San Rafael: Coronado's Road and the Fort That Moved

The small village of San Rafael sits near a spring at the edge of the Malpais, the vast black lava flow that spreads across this part of New Mexico. That spring is why people have stopped here for centuries.

Tradition holds that members of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's expedition passed this way in fifteen forty, searching for the fabled cities of gold, though accounts of his exact route differ. The spring that drew them is the same one that sustained the Spanish settlers who founded the village, which is also known as El Gallo.

In eighteen sixty-two, the army moved Fort Wingate to this spring, part of the effort to control the Navajo country to the north. The fort was moved again in eighteen sixty-eight, but the village remained, and the name San Rafael came into use alongside El Gallo.