San Ysidro: The Oldest Settlement in the Jemez Valley

San Ysidro sits where United States Highway Five-Fifty meets the road up into the Jemez Valley, at the point where the Jemez River leaves its mountain canyon and opens onto the Rio Grande plain. It is one of the oldest Spanish farming settlements in the area, long after Jemez Pueblo. A man named Juan Trujillo established a farming community here in sixteen ninety-nine, naming it for San Isidore the Farmer, the patron saint of agriculture.

For three centuries San Ysidro has served as the gateway to the Jemez Valley, a waypoint for traders, missionaries, and travelers heading up toward the Jemez Pueblo, the Valles Caldera, and the mountains beyond. The village incorporated in nineteen sixty-seven. Today its plaza and church anchor a small community that remains largely agricultural, a quiet threshold between the wide Rio Grande corridor and the forested highlands of the Jemez Mountains above.