Part 1 ended with the execution of Diego Márquez in 1643 for his part in the murder of Governor Rosas. The story continues . . .
On September 18, 1692 Diego de Vargas gave the Los Serrillos Grant to Alonzo (or Alfonso) Rael de Aguilar. The original grant included all the land from the Cerros de San Marcos (Cerrillos Hills) up to Arroyo Guicú, which would have included the modern LCWP. Rael de Aguilar in 1695 founded the town of el Real de los Cerrillos, where the modern Bonanza Creek Ranch is located, to exploit the nearby lead and silver mines in the Cerros de San Marcos. However, continuing strife caused the town to be abandoned in June of the following year. But the little rocky hills to the east of Rael de Aguilar’s town were the first use of the place name Los Cerrillos in New Mexico, and the LCWP tract was part of it.
In the early 1700s el Rancho de las Golondrinas was acquired as a royal purchase by Miguel Vega y Coca, who had no sons, and consequently the rancho passed to Diego Baca through his marriage to María Vega y Coca. Diego and María’s residence was given as La Cañada de Guicú. The land north of LCWP was generally held by Bacas.
On June 20, 1776, a raid by hostiles in the Ciénega area, widely believed to be Comanche, resulted in 9 killed and 2 children abducted.
In 1788 the heirs of Rael de Aguilar requested the re-granting of the land called Los Cerrillos, and the grant was given to Josef Miguel de la Peña, whose wife, María Rael, was the granddaughter of Rael de Aguilar, and other heirs. Three years later Miguel de la Peña sold the Los Cerrillos property to Cleto de Miera for $450. By the 1800s the Cerrillos grant belonged to Colonel Manuel S. Delgado. The land east of LCWP was thereafter generally held by Delgados.
The LCWP tract was part of the Gonzáles Ranch, which was centered south, on Las Lagunitas. In 1858 the owners of the Gonzáles ranch, Nasário Gonzáles and María Rita Baca de Gonzáles, donated 100 varas (nearly 300 feet) of their land for a new chapel at Las Golondrinas. Later, Nasário Gonzáles and his brothers-in-law, Manuel Baca y Delgado and José Baca y Delgado, gave 6 varas more of land on the edge of the same property. José Baca y Delgado, who erected the chapel of Golondrinas at his personal expense around 1871, was buried there. Notice the intertwining of the Baca, Delgado and Gonzáles families?
Eight years later, in 1876, Nasário Gonzáles was designated the administrator of the estate of José Baca y Delgado, his bachelor brother-in-law. In settling the estate, Gonzáles sold two pieces of land at a court-ordered public auction to Amado L. Baca, his son-in-law, June 1878. The larger parcel, although located in the Alamo Grant, was described as a “certain piece of land measuring 373 varas (about 1,000 feet frontage on the creek) of land known as the Rancho de las Golondrinas.” The tract indicates the existence of three houses for laborers, a house that was the residence of the late José Baca y Delgado, and other “old things” He also received a third part of the Cañadita de los Bacas in this transaction. This parcel was bordered on the east with the land of Nasário Gonzáles and Manuel Baca y Delgado; on the west to the middle rock (media peñasco) from las Golondrinas to the lands of Antonio Ortiz y Salazar and Rafael López; on the north with the hill that divides the watershed of the Ciénega Arroyo; to the south with the watershed of el Guicú and of the buyer. This “third part” was either the LCWP itself or land adjacent to it. Amado Baca paid $500 for this exchange.
As we started this history of Guicú and Ciénega with scandal, let us end it with more of the same. John B. Lamy Jr., the nephew of the Archbishop, had come to New Mexico in the early 1870s. In 1880, he and his 26 year-old wife (he was then 35) Mercedes Chávez, a lady of wealth and high social position, lived with their 4 year-old ward F. Fournier in a house immediately north of Las Golondrinas, northwest of LCWP. For the previous ten years John’s uncle, the Archbishop, had employed François Mallet as architect for the cathedral being built in Santa Fe. Mallet was educated, brilliant and handsome, and being a countryman of Lamy, quite naturally a warm friendship sprang up between the young men. Lamy invited Mallet to his home and introduced him to his wife. It soon began to be widely rumored that relations between Mallet and Mrs. Lamy were inappropriately intimate.
In the late summer of 1880 John B. Lamy Jr. accosted François Mallet outside the cathedral, and shot and killed him. The trial found Lamy not guilty for reason of insanity. Then, on September 24, on a writ of habeas corpus, he was examined by the court and found not insane, and subsequently released. A couple of years later Mercedes Chávez filed for divorce, and moved to Santa Monica, California.
In the spring of 1972 El Rancho de las Golondrinas opened as Old Ciénega Village Museum and water from the LCWP was used to power the large mill there.
Visit www.santafebotanicalgarden.org to learn more about how Santa Fe Botanical Garden celebrates, cultivates and preserves the rich botanical heritage and biodiversity of the region.