Las Placitas: A Spanish Land Grant in the Sandia Foothills
Near Albuquerque, New Mexico
The Sandia Mountains behind you have sheltered human settlement for thousands of years. The Spanish colonial chapter here began in the seventeen sixties, with the land grant known as La Merced de San Antonio de las Huertas, which translates roughly as the Grant of Saint Anthony of the Orchards.
The name Las Placitas means little plazas, a nod to the clusters of small adobe settlements that spread through these foothills. Families farmed the spring-fed canyons, raised livestock, and built the thick-walled adobe houses that still define the village's character.
Las Placitas sits on the northeast side of the Sandia Mountains, and the area holds pre-Columbian pueblo sites as well as Spanish colonial settlement, a long thread of human presence in the Rio Grande corridor.
