Blood of Christ: The Name on These Mountains
Near Crestone, Colorado
The mountains rising behind Crestone carry one of the most vivid names in the American West. Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for Blood of Christ, and the name dates to the early eighteenth century. The most commonly cited origin comes from a military expedition led in seventeen nineteen by Antonio Valverde y Cosío, then governor of New Mexico.
His party was moving through the San Luis Valley against Ute and Comanche groups pressing into Spanish territory. According to the account that survived, they watched the snow-covered summits catch a sunrise and glow blood-red in the morning alpenglow. That image prompted the invocation of Christ's sacrifice, and the name passed into use.
Before the Spanish arrived, the valley had been continuously inhabited for roughly eleven thousand years. By the time Europeans entered the region, this was the territory of the Nuche, the Ute people, specifically the Tabeguache, Muache, and Capote bands, who used the mountain passes as travel corridors between the Great Plains and the communities of northern New Mexico. The Comanche and Navajo also moved through this country.
The first documented European presence in the San Luis Valley came with Juan de Oñate's expedition in fifteen ninety-eight. Much later, in eighteen fifty-one, Hispano settlers from Taos founded the town of San Luis on a Mexican land grant originally issued in eighteen forty-three. San Luis, about seventy miles south of Crestone, is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in Colorado.
The Sangre de Cristo range runs roughly two hundred forty miles, from central Colorado south into northern New Mexico, one of the longest continuous mountain chains in the Rocky Mountain system.
