The Hispano Ranchos of Northern New Mexico: Continuity and Change (Teaching with Historic Places)

This lesson is part of the National Park Service’s Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) program.

Northern New Mexico boasts river valleys surrounded by snow-covered mountains. But it was also harsh and unforgiving; one early settler called it a "glorious hell." The Spanish, who came to this area in the late 16th century, found that the valleys near the Rio Grande could be farmed when streams were channeled into irrigation systems.They took their century's old traditions with them, but soon encountered new influences from the rapidly expanding United States. Some of the small subsistence farms, or ranchos, created in the mid-19th century survive in the mountain valleys of the Pecos and Mora rivers. Learn more about these settlements using this lesson plan.

Objectives

1. To explain how and why Spanish settlement in New Mexico expanded into the valleys east of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains;
2. To describe how traditional Hispano culture in the valleys responded to new influences after New Mexico became a territory of the United States;
3. To identify the ways in which surviving ranchos reflect those responses;
4. To investigate the culture of early settlers in their own communities and identify how it changed over time.

Full Lesson Plan