Bloomfield: Farming Town, Then Boom Town

Bloomfield was settled in the late eighteen seventies at a natural crossing of the San Juan River, planted by pioneer families, many of them Latter-day Saints, who came looking for fertile land. The San Juan and Animas Rivers nourish the soil here, and early settlers built irrigation canals to grow fruit orchards, vegetables, and grain. Early in the twentieth century a Denver and Rio Grande Railroad spur reached the area, and Bloomfield became a shipping point for sheep and cattle.

Then in nineteen eleven, a settler drilling for water struck oil instead. That accident set in motion the discovery of the vast San Juan Basin petroleum reserves that would reshape the entire region. Development of oil, natural gas, and coal accelerated in the nineteen fifties and the population of San Juan County nearly tripled in a single decade. Bloomfield today sits between Farmington and Aztec in the heart of New Mexico's energy-producing northwest, a farm community turned energy town that still grows orchards alongside the pump jacks.