Los Lunas, New Mexico

Los Lunas takes its name directly from a family: the Luna family, Spanish land grantees who received their first claim here around seventeen sixteen and proceeded to dominate Valencia County for nearly two centuries. The town means, simply, The Lunas. By the early eighteen hundreds the family ran enormous sheep herds on Rio Grande bottomland.

When Valencia County needed a new seat of government in eighteen seventy-six, the Lunas had enough influence to bring it here. That decision, along with the railroad that followed, sealed the town's position as the county's commercial hub. The Luna family name remains on the town, a reminder that in New Mexico, land grants and family names often amount to the same thing.