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Excerpts from Abe Peña's  Memories of Cibola

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

from The Village at Ojo del Gallo
"Three miles south of Grants, on Highway 53, sits the historic and tumultuous village of San Rafael. At one time it was called Ft. Wingate, and before that Ojo del Gallo. San Rafael was named after Father José Rafael Chávez, a Franciscan priest who came to Ojo del Gallo with the original Hispanic settlers from Seboyeta, in 1863. Among those settlers were Mónico Mirabal, José León Téllez, José Fermín Gallegos, Esquipula Chávez, brother of Father Chávez, and others, veterans of the New Mexico Volunteers in the Civil War. Father Chávez was suspended from his priestly duties by Bishop Lamy, but he went on to be a very successful businessman.


The settlers came to supply the new cavalry fort then under construction with hay and grass for the horses and adobes and lumber for the buildings. The new fort was named Fort Wingate, in honor of Lt. Benjamin Wingate, who was killed by Confederate forces in the Battle of Valverde, on the Río Grande south of Socorro. The fort's purpose was to keep an eye on the Navajos and Apaches and provide security to settlers moving west into this new country. The first Fort Wingate had been quartered for a year or two at Seboyeta, but then it was relocated at Ojo del Gallo.


Mónico Mirabal applied for a veteran's land patent to the rich meadow at the spring, which covered several hundred acres. The meadow is irrigated naturally from the overflow of the Ojo del Gallo spring, which still produces about 500 gallons per minute. Vidal Mirabal told me heard the old-timers say that 'To bale hale, Don Mónico dug a hole in the ground approximately 4 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet, then tramped the grass into large bales and sold them to the fort to feed their horses and milk cows.' The fort under construction was commanded by Col. José Francisco Chávez. He was gone most of the time on other duties, however, and the provisional commander was Capt. Rafael Chacón. According to Chacón's autobiography, Legacy of Honor, written some forty years later, 'The soldiers lived in tents while building with adobe, terrones, and lumber.'


Capt. Chacón and some of the other officers brought their young wives to live with them in the harsh and primitive conditions, especially severe during the first winter, in 1862. He writes, 'In the month of October 1862, we went to El Gallo... All went well on the trip except for two mishaps. Across from Isleta Pueblo was a narrow passage, and when we passed by there the soldiers saw that the wheels of the wagon, on the river side, were off the road and in the air. It was a miracle that it did not overturn. In it were my wife Juanita and Gumecinda, my little daughter, and Doña Simona, the wife of Lieutenant Martin Quintana.'
The Seboyetanos decided to bring their families to Ft. Wingate in 1865. Among the children came one-year-old Silvestre, the son of Mónico and Juana María Mirabal, who grew up to attain prominence in ranching, banking, and the political arena after the turn of the century.


In 1868 the army decided to move Fort Wingate, after six short years at Ojo del Gallo, to Ojo del Oso, near Gallup, to be closer to the Navajos. During World War I, it was converted to an ordinance depot. In World War II it handled millions of tons of munitions and employed hundreds of people; it was finally phased out in 1993.


San Rafael adopted its new name in 1868 and prospered as an important economic center in west-central New Mexico. When the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad came through Los Alamitos, now Grants, in 1882, it pretty well signaled the decline of commerce in San Rafael, 3 miles south of the railway line. The thriving community had several general merchandise stores and some large and luxurious homes, many of which are still in use today. There were a few bars, also. Josephine Barela, in her book Ojo del Gallo, says that Don Leopoldo Mazón, a prominent sheepman from the Tinaja country, rode his buggy into San Rafael, and although he generally did not patronize bars, he stopped at Don Eliseo's cantina. 'After a few drinks, he looked up and saw himself in the mirror. Not liking what he saw he whipped out his pistol and shot the mirror to splinters! Knowing he was drunk, my father did not say anything.' The following day, he sheepishly sought out Don Eliseo, to apologize and tell him to order the best and most expensive mirror he could find. The mirror graced the Barela bar and later their home, for years.


Ms. Barela also writes, 'In the elections of 1888 the Militia assigned Captain Dumas Provencher, called Don Damacio, to supervise the election. Two Indians attempted to vote, and knowing they were not citizens, he refused to let them vote... That night as he watched the tallying of the votes, it was said some chairs had been pulled back by the other election officials and a shot rang through the window and he was killed. His assailant was never found and the case remained open for years.'


The U.S. census of 1880 shows San Rafael with a population of more than eight hundred inhabitants. Today San Rafael is home to about fifteen hundred people. The Guadalupe Plaza, across from the attractive Guadalupe Catholic Church, is well-kept, and in a corner of the fenced plaza is the gravestone of its first priest, Padre José Rafael Chávez, who gave the historic village its name, San Rafael."