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.

Santa Cruz Dam History - Part 1

The Santa Cruz dam was a consequence of the Denver and Rio Grande railroad opening a station in 1881 in an area west of the Río Grande it called Española. It introduced men looking for economic opportunities into an area where local Spanish-speaking settlers saw land as their only source for food.

Surpluses moved between villages at different altitudes with different growing seasons. Truchas raised wheat, Santa Cruz grew fruit, Chimayó supplied chili, Colorado provided beans and potatoes. What cash existed came when men went to the mines in Colorado and Utah or worked as sheep herders in Colorado or Wyoming or section hands in Colorado and Arizona.

One man who followed the railroad from Pueblo, Colorado, was Frank Bond, a Canadian immigrant who had failed in the wool business there. In 1883, he bought land from the railroad for a stock shipping facility. He also opened a local store where people could pay for goods by raising sheep for him. Within a few years, most were indebted to him.

Another was Johann Block who arrived from Kansas around 1890. His father, Jacob Block, was a West Prussian who had migrated there with his family. John married Sofia Vigil Valdez and became a local landowner. His cousins, Heinrich and Jacob Jantz-johnson, also moved here; Henry was a bee-keeper, Jake a dairy man.

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, England could no longer import food from Russia and Germany. Prices rose in this country, even in the Santa Cruz valley. W. P. Cook came in 1915 and started work for Frank Bond as a stable boy.

Prices fell as soon as the war was over, and stayed depressed through the 1920's. Commercial farmers like to think the war years were the new normal and the present was an anomaly. One way to address it was produce more, and over-production throughout the decade kept commodity prices low nationally.

The new men weren’t deterred by the fact the easiest land to farm was taken. They believed all you had to do to make dry land productive was add water. In 1919, the commercial farmers petitioned the courts to revisit the distribution of water.

They didn’t understand demand for that water was already increasing. 1917 and 1918 had been dry years. The local population hadn’t been able to send its young to settle the frontiers after the United States took control of the land east of the Sangre de Cristo. Chimayó was taking more of the water before it could reach the valley. The court ruled in Chimayó’s favor.

Then, a man named Conger wanted to bring more land into production by building a 14 mile ditch from the Río Grande. The years between 1920 and 1925 were drought years in the state. When the ditch was completed in 1924, farmers turning chili into a commercial crop in the Mesilla Valley in the southern part of the state successfully protested the diversion of common water.

Notes:
Calkins, Hugh G. The Santa Cruz Irrigation District - New Mexico, 1937; best history of the dam.

Scurlock, Dan. From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin, 1998.

US Department of Interior. Tewa Basin Study, volume 2, 1935, reprinted by Marta Weigle as Hispanic Villages of Northern New Mexico, 1975; best source for social and economic conditions in the Española valley in the 1930's.

Photographs: Santa Cruz Lake, 14 February 2012; boulders have been placed around the parking area.

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.

The Ditch - The Dam

The Santa Cruz dam sits near the edge of an uplift of Mesoproterozoic granite topped by early Pleistocene sandy gravel.

Daniel Koning’s geological map for the Cundiyo quadrangle shows the uplift lies between two north-south faults with the western one through the reservoir and the eastern roughly along route 503. Both are moving east. Between them, northeast of the lake, is another, shorter fault that curves and is moving northeast.

The sedimentary land at the top of the dam basin is 6300'. The structural and hydraulic heights of the dam are 151' but only 100' is available to hold water. The width of the dam at its base is 103.6'. That means the crack in the uplifted rock, at its narrowest, is something like 150' x 100'.

The lake covers 121 acres at the top and looks to be roughly 4000' long from the face to the point where the bowls narrows and water is white in the picture below. The opening widens to 600' in places.

From there the Santa Cruz river runs for a mile to the point it forms at route 503. It first goes south where the land above is 6400', then curves to go northeast where the surface land is 6600'. It flows through what Craig Martin describes as a “narrow, rocky canyon.”

The 10' to 15' wide river has “shallow runs and many holes 4 to 10 feet deep” for brown trout. That means, the the crack goes more than 10' below the surface and the river bottom is rock fill.

Martin say’s it’s possible to walk the river, nearly to the dam, if you’re willing to wade through the water and navigate those openings.

You don’t need to venture so far to see the rocks that form the walls of the reservoir. They’re visible on route 503 where the river begins it narrow journey. Daniel Koning says the granite and granitic pegmatite have a “distinct reddish weathered surface” and consist of potassium feldspar, quartz, muscovite, plagioclase feldspar and biotite.

Outcrops can also be seen when you follow the river back from route 520 to the dam at the northern end of canyon fault.

