleman found the claim to be a palpably small one containing only 130.93 acres. In a supplemental opinion dated February 18, 1886, Julian stated:

This case is so remarkable in some of its features and has become so notorious that it invites some particularity of attention. . . . The claimants, who were permitted by the surveyor general to file their petition without disclosing their names, accompanied it by a sketch map, representing an area of two hundred and forty thousand acres, or three hundred and seventy‑five square miles! The grantee only asked for a “spot of land” on which “to plant a cornfield” for the support of his family, and the undiscovered men who claimed to represent him

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had the effrontery to assume that the governor of this province, in response to this modest petition, made a grant of two hundred and forty thousand acres, covering mountains, canons, and gorges, and mainly fit for nothing but grazing. If they had said, in so many words, “We have entered upon a scheme of wholesale robbery of the public domain through the machinery of the surveyor General’s office”, their purpose would scarcely have appeared more glaringly manifest. But the surveyor general strangely failed to see this and innocently allowed himself to be made the head of a roving commission to explore the country as far out as twenty miles from Santa Fe in search of the natural objects mentioned as the boundary calls of the little tract surveyed by Major Coleman. Whether his conduct presents an ethical or psychological problem, I will not undertake to decide; but it has about it something of the fascination of a romance and invites the pencil of an artist. The claim made to a large tract in this case is shown to be utterly false by another consideration. Under the law of Spain in 1742, the mountain and pasture lands in the provinces were common and free to the inhabitants, or, if granted, the fee did not pass, but only a tenancy at will or life estate. . . . In the case of McMullen v. Hodge (5 Texas 62), it is said, “We may, however, have to be permitted to remark that the concession of a large extent of land for the purpose of pasturage and the raising of cattle was unknown to the Spanish law.” . . . .3

In winding up his report, Julian recommended the rejection of all the claim except the small agricultural tract surveyed by Coleman, which he conceded to be valid. However, since the attorney for the claimants had failed to amend his petition in order to specify the names of his clients, Julian recommended the rejection of that tract also.4

Since Congress failed to take action on any of his recommendations, Julian, in an effort to motivate that

3. S. Exec. Doc. No. 206, 49th Cong., 1st Sess. 1‑6 (1886).
4. Ibid.

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august body, wrote a scathing article in The North American Review, in which he denounced the action of his predecessors as being the “tools of the land thieves”. This grant is an example of the sweeping accusations. He states:

The Canada Ancha tract was a grant to Salvador Gonzales, who simply asked the governor of New Mexico for a spot of land on which “to plant a corn field” for the support of his family. It was one of a group of small grants in the immediate vicinity of Santa Fe, and contains a fraction over 130 acres, with well defined and easily ascertained boundaries, The claimants of this grant, whose names were not given to the Surveyor‑General, filed a sketch map representing an area of 240,000 acres, or 375 square miles. The Deputy Surveyor placed himself at the head of a roving commission, in search of the boundaries, which he extended some twenty miles from Santa Fe, and made to include the highest mountain peaks of New Mexico, and 103,759 acres, A second survey was made afterwards, containing only 23,661 acres, including more than 20,000 acres of hills and mountains utterly unfit for cultivation, although the grantee only asked for land for “a corn field”. The land covered by the larger survey is reserved from settlement, and will so remain till Congress shall adjudicate the title; but in the meanwhile, the claimants of the land, having been made ashamed of their performance, have abandoned their case, since the actual area and boundaries of the little tract have been determined by an authentic sur­vey.5

However, even this disgraceful and unwarranted attack failed to move Congress, and the claim was still pending when the Court of Private Land Claims was created. On February 14, 1893, Abraham Gold, who claimed an interest in the grant under purchases from some of the descendants of the original grantee  filed suit in the Court

5. Julian, “Land Stealing in New Mexico”, 145 The North American Review 20 (1887).

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of Private Land Claims, seeking the recognition of the grant. In his petition, Gold alleged that the grant contained 23,461 acres. The government filed a general answer putting into issue the allegations contained in the plaintiff’s petition, together with a special defense denying the correctness of the Laderer Survey.

The case came up for trial on November 17, 1896. Gold submitted his muniments of title, together with oral testimony tending to connect himself to the original grantees by purchase from Gonzales’ descendants and that the grant had been used for agricultural and grazing purposes in times past. Testimony was also adduced by the plaintiff to the effect that the eastern boundary of the grant was “some black hills located eight or ten miles east of the west boundary and that the north‑south distance was about the same”.

Since the genuiness of the grant papers was beyond dispute, the government acknowledged that Gold was entitled to the confirmation of some land, but joined issue with him over the extent of the grant. The government contended that instead of 23,461 acres, the grant covered only the lands lying within the Canada Ancha. In view of the fact that the south and west boundaries described in the grant papers

6. Gold v, United States, No. 85 (Mss., Records of the Ct. Pvt. L. Cl.).

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were well known natural objects, the location of only the northern and eastern boundaries were in dispute, The government’s witnesses contended that the black hills were a range of low hills which formed the eastern boundary of the Canada Ancha and that the road mentioned as the north boundary was a road at the head of the Canada Ancha. This road was located about one mile north of the south boundary. The court held the case under advisement until October 5, 1897, when it announced its decision confirming the grant, but limited it to the area contended for by the government.7

Since neither side appealed the decision, the claim was promptly surveyed by Deputy Surveyor George H. Pradt under a contract with the government. His survey showed the grant as covering a 200.82 acre tract of land within the narrow Canada Ancha. The grant was patented on April 19, 1917.8