Las Ruedas, New Mexico

Click on the google image to make it larger. You can't make out the details otherwise.

This is an aerial view of the Picacho, Rowe and Las Ruedas area of San Miguel County in New Mexico. Las Ruedas was just east of Rowe on the Pecos River and is where a lot, if not most of the early settlers of Rowe came from. They came as a result of the Santa Fe Railroad arrival and its replacement of the Santa Fe Trail.

Las Ruedas was the only village on the old Los Trigos Land Grant. and was depopulated as a result of the railroad arriving in the area. I do not know who was the last person to leave but it probably occurred in the late 1800 or very early 1900's. I have access to the 1860 and 1870 Territorial Census and will post here on the demographics of the village. I will do it as I find time.

When I was a kid in the 1950's the church was still there, in ruins, but still there. You could still see the remnants of the rock fence around the church. The presence  of a church there indicates that my ancestors lived there for a while. There were stone remnants of the houses on the semi flat areas close to the river. There was also the concrete remnant of a water holding tank that the railroad used to pump water to the railroad at Rowe for the steam engines.

When we walked down there to go fishing or swimming we would always look for lead along the old pipeline. We used the lead as sinkers for our fishing lines. Just cut a notch in a small piece of lead with a knife attach it to the line and bite down on it and wa laaaa, a custom made sinker. There was a cool place to swim on the furthest point east in this photo that the river reached. "El Remance" was well known to all of the kids in Rowe.

The Los Trigos land Grant, of which Las Ruedas was part of, ended up in the hands of "Buddy Folgensen and his actress wife Greer Garson. When they passed away the property was split up and the Pecos National Monument ended up with parts of it. I do not know who exactly owns the old village site. I am told that Jane Fonda and Val Kilmer own the rest. Anyway this post is about Las Ruedas, not the Los Trigos Land Grant. There are references to Las Ruedas  in the book titled "Four Leagues of Pecos" written by G. Emlen Hill and another titled "Before Pecos, Settlement Aggregation at Rowe, New Mexico" written by Linda S. Cordell and published by UNM Press. The place is pretty near to being totally forgotten.