The Bureau of Reclamation says that the “quality designations” of the dam’s supporting rock “ranged from poor to very poor; however, with depth the fractured zones are locked in and will provide adequate foundation.”

That’s as reassuring as it gets in an area striped with faults. A collapsed dam would spread disaster all the way to the Rio Grande.

Notes: Martin, Craig. 2002. Fly Fishing in Northern New Mexico.

Photographs:
1. Santa Cruz lake and dam, 14 February 2012.

2. Santa Cruz dam from the other side, 16 February 2012.

3. Santa Cruz lake looking towards the north opening, 14 February 2012.

4. Walls of the Santa Cruz river canyon from route 503, 14 February 2012.

5. Santa Cruz river from route 503, 14 February 2012.

6. Exposed rock on route 503, 14 February 2012.

7. Exposed rock from other side of dam, near route 520, 16 February 2012.

The Ditch - Chimayó

When you pass beyond the badlands, the land opens out. You’ve passed the northeast trending boundary between lithosome B from Peñasco and lithosome A from the Santa Fe section of the Sangre de Cristo within the Tesuque formation. Ridges of sediment still exist to the north, but they’re farther back from the road, on the other side of the Rio Chiquito. They’re now Quaternary alluvium.

The road no longer follows the Santa Cruz which lies farther to the right. The 1940 WPA Guide to 1930's New Mexico says the area then was “planted with fields of corn, chili, frijoles (Mexican or pinto beans), apple and peach orchards.” Today all you can see are houses, many announcing themselves as studios or galleries.

Here and there signs warn of possible water on the road. When you look north, you often see an arroyo that’s been turned into a road.

On the other side of the road you see steeply declining roads where water runs from arroyos and route 76 itself.

Dams were built on several of these washes in 1962, to stop silt from running into the Santa Cruz and the irrigation ditches downstream. In Sabrino’s Map, Don Usner suggests they may have had the unintended consequence of encouraging settlement along the arroyos. He says early settlers in Chimayó “took care to build their homes well away from the arroyo beds” where “spectacular floods once churned,” but since the dams were built “random arrangements of mobile homes lay boldly in the path of some of the temporarily constrained washes.”

You don’t actually see the Santa Cruz again until you turn towards the Santuario in El Portrero southeast of the old Chimayó plaza. For the most part, the rocks again are smaller than they were downstream.

In front of the dam face, the river is dry or nearly so. The dam is releasing no water right now.

Between the two points, the Rio Quemado has joined the Santa Cruz and snow is continuing to melt from the recent flurries.

Photographs:
1. Rio Santa Cruz in El Portrero, west of the Santuario on route 520, 16 February 2012.

2. Arroyo to north off route 76 in Chimayó area, 16 February 2012.

3. Road leading off 76 toward Rio Santa Cruz in Chimayó area, 16 February 2012.

4. Rio Santa Cruz in El Portrero, west of the Santuario on route 520, 16 February 2012.

5. Rio Santa Cruz soon after it leaves the dam, off route 520, 16 February 2012.

6. Snow melting into Santa Cruz river from route 503, 14 February 2012.

The Ditch - Quarteles

My plans to get a better idea where the local acequia ran below the great mound by walking the nearby farm road were dashed by the realities of life in New Mexico in February. Light snow began falling in the night and heavy clouds persisted through the morning. With no sun until noon, it was too cold to walk in mid-morning when the local paved roads are safest for pedestrians.

I retreated to my car to seek the Santa Cruz dam. As you go east you drive through three zones. The first begins as you enter Quarteles where the USGS map says the elevation is 5757'. You rise 150' to the area where suburban Chimayó begins. The elevation there is 5909' and rises to 6220' where you make the turn for the Santuario. Continuing east, the road rises another 280' before the exit to Santa Cruz Lake.

The elevation increase in the first stage is emphasized by the badlands on the left which can be 50' higher than the road. At their base, there are the familiar Tertiary sediments of the Tesuque formation lithosome B that came from the Peñasco embayment. On top, according to Daniel Koning, are glacial cobbles and pebbles composed of quartzite, granite and pegmatitic quartz.

At the point where the road from La Puebla meets route 76, the badlands rise from 5800' at the road to 5950' inland.

Across the road, the Santa Cruz river level is low, fed only by recent snow in the air and melting in tributaries below the dam. Banks of those cobbles lie exposed like beached whales, white in the winter light.

About three quarters of a mile farther down the road, the Placita Road meets route 76.

The land exposed by road builders is leaching cobbles.

Across the road, the Santa Cruz is flowing through and over the rocks.

Photographs:
1. Rio Santa Cruz at La Puebla Road near route 76, 16 February 2012.

