Homesteading On The Pajarito Plateau, 1887-1942

Figure 91. Ranch hands harvest beans in fields east of H. H. Brookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home at the Los Alamos Ranch. (Los Alamos Historical Society)

Figure 92. Ranch School workers use the latest equipment for harvesting crops in 1921. (Los Alamos Historical Society)

Figure 94. The Ranch School tractor, driven by an operator identified as Bob Lewis, 1921. (Los Alamos Historical Society)

Figure 93. Local workers pose in haying wagons at H. H. Brookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Los Alamos ranch. (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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