Alamosa County
Barlow and Sanderson Stagecoach
Bison Reintroduction
Capilla de San Antonio de Padua (Lasauses)
Built in 1928–30, Capilla de San Antonio de Padua is a Catholic church in Lasauses in the San Luis Valley. Constructed in the Territorial Adobe style, the church incorporated one wall of an earlier church on the same site, which was built in 1880 but…
Capilla de San Isidro
Capilla de San Juan Bautista (Church of Saint John the Baptist)
Capilla de Viejo San Acacio
Colorado: An Overview
Conejos County
Conejos Indian Agency
The Conejos Indian Agency was established in the San Luis Valley for the Ute Indians in 1860. It was an important place where annuity goods were distributed to the Utes and treaty negotiations took place. After the Treaty of 1868 established a…
Conejos Treaty
Signed in October 1863 at Conejos in the San Luis Valley, the Conejos Treaty was an agreement between the US government and the Tabeguache band of Nuche (Ute people). It granted the United States the rights to all land in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains east…
Costilla County
Cottonwood Trees
First Baptist Church of Moffat
The First Baptist Church of Moffat is a two-story concrete-block building constructed in 1911 at the corner of Fourth and Lincoln Streets (401 Lincoln Avenue, Moffat, Colorado). In the 1920s, residents bought the church from the Baptist Association to…
Fort Garland
Iglesia de San Francisco de Assisi
Iglesia de San Pedro y San Pablo
Lafayette Head
Mexican Land Grants in Colorado
From the sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, the king of Spain and the Mexican government awarded land grants to individuals and communities throughout the American Southwest. All seven of Colorado’s land grants, comprising more than 8 million acres…
Pike’s Stockade
Rio Grande County
Saguache
Saguache County
San Luis
The oldest continuously occupied town in Colorado, San Luis sits along Culebra Creek, just west of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the southeast portion of the San Luis Valley. In April 1851, Hispanos from Taos, New Mexico, founded San Luis on the…
San Luis Valley
San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council
The San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council (SLVEC) helps to safeguard over 3.1 million acres of public lands and natural resources in the six counties comprising the San Luis Valley, noted for their unchanged landscapes, biological richness, early settlement…
San Rafael Presbyterian Church
Located in Mogote in the southern San Luis Valley (4907 Co Rd 9, Antonito, CO 81120), San Rafael Presbyterian Church was probably built in 1895–97 and used regularly until 1965. It is the second-oldest church in Conejos County and one of the few…
Sangre de Cristo Land Grant
The Sangre de Cristo land grant was a Mexican land grant possessed in January 1844 by Narciso Beaubien and Stephen Luis Lee. Covering almost 1.4 million acres in the San Luis Valley and Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado, the grant gave rise…
Spring Creek Fire
St. Francis of Assisi Mission Church
Built in 1881, St. Francis of Assisi Mission Church is a Catholic church in Los Valdeses, a town along the Rio Grande about halfway between Del Norte and Monte Vista. One of the few Hispano churches in the San Luis Valley with a cruciform plan, St…
State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home
Stewart’s Cattle Guard Archaeological Site
The Stewart’s Cattle Guard Archaeological Site in the San Luis Valley represents a late summer or early fall bison hunting camp occupied by Folsom peoples in the Paleo-Indian period (before 6000 BCE). The site was discovered in the late 1970s and…
Treaty of Abiquiú
Considered to be the first official treaty between the United States and the Ute people of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, the Treaty of Abiquiú was made in 1849 with the intention of establishing peaceful relations between the two groups…
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Trujillo Homesteads
Wendy Videlock
Wendy Videlock is a writer, visual artist, teacher, and a life-long student of the world. She lives on the Western Slope of Colorado in Palisade. Her books include Nevertheless (San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2011), Slingshots &…