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Abe Peña's  "From the Past" newspaper column

All material used with the kind permission of the author, given to me personally.

"Thursday, September 25, 2008 5:37 PM MDT

The heritage of Los Alamitos

Long before the first Europeans came through Grants, the Anasazi Indians, and later the Zunis, the Acomas, and the Lagunas, hunted and traveled extensively throughout this area. The nomadic Navajos and Apaches built rancherias, and sometimes there were conflicts between the Pueblos and the Navajos and Apaches.

The Spanish explorer Hernando de Alvarado and some 20 soldiers were the first Europeans to pass through Grants, in August of 1540. Alvarado was sent by his leader, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, from near Zuni Pueblo, on an exploring expedition to the east. Coronado and a larger party passed through Grants later in the year to winter near present-day Bernalillo on the Rio Grande.

In 1598, Juan de Oñate, the first colonizer and first governor of New Mexico, passed through Grants, and again in 1605 when he carved on Inscription Rock at El Morro: “Paso por aqui el adelantado Don Juan de Oñate del descubrimiento del Mar del Sur Abril 16, 1605 [There passed through here the vanguard Don Juan de Oñate from the discovery of the sea of the south].”

In 1862, some 257 years after Oñate passed through here, came Antonio Chavez and his family from Seboyeta to build one of the first homes in Grants. Ten years later, in 1872, Jesus Blea, a veteran of the Civil War battle at Valverde, a friend of Chavez, came from Santa Rosa with his family and they also built a home. They called the settlement “Los Alamitos [The Cottonwoods].” Cottonwood trees had been planted and were thriving on the edge of the malpais near a spring that provided permanent water to the settlers.

The original Blea adobe and lava house is still standing, but is in disrepair, on Valencia Street off San Jose Drive in south Grants. Former mayor George Dannenbaum had the house designated and registered as a historical site in 1977.

With the coming of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad in 1882 came the three Canadian brothers, Angus, John, and Lewis Grant. They contracted to build the railroad through Los Alamitos and built a campsite about where Diamond G is located on the west side of Grants. More than 4,000 men, including several hundred Filipinos, and more than 2,000 mules worked the railway line as it inched its way west to California.

People began to call the campsite Grant's Camp. Later, when the railroad station was built, it was called Grant's Station and finally just Grant's. In 1937, according to retired Postmaster Eddie Roberts, the post office removed the apostrophe and it became simply Grants.

When the railroad was being built, Simon Bibo came to open a store. He was a member of a large Jewish family that came to the United States from Prussia in 1866 and came west to live and trade in New Mexico. George Dannenbaum, a descendent of the Bibo family, said, “Simon Bibo purchased the 160-acre townsite owned by Jesus Blea and built the Bernalillo Mercantile store facing the railroad tracks where Falcomata Motors is now located in west Grants. When Route 66 came through Grants in 1926, the entrance to the store was changed to face what is now Santa Fe Avenue."

The railroad became the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe and built livestock pens and corrals and loading facilities, and over those early years thousands of sheep and cattle were shipped to markets around the country. The livestock industry gave Grants a shot in the arm. It was our most important industry and has remained an important segment of our economy to this day.

A hotel was built where the former Latham's Stockman's store was located. It was known as the Yucca Hotel and built by George Ades. The famous Joe Capelli was the contractor. It was an attractive multi-story stucco building painted white, and both the hotel and the restaurant became notable landmarks in the early days of Grants. Another hotel, the Woodard, built of frame at the east end about where the West Theatre is today, also served the community until it burned down in the 1930s.

Grants begin to develop as the commercial center for the area, replacing the village of San Rafael, which had been the center in the colonial period, until the railroad came though in 1882. In the 1920s came the Breece Lumber Company from Michigan, which built a railroad to the heart of the Zuni Mountains. Millions of board feet of timber were hauled out and put on the mainline, known simply as “The Santa Fe,” and sent across the country to help build America. The timber industry became the largest provider of jobs, bringing the Hispanic people into the cash economy.

Grants grew slowly. 1929 was a banner year. The first electricity, produced by a Fairbanks Morse generator owned by Bond-Sargent store, managed by Carroll Gunderson, lit up a few homes and businesses, and the first telephones were put in. Santa Fe Avenue was paved. The first high school, known to us as Grants Union High School, was built and is now the attractive Cibola County Courthouse. The first Fourth of July parade and rodeo was held and Bluewater Dam was built. The stock market crashed, starting the big recession of the 1930s. The Dustbowl forced many of our neighbors in Oklahoma to seek a new life in California. They traveled Route 66 right down the middle of Grants with a mattress on their roof seeking their dream to the west.

By the late 1930s, most of the timber in the Zuni Mountains was harvested, and the rails were picked up in 1940s and sold to the Japanese as scrap iron. Those rails possibly came back to us in the form of bombs and bullets at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The vegetable industry, started by Bluewater farmers and later integrated by large commercial growers from the Phoenix area, prospered and grew with the completion of Bluewater Dam and, later, water wells. Some 4,000 acres of vegetables, led by carrots, produced food for America's tables. Several packing sheds were built alongside the railroad in Grants and employed hundreds. Women entered the labor market and Navajos were brought into the cash economy. It was truly a spectacular sight to see hundreds of Navajos, especially women in the their colorful velveteen blouses, gainfully employed in the carrot fields.

Plastic bags were developed during World War II and, after the war, American housewives wanted their carrots packaged in hygienic plastic bags. The attractive Grants carrot with its deep green top removed for packaging disappeared from produce counters, and the rich flavorful carrot lost its bonus price in the markets. High freight costs and high pumping costs from wells could not compete with areas closer to consumers and cheaper water. The industry went out of business in the 1950s.

As providence would have it, our Navajo neighbor Paddy Martinez brought in a rock to his friend Carroll Gunderson in Grants that changed the history of our area for all time. It was uranium. Uranium fever ran through the area like wildfire. Many purchased the $50 Geiger counter and took to the hills. It was not uncommon to see landowners posting their land, “No trespassing. Trespassers will be prosecuted or shot.”

Lawyers had a field day and, when the dust settled, the uranium industry had developed about 6,000 high paying jobs and produced about 53 percent of the total uranium produced in the United States. Grants grew from 1,200 people to 12,000. The village of Milan was born and grew to 3,000 people. Trailer parks dotted the landscape, where hundreds of trailers provided housing to the mushrooming population.

In 1979, after the scare of a meltdown at the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the price per pound started dropping and dropping and layoffs and more layoffs by the mining companies became the rule. The price declined from an average of $32 to less than $8 per pound. The last companies to close operated at large losses, hoping for the tide to turn. By 1991, all the mines were shut down and the number of jobs reduced to less than 100, and those mostly engaged by Quivira Mining, doing some leaching at the Ambrosio Lake site.

Some call it “Grants Luck” and some “True Grit.” Grants has resurrected from the “Boom to Bust” (a book written by George Dannenbaum in 1997) days of the uranium boom.

Santa Fe Avenue has undergone an eye-catching facelift and the MainStreet America folks are doing a fine job. Grants is growing slowly, propelled by hundreds of individuals who believe, and have invested in Grants and Cíbola County. They are convinced the area has a fine future. The password is adelante - forward.

Abe Peña is a local author and historian whose award-winning books Memories of Cibola and Villages & Villagers are available at bookstores throughout New Mexico."