 Truchas: Acequia Holds Key to Life in Mountain Town
By Dan Mauzy, SUN Staff Writer Published: Thursday, January 14, 2010 10:22 AM MST This story was originally published July 12, 2007. It was one in a series of community profiles the SUN wrote in 2005, 2007 and 2008. Near the 13,000-feet peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains a waterfall crashes. For 12 miles the water drains off the mountain canyon to the falls, from which point it winds down a hand-carved ditch, now hundreds of years old. The man-made furrow, sunk a few feet into the earth, is known as the Acequia de la Sierra and is the life-blood of the 253-year-old mountain town of Truchas. "Without it there wouldn't be any Truchas," 82-year-old resident and one-time ditch commissioner Priscilliano Sandovales said. "It gives us life," Sandovales' wife Joanne said. The Acequia de la Sierra was a feat of aquatic engineering comparable to the Hoover Dam for the 11 families who founded the town of Truchas in 1754. Using wooden tools and fire, the effort included digging through 1.8 miles of granite, Truchas resident Ramon Cortina said. The acequia has done more than just provide a lifeline for the 220 or so current water rights owners in the town of less than 1,000 residents. On at least one occasion it has saved the town from extinction, Sandovales said. Five years ago a forest fire charred the landscape from the nearby hamlet of Cordova to the southern slope of the Truchas peak. Fed by timber dried in the severe drought of 2002, the flames crept closer to the town of Truchas until eventually the residents were evacuated. But when the fire line reached the Acequia de la Sierra it was unable to jump the six-foot wide water channel, and eventually the flames were quenched. Scarring from the forest fire is still visible in the discoloration of the mountainside, reminding the residents of what might have been had their vein run dry that year. And so every year the town's inhabitants hike into the mountains to clear dirt and brush from the ditch, both as a sign of respect to the 11 families who built the waterway generations ago as well as to ensure a steady flow for that year's crops, Cortina said. While the acequia was vital to the their self-sufficient ranching community in the 18th century, now only a handful of residents have livestock grazing on their property. Those who do are retired land owners who tend to keep a few head of cattle, maybe some goats and chickens, and none of them rely on their animals for prosperity. Henry Romero, a life-long Truchas resident, said at its peak his ranch boasted 69 cows, but after years of brutal drought his herd had dwindled to 16. "It's been terrible," Romero said as he ticked off the years on his hand like a wayward oenophile listing grape harvests: 1994, 1996, 2002 . . . "With the drought it wasn't worth it," Romero said. With this year's unusually heavy precipitation, the ranchers have not had to worry as they have in the past, Sandovales said. While the water is always politically charged, during wet years Sandovales said he doesn't see as much treachery as in the dry seasons, such as neighbors turning off another's water or opening their sluices during off hours. But while the ranchers enjoy the boon, another Truchas community is experiencing a different kind of drought. The 14 art galleries on Truchas' main street have been dealing with the slowest season in recent memory, owners and artists said. When Harry Cordova opened his weaving shop in 1970 he said he was the first business in Truchas marketing to the state's art-hungry tourists. Cordova said the past year has been the worst his business has ever had. Many gallery owners blamed the rising price of gas, and Cordova suggested it might be partially due to the art market's migration toward Internet-based vendors. "When you don't have a steady job you depend on this, and it is scary," Alvaro Cardona-Hine said. Cardona-Hine and Barbara McCauley own Truchas' second oldest art gallery, which opened in 1987. In the winter, Cardona-Hine said the situation is even more dire. "If you get a car to stop once a week that's a lot," Cardona-Hine said. While one might expect the slow business would create tooth-and-nail style competition between the galleries, nothing could be further from the truth. "We're here for each other," artist and gallery owner Anna Karin said. "We help each other out." The artists and gallery owners have learned to advertise together, creating such events as the High Road Art Tour which is held during the last two weekends in September. During that period, Karin estimates her gallery will enjoy as many as 1,000 visitors. Karin, originally from Sweden, has lived in Truchas for the past three years. After receiving a scholarship that brought her from Stockholm to Oklahoma for visual art training, Karin stopped in New Mexico. "I like it here; there's a lot of sun," Karin said as she stood in her light-drenched studio gallery. At well over 8,000 feet, the sky is all the more closer than the neighboring town of Chimayó where Karin spent her first few years in the state. Furthermore, the