San Miguel del Vado Land Grant

The San Miguel del Vado Land Grant (also known as the San Miguel del Bado Land Grant) is one of the northern Spanish land grants in New Mexico. The original grant was lost, but a second grant was obtained by 58 men and their respective families on March 12, 1803. Two days later, the procedure was repeated at San José del Vado, three miles upstream from San Miguel, distributing farm land to an additional forty-seven heads of household, including two women. Fifty-three men had earlier submitted the petition, and were granted temporary possession on November 24, 1794, pending satisfaction of prescribed criteria. Thirteen of the original men who applied for the grant were genízaros, those Native Americans, captured or sold into slavery, some of whom had complained of poor conditions and were granted lands by the governor for farming, often to provide a buffer of protection for larger towns, such as Santa Fé, against enemies. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sandoval that the grant would be reduced from the surveyor general's estimated 315,000 acres, including common lands, to the little more than 5,000 acres then under private ownership.

This land grant was in the vicinity of the Pecos River, below the Pecos Pueblo, which was eventually abandoned by the dwindling population of Native Americans, the remnants of which moved to Jemez Pueblo in 1838. A vado or bado is a word for a place where a river is forged. This vado was a meeting place for trade between the Plains and Pueblo tribes. It was a passage through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains for the Puebloan peoples of the Rio Grande valley to access the plains for buffalo hunting. It became the passage for the later Spanish explorers, comancheros and other frontier traders, ciboleros and other buffalo hunters, Indian fighters, the Santa Fe Trail, Civil War armies, and later still for the southern route of the transcontinental railroad.

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