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…

Signed on February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War (1846–48). In the treaty, the Republic of Mexico agreed to cede 55 percent of its territory, some 525,000 square miles, to the United States. This land eventually…