The Ditch - Headwaters

In the year of the American Revolution, before there were dams or modern roads to confuse one’s sense of geography, Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez visited the church at Santa Cruz as part of a general review of their missions by the Franciscans.

He noted the village was near a “river, which, although it arises in the aforesaid sierra from three not very large springs, is joined from very high up by three or four rivulets which feed it more water than it brings from it source, and therefore it is permanent.”

The sources are today called the Río Frijoles and Río Medio which join before the river enters Santa Cruz Lake, and the Río Quemado which joins soon after it escapes impoundment.

The Picuris-Pecos fault that Patrick Sutherland says occurred during the Laramide Orogeny when the Sangre de Cristo were being formed the last time defines their origins to the east. On its west side, the fault thrust Precambrian rocks of the Ortega Formation over existing Pennsylvanian strata to the east. Embudo granite exists to the west.

The Jicarilla Fault, which dips in the opposite direction, lies a few miles to the east. It also appeared in Laramide times and now separates the Pennsylvanian from the Precambrian quartzite of the Truchas Range.

The Frijoles arises before the Picuris-Pecos Fault and curls south and west through the widening Panchuela West.

The origins of Río Medio lie farther north and east in the watershed before the Río Grande and Pecos known as Trailrider’s Wall that runs from Truchas Peak to Pecos Baldy. From there it crosses both the Jicarilla and Picuris-Pecos faults.

Río Quemado begins east of the Picrus-Pecos fault, with the south fork coming from somewhere between Middle Truchas Peak and Truchas Peak. The north fork leaves a glacial cirque near North Truchas Peak and falls 100' at the Quemado Falls.

All the mountain rivers are accessible to hikers and fishermen who aren’t intimidated by Forest Service warnings that a trail is not only difficult but hard to locate.

For common folk, the last you see of the Frijoles is in a valley that lies some 75' below route 503. Settlers in Cundiyo have dug ditches from the curving river to water what look like flattened hay fields.

The Medio is less visible as it wanders along the edge of a privately owned meadow just north of the confluence with the Frijoles. Even fisherman can’t get through there.

Río Quemado is hidden by the settlement of Cordova and by scrub that’s grown along its banks, but, away from the road, flows there through a fairly broad valley.

This is as far north as I can follow the Santa Cruz, and it’s as far north as settlement had penetrated when Domínguez counted 125 families living in the village of Santa Cruz, 71 in Chimayó after the confluence, 52 in Quemado and 26 in Truchas just beyond.

Notes: Francisco Atansio Domínguez. Republished 1956 as The Missions of New Mexico, 1776, translated and edited by Eleanor B. Adams and Angélico Chávez.

Photographs:
1. Río Frijoles as it joins the Rio Medio, 14 February 2012.

2. Río Frijoles below 503 east of Cundiyo, 16 February 2012; the river is marked by the red willow; the differences between the near hills and the Sangre de Cristo may be marked by the differences in vegetation in back.

3. Río Medio just before its merger with the Río Frijoles along route 503, 14 February 2012.

4. Río Quemado at Cordova just off county road 83, 21 February 2012.