Homesteading On The Pajarito Plateau, 1887-1942

Figure 46. The original main road to Los Alamos challenged early automobile traffic. Large vehicles could not make the final, tight curve (compare this photo to photo on previous page) and had to back up the last section of the old dirt road. The Ranch School improved the road, bypassing the last switchback and extending it more gradually to the right, through the gap shown at the end of the mesa. (Los Alamos Historical Society)

Chapter 3: Homesteading on the Pajarito Plateau

Homesteading On The Pajarito Plateau, 1887-1942

Published on Feb 9, 2013

Jim Cruz

About

This book has been written primarily for the descendants of the families who homesteaded the Pajarito Plateau in northern New Mexico beginning in the late 1880s. It is intended to serve as a record of a lifestyle now long gone,a time of “hard work and long days” that spanned just over half a century. During the fifty-five years between 1887—when the first official application for a homestead on the plateau was made—and late 1942, when the United States government began the condemnation process to acquire privately owned properties as part of the Manhattan Project’s secret Project Y, about thirtysix individuals, mostly Hispanic farmers and ranchers, established homesteads and used the resources of the plateau to supplement a subsistence-based way of life.

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