elevation helps the town escape the sweltering heat most Española Valley residents experience every summer. Karin's classical oil paintings are accompanied in her studio gallery by metalworker Bill Loyd's gongs and wind chimes, which he crafts from old fire-extinguishers and discarded fuselages. Truchas artists also include abstract painters and sculptors, pottery throwers, and a rug and tapestry weaver. During the slow winter season the gallery owners and artists come together for cross-country skiing expeditions, Karin said. They even have a name for themselves, the "Yellow Dogs." After their snowy jaunts, the skiers take turns hosting the group for stew and beer. One artist said Karin was known as the "Dessert Queen" for the decadent treats she manages to produce. "We're like children," Cortina said of the group. It is a well-known rumor that some of the artists and gallery owners used to remove the road sign directing travelers north toward Taos in an effort to dupe potential customers into driving past their businesses which do not line the highway. While the mischievousness might seem endearing to some, it belies the precarious nature of a community that thrives on tourist traffic traveling between the famous art havens of Taos and Santa Fe. "The high road to Taos has been written about for as long as I can remember," Cordova said. "People bring the Sunday bulletin of the local newspaper saying, 'I read about the high road to Taos.'" Yet despite the area's recognition, even in Cordova's statement it is clear Truchas is not yet a destination town. Though there are a few family-run bed-and-breakfasts, without a restaurant in town it is hard to entice tourists to stay more than a few hours. But since the old coffee shop was recently purchased after being closed for near a decade, residents have their fingers crossed. "Next year we're thinking we're definitely going to have one restaurant from what the rumor is," Karin said. In 1754, Governor Tomás Vélez Cachupín bequeathed 15,000 acres to 11 families from Chimayó and Pueblo Quemado, according to a report released by the Center for Land Grant Studies. The grant, often called 'la merced' in reference to 'the mercy' of the king of Spain to grant the land, would eventually become Nuestra Señora del Rosario de las Truchas, later known as simply Truchas. Cachupín instructed the grant recipients to construct their homes around a plaza, with the walls of each house joined together to form a continuous wall, the report states. With this layout, the town folk would be able to repel any attacks from the nomadic plains tribes in the area, such as the Apache and Comanche. Danny Martinez, a local construction worker, lives in one of the houses that formed the now mostly deteriorated exterior wall. "This is the heart of Truchas," Martinez said. William Franke, owner of the oldest art gallery in town, said Truchas had also worked out a system with Chimayó where if the enemy passed through, Chimayó residents would light a warning fire that could be seen all the way from the church tower in Truchas. The Old Truchas Mission of the Holy Rosary was constructed in 1764, a marquis outside the church reads. Though the original foundation still stands, the roof has been replaced and its doors are opened only a few times a year. The mainly Catholic community now attends mass in a new building on the road heading out of town toward Taos. By 1776, Truchas had doubled in size, home to 22 families totaling 122 people, the Land Grant report states. A little over a century later, more than 50 individuals and families laid claim to the land, and in 1892 the petitioners received confirmation of their grant from the Court of Private Land Claims. To date, the land grant has approximately 320 members, according to Sandovales. During the Great Depression, many land grant heirs sold their memberships in order to raise enough money to pay their taxes, Sandovales said, and then many residents left to find work in the Colorado mines or in California working on warships. "People were just barely surviving," the elderly Truchas oral historian, who goes by the single name of Olivama, said. "So they left." Both Sandovales and Olivama said the federal government originally considered Truchas as the site for what would eventually become the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "But there were too many entrances and exits," Olivama said. Originally, Sandovales, who lived in Los Alamos for a period, said he had hoped they would build the laboratory in his hometown, but in retrospect he is greatly relieved they went with the now prosperous but wildly transformed Los Alamos community. "I wouldn't want what Los Alamos is now," Sandovales said. Truchas never fully recovered from the mid-century exodus and youths continue to leave town to find work in the state's larger metropolitan areas. Those who do stay in the area commute more than 45 minutes to work. "Truchas is mainly a bedroom community," Cordova said. "We have a lot of the young kids going off to college and becoming engineers so they can find jobs at Los