San Miguel del Vado

This small village on the Pecos River is one of the oldest Hispanic frontier settlements in New Mexico. In seventeen ninety-four, fifty-two families led by Lorenzo Marquez petitioned the Spanish government for a community land grant to settle the ford, el vado, where the Pecos crossed the road toward the plains. The grant's founder, Lorenzo Marquez, led a remarkably mixed group: mestizo settlers, Pueblo Indians probably from nearby Pecos, and genízaros, the term for enslaved Native people absorbed into Hispanic households.

Together they built a fortified plaza community to serve as a buffer against Apache raids. By the eighteen twenties, San Miguel del Vado had become a prominent community on the Santa Fe Trail, making it an important provisioning stop as American commerce opened the road.