Introduction

As one travels through New Mexico, it is hard to believe that millions of years ago, most of the state was covered by a shallow sea. This was pointed out to me years ago on several occasions when I was driving along U.S. 84 between Española and Tierra Amarilla with don José Sánchez, an old and respectedanciano(elder) that I had the great honor of knowing when I was a young adult. He used to say that a long time ago—he thought maybe during the time of Noah’s flood—this entire area had to have been under water. He pointed out the strata, or different colored layers of the cliffs along the road, and suggested they were created by the receding flood, each era of many years leaving behind its own mark. I do not know how don José reached his conclusions but he was right, and it is certain that nowhere in New Mexico is this early geologic history of the state better represented than in Rio Arriba County.

Science tells us that geologic time is based on the sequence of fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks within rock layers. By analyzing the fossils found in the individual layers, scientists have been able to establish a worldwide sequence of time dating back hundreds of millions of years. Paleontologists, those scientists who study fossils, tell us that during those millions of years, the region that now comprises New Mexico teemed with life. More than 1,000 different kinds of fossils have been found in New Mexico, some of which are unique to the region. These ranged from the simplest plants to the giantbrontosaurusand other dinosaurs of the type that dominated earth for millions of years. In 1947, archaeologists discovered what Professor Barry S. Kues of the University of New Mexico described as one of world’s“best deposits of early dinosaurs” at Ghost Ranch, located just north of Abiquiú. These included several complete fossilized skeletons ofcoelophysis, a small, agile, bipedal dinosaur that has been namedRioarribasaurusin honor of the site where it was discovered. Although there is now some controversy regarding the naming of this ancient dinosaur, the New Mexico State Legislature designated coelophysis as the official state fossil (not dinosaur) in 1981.

So what does this namerio arribamean?Primarily, it is a Spanish term that translates loosely into“upper river,” referring to the area of northern New Mexico traversed by the Rio del Norte, or as we know it today, the Rio Grande. It is normally used in the context of differentiating northern New Mexico from therio abajo, or“lower river” area of central and southern New Mexico. In this book the term is generally written two ways—the lower caserio arribawhen referring to the area in historical or geographic terms, with the upper case Rio Arriba used principally to designate the geopolitical entity we know as Rio Arriba County. In that sense the upper case Rio Arriba did not come into being until after 1846, when the United States occupied New Mexico and organized the territory into counties.

Even within that limited definition, a history of therio arribashould ideally encompass all of north-central New Mexico, to include the present-day counties of Rio Arriba and Taos. In a larger sense, this definition might even include the counties of Mora, Colfax, Santa Fe, San Miguel and even Los Alamos and San Juan—in other words, all of Northern New Mexico. Within that context, it may be noted that three communities that played an important role in the history of therio arribacovered by this book—Santa Cruz de la Cañada, Chimayo, and Ojo Caliente—are not actually located within Rio Arriba County. Santa Cruz and Chimayó are mostly in Santa Fe County and Ojo Caliente is in Taos County. This leads us to a point out one thing that became increasingly clear as this book was being organized—this one volume will barely suffice to provide the reader with a history of one county, much less several. The other counties of northern New Mexico will have to await their own books.

This volume is organized into two parts. The first is a