Alamos." During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Truchas experienced an influx of young nonconformists who were hoping to cast off the troubles of modern technology at the same time Truchas residents were ready to embrace it, Cortina said. "They came looking for something primitive" Cortina said. "But the people here were tired of that." Not only did the newcomers drastically raise property values, plopping down tens of thousands of dollars in excess of what residents considered their property to be worth, Romero said, they also did not respect the values the small town of Truchas had adhered to for generations. Romero remembers watching as they drove around town in an old school bus, marijuana plants swaying back and forth with the draft. Cardona-Hine said these outsiders would bathe in the acequias, which some residents were still using for drinking water. "They were driven out of town," Cardona-Hine said. Cortina, a Cuban expatriate and Vietnam War veteran, explained the situation a little more colorfully. "There were a couple of houses burned down," Cortina said. "There were some shootings." James Goldstone decided to film "Red Sky at Morning" in Truchas in 1971. Franke remembers the film crew gathering behind one of the local houses. A small production, it prepared the town for larger things to come. In the late 1980s Robert Redford arrived in Truchas to shoot the feature film, "The Milagro Beanfield War," which was based on John Nichols' novel of the same name. "It was great," Cardona-Hine said, and remembers how Redford invited the whole town to Santa Fe to attend the first screening, transporting the residents in a giant bus. "(Redford) became very popular." Cardona-Hine remembers his neighbor had been sitting on the back of a pick up truck with Redford during a break in the shooting. When Redford stood up, two local girls fought over his empty seat. The one who won leapt onto the truck where she wiggled her rear around in the space Redford had just sat, hoping to absorb a little bit of Redford for herself. But now, all that is left of the filming is a few movie-themed glasses in long-time politico Ray Tafoya's General Store. Last year the town united when the postal service threatened to install cluster style mailboxes in lieu of a full-fledged post office. The community, led by Donna Volatile, expressed outrage and threatened to blockade the road. Eventually the postal service backed down. "It was a real communal effort," Volatile said. "Then it was like, 'If we can do that, what else can we do?" The galleries have recently started discussing a plan to help raise money to install insulated windows at the Truchas health clinic, Cortina said. The clinic was started in 1972 by the Truchas Service Center, which also hosts a senior arts center. Next door is the Truchas library, which at one point was home to a Mission school. While Truchas also had a public school, both the Mission school and the public elementary school closed in the early 1970s, and now students travel down the hill to Mountain View Elementary in Cordova, Franke said. In the summer, the clinic runs a youth program, with free lunches provided by the state Children Youth and Families Department. On a recent week-day morning, young children could be heard practicing a musical number for the upcoming Truchas Fiesta which is set for July 28. Tafoya, who was a Rio Arriba County commissioner from 1993 to 2002, remembers how even he had to leave Truchas for a time, despite the fact that his family has owned the General Store since 1905. "We had to move out because there weren't any jobs," Tafoya said. "There's not that many more jobs now." Tafoya said as the youth leave to find work and don't return, often their parents will end up selling their property to live closer to their children. When Romero bought the six acres that constitutes his small ranch decades ago, he said he spent $190 total. Now Truchas property is valued at around $35,000 an acre. Sandovales said the only people who can afford property are transplants from California and New York. "Truchas will continue to transform in that way," Sandovales said, though he believes his son, a cardiologist living in Los Alamos, won't sell the property when he inherits it. But Cortina said there is a Truchas man, Eugene Vigil, who has recently started to resist the town's seemingly unalterable trajectory. Vigil and another man, Cortina said, are trying to show Truchas residents can still live off the land like their self-sufficient forefathers did. "They are fighting to show it can be done," Cortina said. Unfortunately for Vigil, he has been in jail after a drunk driving charge, Cortina said. An online court database confirmed Vigil was arrested June 28 for a number of charges including drunk driving. For the moment his tractor sits in the middle of a garden patch, halfway through plowing a row. But eventually, Cortina said Vigil will get back to work fighting against the grain. "This is a community where if we have more people like that we would make it," Cortina said. "Eventually it's going to get better." |
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