close window Courtesy of the State Records Center and Archives. Reproducing prohibited without express permission from the State Records Center and Archives. Cubero Cubero passed through the area in 1697 on an expedition to Zuni, and it's possible the name originated then. It's also possible the name comes from a local family, though one no longer living in the community. The village appears as Cubera on Bernardo Miera y Pacheco's map of the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition of 1776 but as Cubero on most subsequent maps. The village was located on an Indian trail and once was notorious hangout for Mexican traders in slaves, whiskey, and guns. Indian attacks were frequent; and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Cubero was a Spanish military outpost. American troops were later stationed here. The Navajo name for Cubero means "water in the crevice," doubtless a reference to the trickling spring here. Robert Julyan The Place Names of New Mexico 2nd. ed., University of New Mexico Press, 1998 © 2004-2009  New Mexico Office of the State Historian