Farmington: Where Three Rivers Meet the Four Corners

Farmington sits at the confluence of the San Juan, Animas, and La Plata Rivers in the northwestern corner of New Mexico. The Navajo know the place as Totah, which means where three rivers meet. This confluence made it a significant location long before Anglo settlers arrived: the Ancestral Puebloans built communities throughout the San Juan Basin from around the seventh century, with major centers at Salmon Ruins just west of town and at Aztec Ruins a few miles east.

The Navajo Reservation, established in eighteen sixty-eight after the Long Walk, covers half of San Juan County and lies just west and south of Farmington. Anglo pioneers moved into the basin after eighteen seventy-nine, finding the river bottomlands ideal for fruit orchards and ranching. The town was incorporated in nineteen oh one.

Today Farmington is a major city in the Four Corners region and serves as the commercial hub for a wide stretch of Navajo Nation territory, the Jicarilla Apache Nation, and four-state recreation country.