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| Hispanic Wedding |
Courtesy, Colorado
Historical Society
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Photo by William Azar © 1913
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Los Caminos Antiguos
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Los Caminos Antiguos Timeline
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| 8000-5000 BC Folsom Man hunts in the San Luis Valley. |
| 1300 AD San Luis Valley is visited by Ancestral Puebloans. Tewa, Navajo, Apache and Utes inhabited the area seasonally. |
| 1598 Explorer Don Juan de Oñate claims the San Luis Valley for Spain. |
| Early 1600s Spanish conquistadors (explorers) enter the area that is now Colorado, lured by tales of gold and silver. |
| 1700s Francisco Torres accompanies a Spanish expedition looking for gold. He names the Sangre de Cristo (blood of Christ) mountain range. |
| 1807 Lt. Zebulon Pike becomes the first American to visit San Luis Valley. |
| 1821 Mexico becomes independent of Spain and takes control of what will become the southwestern United States. |
| 1843-44 Republic of Mexico issues land grants to those willing to settle in the remote San Luis Valley. These first Hispanics were lured by the promise of land. |
| 1846-48 Mexican-American War occurs. |
| 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transfers western lands from Mexico to the United States, including southern and western Colorado. |
| 1849 Eighty families settle in the San Luis Valley. |
| 1851 First permanent Hispanic settlement in Colorado is established at San Luis. Conejos and San Acacio are settled soon thereafter. |
| 1852 Fort Massachusetts is built to
protect settlements from Ute attacks. |
| 1857 First Catholic church is established in the San Luis region—Our Lady of Guadalupe in Conejos. |
| 1858 U.S. government establishes Fort Garland as a military outpost designed to protect settlers from the Utes. |
| 1860s U.S. settlers claim most of the Ute land in the San Luis Valley. |
| 1861 Colorado Territory is established. |
| 1862 William Gilpin and William Blackmore
purchase a large portion of one of the Mexican land grants to be
mined for gold and silver. Many Hispanic settlers are not able to
produce a title to their land and lose them or are forced to buy
them back. This battle over land is still being fought in the courts
today. |
| 1868 U.S. government negotiates a treaty that confines the Utes to western Colorado. Hostilities continued until the 1880s when they were banished to reservations. |
| 1870 William Jackson Palmer begins construction of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad from Denver to Mexico through the San Luis Valley. Industry enters the valley for the first time. |
| 1880 Denver & Rio Grande Railroad station is built in Antonito. This railroad is now called the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. |
