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Excerpts from Abe Peña's  popular publications

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


from VILLAGES

In Spanish, an earthen dam to store water is usually called an atarque. There are several villages around New Mexico called Atarque. The village of Atarque and the surrounding area we are going to visit today is the one south of Zuni Pueblo near Fence Lake, situated in Cíbola County near the Arizona border in northwestern New Mexico.

The village, according to Pauline Chávez Bent, was founded in 1882 by livestock people and was pretty well abandoned by 1950. Pauline was born and raised in Atarque, and now lives in Huntington Beach, California.


Atarque is now a “Ghost Town.” A victim of changing times. My first encounter with Atarque and its past was when I went to work for the Hubbell Ranch south of Atarque near Quemado in 1954. Frank A. Hubbell, Jr., one of the owners of the Cerro Prieto ranch, told me his father, Frank A. Hubbell, the founder of the ranch, married señorita Trinidad Garcia from Atarque.
He first saw her when she was about ten years old, and told her mother, “I'll be back when she's 15 and ask you for her hand in marriage.” Trinidad's father was Juan Garcia, the son of don Lorenzo and doña Cecilia Ortega Garcia, who were some of the early founders of Atarque.

Frank Hubbell said, “My father started as a bounty hunter tracking and capturing fugitives running from the law in the late 1800s. Fugitives with a bounty on their head would hide in the Quemado country, and he tracked them down.” Adding, “He told me he trailed a fugitive to a deep arroyo, where he built a fire and cooked supper. When the fellow fell asleep, he jumped him, brought him in, and collected the bounty. With the bounties, generally around $100 to $300, he purchased land and in time built this ranch.”

By 1954, the ranches had grown to more than 500,000 acres. The Cerro Prieto was about 250,000, and the Y Ranch near the village of Reserve was about 250,000. The Hubbells owned or controlled more than half a million acres, and ran about 28,000 head of sheep, making it the largest sheep ranch in New Mexico. It employed about 200 sheep herders. Some were from the Grants and Gallup area.

It was while he was tracking fugitives that he first saw pretty Trinidad Garcia in Atarque and returned five years later to ask for her hand. The marriage prospered and was blessed with several children. Among the children were Santiago, Roman, and Frank, Jr. All three participated in the operation of the ranches. Santiago, the oldest, was president of the company, and went blind in his senior years. He wife Charlotte drove his everywhere he went and served as his eyes. The Frank A. Hubbell Company was very successful in a conservative way.

Another prominent ranching family in the Atarque area was the Mazon family. Escolastico (Eskie) Mazon, son of Escolastico and Silvestrita Garcia, was born in 1913 at one of the Mazon ranches near Atarque. Eskie says, “My grandfather Epitacio Mazon and his wife Virginia came from Sonora, Mexico to Cubero, New Mexico and from there went west to found El Rancho de Los Mazones, where I was born. It was near the Arizona border in far western New Mexico. My father told us his ancestors came originally from Spain to search for a better life in the new world.”

The Mazons operated about 75,000 acres, and ran both sheep and cattle. In 1931, about 30 inches of snow blanketed the country in November. Eskie's job was hauling feed in an old Model A Ford truck form Saint John, Arizona to feed the sheep and cattle. By spring, when the snow finally melted after an exceptionally cold winter, most of the sheep had died and the banks began to call in the loans taken by stockmen to feed the livestock. Paying the loans was tough, but some ranches survived the hardships of the 1931 – 32 big snow—La Nevada. Especially the ones who had cattle that could reach piñon trees and tall brush to survive.

Eskie says, “I had had enough. At age 18, I told my father I'm going to Gallup. I don't want anything from the ranches. Do what you want with them. I'm going to try something else.” He got a job picking up the rails from a railroad spur to Gamerco, then he was hired as foreman building a road from Thoreau to Bluewater Lake in the Zuni Mountains. When the job was over, he worked for a contractor building the famous El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, and several others.

The El Rancho hosted many movie stars through the years, and today it's owned by Armand Ortega. Armand has kept the meaningful logo written across the top of the large entrance, “Charm of Yesterday, Convenience of Tomorrow.” I 1955, Viola and I spent our wedding night at El Rancho on our way to Carmel-By-the-Sea in California.

Eskie then started what was to be his life's work, Feeding People. He began in the restaurant business as a busboy at the Manhattan Café in Gallup, owned by Gus Anison, a Greek restaurateur. In time, he was promoted to head cook and eventually acting manager. Then Gus sent him to Grants to help his friend and countryman George Aide run the noted Yucca Hotel restaurant.

In 1941, Eskie was drafted into the Army during World War II, and served until 1945. When he returned home, he married Seferina Dominguez, a school teacher from San Rafael who waited for him through 4 years of war while he helped chase General Rommel, the Desert Fox, across Africa and Italy, finally terminating his military service in western Europe.

He worked briefly for Mr. Gunderson at the Bond-Gunderson store on the east end of Grants, then was hired by Mr. Thigpen at his store, where the Mining Museum is today. He also got a job in the meat department with the Michaels in Grants, but restaurants were in his blood, and in the early 1950s he opened the popular Monte Carlo Café on Santa Fe Avenue. His marriage to Seferina brought forth three sons: Jerry, Raymond, and Alex. Jerry served on the Grants City Council in the 1980s. His wife Seferina passed away in 1997, and is fondly remembered by many of her former pupils.

He was an active member of Saint Teresa Catholic Church in Grants, where he served as a Eucharist minister and helped the parish in many ways.

In 1989, when the mines in the Grants area were closing down and thousands of jobs were being lost, Eskie was my guest on Enchanting New Mexico. We called the TV show “Seniors in action—going places and doing things.” When I asked him, “What do you see for the future of Grants?” Without batting an eye, and pounding on the table, he said, “Grants will never die!”

Again in 1995, he was my guest on the same program, and I asked him the same question, and again he answered, “Grants will never die—We're too tough to die!” Eskie, who passed away in 2002, served his church, his community, and his country in an extraordinary manner, and we thank him for his optimism and his spirit of patriotism. Muchas Gracias, Escolastico.”