New Mexico Office of the State Historian : Casa Colorada Grant

Casa Colorada Grant

On May 19, 1760, after coming to Sevilleta, Bishop Tamarón passed the ruins of “the house they called Colorada,” and from that point on they began to see pens of ewes, corrals, and small houses (Adams 1953:201). Given that this is the only colonial era mention of this place and that at the time it was already in ruins, perhaps a pre-revolt estancia which was located there gave its name to the area.

The modern settlement of Casa Colorada was born of a petition for a community grant in 1823. The grant may not have been confirmed at that time but the town continued in existence (Bowden 1969:II, 205). Testimony in the adjudication of the grant before the Surveyor General confirmed that the town was built in 1822 or 1823 in the place already known by the name Casa Colorada (Town of Casa Colorada Grant:12). It was included in lists of New Mexico towns in 1833 and 1840 (Bloom 1913:14; Carroll and Haggard 1942:93).

Wislizenus only referred to the nearby sand hills and the location of “Casas Coloradas,” six miles south of Tomé, when he camped there on 22 July 1846 (Wislizenus 1848:35). Later in the same year Abert commented on some large ponds north of town which were filled with water birds. His party had reached the Río Grande near there after descending from Abó Pass (Abert 1962:117-118).

In 1855, W.W.H. Davis observed that at Casa Colorada his party “struck a young desert, an excellent pocket edition of the great African Zahara, over which we journeyed for about four miles.” Through the area north of “La Hoya” the sand made travel difficult and the land barren with the exception of “occasional small patches in some of the valleys close to the river” (Davis 1938:200).

In the 1920s the local Post Office was given the name “Turn” because there was a turn in the road at Casa Colorada and that name has since appeared on many maps but the original name is still in general use (Julyan 1996:67).