Trips in Brief

This post, like most of the others on this working website, will be updated as the trips continue.

1. March 2010. I'm not sure of the date, but it was the first trip I took to these areas since thinking up the idea of living the map, sometime during UNM's Spring Break. I forgot to bring a memory card for the camera, but had a good time with my kids at the Sandias' northern end, looking for Sierra de la Mina (a.k.a. the Crest of Montezuma) and finding Ojo de San Francisco, a small settlement in ruins (complete with at least one ancient trash pile) and Cuchilla de San Francisco or what the map calls "high Ridge."

We found the San Francisco Spring itself (one of two by that name in the area), a concrete well-house in a grove of elms and cottonwoods, its acequia grass-matted and dry. My two older kids, fresh off of reading Enid Blyton's THE TREASURE HUNTERS, found bits of old glass and called them their treasures. Also, we looked for Ojo del Oso, a spring, but found Dome Valley, the old hippie commune instead, complete with geodesic zomes.

2. March 27, 2010. Went with three friends, Ana and Danny and Luke and two of their friends, Nick and August, first to La Madera Road, to find Una de Gato and Tejon, both of which I had been to before but neither as part of this new quest. Stopped at a ranch gate, planning to park there and walk to Una de Gato; there, we encountered an angry ranch hand with a chihuahua who threatened us away. Parked elsewhere to walk in to Una de Gato, walked and walked, found it, but the ranch hand found us on a not-distant-enough ranch side road--honked and yelled and even fired a gun, freaking us out.

We had just found Una de Gato's rocky-slump remains, but couldn't stay around to take pictures, re-locate the cemetery, and find its "watering hole," whatever Lou Sage Batchen meant by that, with that guy shooting. (Is the watering hole a spring?) We followed the creek away from there, upstream past a little waterfall, past another clump of especially weedy ruins, and up to two still mostly-standing buildings that, if they aren't part of Una de Gato may have been another little settlement.

So we walked the creek down to where the car was, ran and jumped in and took off. A business card was on our windshield: "DIAMOND TAIL RANCH / YOU ARE TRESPASSING!!! / GOT YOUR LICENSE." Respectfully trespassing for the sake of history is just trespassing, I guess. So we drove around to Placitas, to the other side of Tejon, showed the group Dome Valley, but then Ojo del San Francisco, where we found two or three really cool mineshafts, including what must have been a gypsum mine, with its walls and ceiling lined with crystals. Hiked up Cuchilla de San Francisco, looking unsuccessfully(?) for what the map calls the "Present Road to San Pedro." We may have found pieces of it, but scrutinizing some satellite photos will help. We walked almost the entire length of that "high Ridge," and saw a very nice sunset and an even better view.

3. April 3, 2010. Went back out to Cuchilla de San Francisco, this time with the wife and kids. Spent most of our time around one of the open mines--a gypsum mine, I think--and the ruins of Ojo de San Francisco, though my daughter Anodyne and I also walked up to the top of the ridge and walked along it north for a ways. Incredibly windy up there. Got more photos of Ojo de San Francisco, found the remains of a log fence that must have once surrounded the spring. Looked a bit for the "prehistoric" mines mentioned in an old booklet I bought, but I think they're further south than where we were. Also, I think we can be fairly sure that part of the trail between the old spring and the ridge is what's called the "Present Road to San Pedro" on the map. I think it's closer, like there, to the settlement than we were looking last time. Hiked around until it was almost dark, then went to Denny's down in Bernalillo.

Sketch of Country around Las Placitas

This is an old map I found at UNM's Center for Southwest Research (CSWR), Sketch of Country around Las Placitas, while researching an article about Tejón, New Mexico. It is a map of the north end of central New Mexico's Sandia Mountains, particularly the Placitas area, with the Town of Tejón Grant to the mountains' northeast.

Something about it--perhaps the small area it covers, the small number of places it features, or the affection I feel for the area it depicts (particularly the La Madera Road area)--made me just fall in love with it and want to know everything it depicts, to be able to draw visuals up in my mind for every ridge and spring and settlement.

