La Cañada - Location

Ever since I read Luis Pérez Granillo’s survey of the settlement of La Cañada as it existed in 1680, I’ve wondered where it was, beyond south of the Santa Cruz river.

As near as I can tell, the distance between the Río Grande and the badlands that enclose the Española valley on the east is about 2.6 miles that can be broken into three sections.

One runs from the main river to the great mound. Daniel Koning’s geological map of the area shows that while the immediate river bank is recent quaternary (Qay2), most of the land is older quaternary (Qay1). The modern village of San Pedro lies ninety degrees south of this area along the Río Grande in the older quaternary zone.

A second section runs directly between the north end of the mound and the Santa Cruz, south of the modern church. Koning says this land is also modern quaternary. Most of this land is now vacant.

Third, there’s a wide expanse of land northeast of the mound that runs east along the river to the badlands. Koning identifies this as modern quaternary. Sombrillo exists in patches of older quaternary land on the southeast margins of the area.

If one assumes for the moment, that a suerte, the unit of irrigated land for growing produce, was roughly 420' wide, then there could have been twelve to the mile.

Granillo indicated there were eleven units on the north side of the arroyo and nine on the south with some unusable land near the east end of the south side.

This would mean the community stretched about a mile along the river, somewhere in the 2.6 miles available.

It’s easy to think it was immediately south of the current church, which would mean it ran from the badlands west.

However, it’s just as easy to think the new villa of Santa Cruz was sited to the west, expanded east in the 1700's until there was no more usable land, then moved north to its current location.

The real problem with considering the location of the original settlement is the meaning of the word cañada in 1695. Today, Rubén Cobos defines it as “a dry riverbed; a small canyon in the sierra.” Others simply say it means an arroyo.

The Sangre de Cristo are too far for there to be a canyon on this side of the river, and they wouldn’t have settled along a dry riverbed unless they could have converted it into an irrigation ditch.

Some comments made by Francisco Domínguez after he reviewed the Franciscan missions in 1776 are more suggestive. After noting Santa Clara pueblo was “established on a fairly good plain almost like the one that extends from the Villa de la Cañada to San Juan,” he added:

“Toward the west of the plain mentioned here, there is a cañada that comes from the said sierra, runs to the east, and ends near the north side of the church, with its mouth at a distance from the pueblo.”

He then indicates the agricultural lands were “watered by a small river that runs through the middle of the cañada.”

He’s using the word plain to describe the older quaternary flat lands between the badlands and the Río Grande, and so a cañada can’t be that land. Instead, it sounds like he’s referring to the dry banks of a perennial river. They are distinct from the land between the church and the Río Grande, which might have been bosque or recent quaternary, and from wet banks that would have been called ciénega.

This leads me to think the original settlement was a little east of the Río Grande in the area now buried by 84/285 and the road over the Griego Bridge. Granillo says that after “crossing the Río del Norte to the right, I saw and found the hacienda that belonged to Miguel Luján.” In contrast he noted the Santa Cruz river was “about three-quarters of a league” from Santa Clara where he began, a distance of roughly 2.5 miles.

Today it’s difficult to distinguish any older settlement patterns from the overlay that accumlated along the Santa Fé-Taos highway that crosses the area at an angle. There probably are no houses earlier that the late nineteenth century; adobe was replaced when more durable materials became available.

Perhaps the best evidence of older land uses are the ditches that come directly from the Santa Cruz through commercial land, cross under the road and disappear in the hodgepodge of housing that’s developed in recent decades.

One goes along the parking lot of the Shell Station.

Another goes along the parking lot of the Zia Credit Union.

Although, they probably are also recent, they suggest a different orientation of settlement vis a vis the river than has existed since the highway was built.

The identity of the arroyo is a puzzle. I’ve seen no arroyos in the area north and east of Arroyo Seco. If could be something that ran off the mound that’s since been filled and blocked. Or, it could be something from the badlands.

It’s also possible it was the irrigation system that ran through the center of the settlement. Granillo doesn’t describe any ditches, and so he, or his translator, may have been using that term for the main canal. Like the modern ditches, it may have been too irregular to be called an acequia.

The houses that were destroyed then may have been too near the upstream end of the ditch and been destroyed when a surge of water came through. While the area was vacated after the Pueblo Revolt no preventive maintenance would have been done to any barrier or dam that would have protected the first buildings.

One can think of two reasons for settling somewhere south along the Santa Cruz rather than on the larger tract of early quaternary land north of the river that was developed in the 1700's. The mound would have provided some protection from both southern winds and unexpected visitors.

More important, a poorly constructed cart going north from Tesuque or San Ildefonso would have had to traverse a number of arroyos, including Arroyo Seco, to get to La Cañada but it wouldn’t have had to cross a running river. The route Domínguez described in 1776 was probably much older, and its fragments probably still exist.

“Going north from San Ildefonso, the road leads for a while among broken hills, with a little mesa halfway (it is called the mesilla de San Ildefonso) which stands on the left side of the road. It always runs upriver and in sight of the Río del Norte and finally comes out on the plain, where, 2 leagues from San Ildefonso, the Mission of the Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz de la Cañada lies.”

Notes:
Cobos, Rubén. A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, 1983.

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

Granillo, Luis. Report for 12 March 1695 describing the settlement of La Cañada, included in Blood on the Boulders: The Journals of Don Diego De Vargas, New Mexico, 1694-97, volume 2, 1998, edited by John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge.

Photographs:
1. USGS map for Española quandrangle showing Santa Cruz river between the badlands to the right (east) and Río Grande to the left (west). The county line goes through the mound. The red line is 84/285.

2. Fallow field back from 84/285 with the mound in back, 17 January 2012; it’s about a half mile due south of the river, and a quarter mile south of the boundary between lower and upper quaternary zones.

3. Land between the mound and Iglesia de la Santa Cruz de la Cañada, 27 January 2012; the white buildings are on the other side of the river.

4. Land east of the mound, south of Santa Cruz, north and west of badlands, 29 March 2012.

5. Ditch along side of Shell station parking lot, 20 January 2012.

6. Ditch along side of Zia Credit Union parking lot before it goes under 84/285, 20 January 2012.

7. Road going back to the Black Mesa looking south toward San Ildefonso, 22 February 2012. It meets the road in the middle which skirts a well-maintained fence protecting the mesa from trespassers. Someday, I may follow that road, but I don’t expect to get any closer to what is considered sacred ground.