2. Badlands at junction of La Puebla Road with route 76, 16 February 2012.

3. Rio Santa Cruz at La Puebla Road near route 76, 16 February 2012.

4. Badlands at junction of Placita Road with route 76, 16 February 2012.

5. Road cut on route 76 at junction with Placita Road, 16 February 2012.

6. Rio Santa Cruz at Placita Road near route 76, 16 February 2012.

The Ditch - The Dam

I could see nothing more of the Santa Cruz river along 84/285, so I drove along the Santa Cruz road searching for some place the river was visible. I found it at the Branch Bridge on Route 106.

Upstream, it’s the obvious continuation of the river seen in town. Downstream, there’s a concrete faced dam that sends water off to the left where there are four gates. Three, closed now, divert the water into the local ditch. The other, at a right angle and open now, sends the water back into the river.

The water runs hidden in a culvert under the access road to emerge a bit downstream in a natural ditch shrouded by trees.

It continues in that dirt lined ditch for some feet until it approaches another concrete dam.

This is the true beginning of the ditch. When the gate to the right is down, water backs up in that dirt ditch until it reaches the slot in the concrete. At that point water enters the ditch proper.

When the ditch is not in use, like now, the gate is raised, and the water enters a canal that takes it back to the river.

In normal times the river remains as placid here as it is in town.

When water levels are high, especially when it rains in summer, the water first backs up into a spillway behind the dirt ditch.

Water can also back up behind the dam, as it must have done last summer.

This dam is relatively new. The Santa Fe New Mexican for 15 May 1989 said it had been dedicated that week and replaced an earlier earthen dam at the same location.

Photographs:
1. Santa Cruz river at the Branch Bridge, looking upstream, 27 January 2012.

2. Diversion gates on Santa Cruz dam, 10 February 2012.

3. Entry point for water from the dam into the transit ditch, 10 February 2012.

4. Control point of entry for the local acequia, 10 February 2012.

5. Control point of entry with local acequia reach downstream, 10 February 2012; the great mound facing 84/285 is just visible in the back.

6. Return channel for water not used in the local acequia, 10 February 2012; the tree has been cut and left blocking the movement of high objects into the Santa Cruz river.

7. Santa Cruz river downstream from the return channel, 10 February 2012.

8. Spillway for the transit ditch, 10 February 2012; the light bank in the center back is the hump separating this from the actual ditch. The culvert in #3 is under it.

9. Land between the dam and the river seen in #1, 27 January 2011.

The Ditch - The Left Bank

Now that I knew where to find the first legs of the local acequia, my next step was to trace the Santa Cruz river back to the diversion point. I began where the Santa Cruz enters the Rio Grande just north of the Griego Bridge in Española. Except at the water’s edge, where mechanical equipment can’t go, the land there’s been kept barren. It’s on the perimeter of a toxic dump site that’s actively being remediated.

The next place up stream I knew I could see the Santa Cruz was at the Riverside Drive (route 68) bridge. There the banks are more defined, perhaps because there’s no back flow from the confluence with the Rio Grande to erode them.

Immediately upstream, the river recovers its natural vegetation pattern, or at least the one that has come back and been left relatively undisturbed.

From there I drove into the first large commercial parking lot I found on the east side of the road. Behind the business, a large area had been scraped bare of any vegetation. Behind that wasteland, some cottonwoods had come back.

Beyond the trees, I found the river, apparently far enough away from any building that its course was left unmanaged. It had carved itself a winding path through sedimentary soils that varied by deposition, avoiding rocks where it could, eroding softer areas at will.

The depth was controlled by dams upstream, but the bottom was still littered with river rock.

I tried another parking lot, a bit farther upstream, where the grasslands before the cottonwoods were less disturbed. I could see houses through the trees that had to be on the other side of the river. However, a well-maintained chain link fence kept me confined to the parking lot.

There was one parking lot left to try before the highway started its climb out of town. The land owners there were definitely tired of people confusing their drive with a public road. There could be no explanations of innocence if I went down that road lined on the right by cottonwoods.

I’d seen as much as I was going to see of the left bank of the Santa Cruz.

Photographs:
1. Santa Cruz river just before it enters the Rio Grande, 29 December 2011.

2. Santa Cruz river just before it goes under highway 84/285, 20 January 2012.

3. Santa Cruz river upstream from 84/285, 20 January 2012; red sandbar willows marks the banks of the river.

4. Approach to Santa Cruz river from behind a business on 84/285, 20 January 2012.

5. Santa Cruz river behind a business on 84/285, 20 January 2012.

6. Santa Cruz river behind a business on 84/285, 20 January 2012.

7. Santa Cruz bosque behind a second business on 84/285, 20 January 2012.

8. Gate blocking access to the Santa Cruz behind a third business on 82/285, 20 January 2012.