So I've decided that I want to live this map. I want to experience every place shown on this map, through the lens of this old map and the time in which it was created. I want to transform that area by discovering through this old map, which I believe is an 1877 surveyor general's map made to defend the land-grant status of the now-abandoned Tejón for the villagers who once lived there.

Over the next few months, I will be exploring all the places on this map--visiting its every named-on-the-map ridge, hill, spring, and settlement, as well as auxiliary settlements, et cetera, not labeled on the map but implied. For instance: towns on the area shown by the map that share the same names as arroyos or springs on the map, the mine and settlement attached to the ridge known as Sierra de la Mina, et cetera.

By the time I have explored this map to my satisfaction, on foot, online, and in libraries and archives, I hope to have a clear picture of the overall story and individual stories of the area and sites depicted on the map, a clear picture of what the area would have been like at the time of the map's creation, and perhaps a few good stories of my own. The trips I've already taken to the areas depicted have only served to whet my appetite. I am eager to see what else there is to find.

Here now, is the list I've drawn up from the map, of places I hope to visit. For practical purposes, I have divided the map into four quarters.

Northwest Quadrant

• Patented Lands of San Felipe
• Arroyo de Tunque (a.k.a. Tonque Arroyo, extending into NE Quadrant)
• “high ridge” (a.k.a. Cuchilla de San Francisco, extending into SW Quadrant)
• “Present Road to San Pedro” (extending into all quadrants)
• Ojo de San Francisco (1 building shown)
• Tejón Grant (extending into all quadrants)

Northeast Quadrant

• Arroyo de Tunque (extending into NW Quadrant)
• Ruins of the Pueblo de Tunque (a.k.a. Tonque Pueblo, 3 buildings shown)
• Mesita de Juana Lopez Grant
• Tejón Grant (extending into all quadrants)
• “Present Road to San Pedro” (extending into all quadrants)
• Arroyo Tuerto (extending into SE Quadrant)

Southeast Quadrant

• Tejón (4 buildings shown)
• Arroyo Tuerto (extending into NE Quadrant)
• “Old San Pedro Road” (extending into SW Quadrant)
• “Present Road to San Pedro” (extending into all quadrants)
• Rancho de Uña de Gato (3 buildings shown)
• Arroyo Uña de Gato
• Tejón Grant (extending into all quadrants)

Southwest Quadrant

• “Lomas or Cerros Colorados” (a.k.a. the Red Hills or the S Turns; 4 hills shown)
• “Present Road to San Pedro” (extending into all quadrants)
• “Old San Pedro Road” (extending into NW Quadrant)
• “Sierra Sandia”
• Cañon de Las Huertas
• Lomas Altas
• “Las Placitas or San Antonio de las Huertes” (6 buildings shown)
• Ojo del Orno (may be Tunnel Springs today)
• Ojo Pomoceno (most likely from San Juan Nepomuceno)
• Ojo Ciruela
• Ojo del Oso
• “cuchilla” (a.k.a. Cuchilla Lupe or La Cuchilla de Lupe; south of Ojo Santa Rosa Castilla)
• Ojo Santa Rosa Castilla
• “Ruins of San Jose de Las Huertas”
• “cuchilla” (east of Ojo Santa Rosa Castilla and northeast of Lomas Altas)
• “Seja de la Casa Colorada”
• “high ridge” (a.k.a. Cuchilla de San Francisco; extending into NW Quadrant)
• Ojo Tecolote
• Tejón Grant (extending into all quadrants)
• Sierra de la Mina (a.k.a. Montezuma Mountain, Crest of Montezuma)
• Ojo de la Casa (2 buildings shown)
• El Crestón

Any information about any of the above would be welcomed in the comments sections of this blog. The primary purpose of this blog is just for me to have someplace to organize my thoughts and research on this process, and to document my efforts, in the hope of eventually writing an article or something on this adventure. But if it also results in someone else posting some helpful information for me, that would be great as well.