Click here for the inside skinny.
An acequia along the Las Trampas in northern New Mexico is suspended on a trestle. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)
Sangre de Cristo Land Grant, La Sierra Common, and Subdivisions. La Sierra is the 80,000-acre common land or ejido. Map courtesy of High Country News at URL: https://www.hcn.org/issues/104/3250.
Maiz de concho growing at The Acequia Institute seed library patch, El Rito, CO. Photo by Devon G. Peña
Delmer Vialpando and Devon G. Peña on La Sierra common lands, the 80,000-acre restored land grant of the Culebra acequia farmers. Photo by The Acequia Institute
Selection of the 2015 native heirloom maize harvest of the seed library of The Acequia Institute in Viejo San Acacio, CO Photo by Devon G. Peña
Maíz de concho from Almunyah Dos Acequias.Viejo San Acacio, CO Photo by Devon G. Peña
Center-Pivot and Acequia Farms. The green belts along the Río Culebra and tributaries in San Acacio, San Luis, Chama, Los Fuertes and other unmarked villages are the principal acequia farm bottomlands in Costilla County. The center-pivot circles are concentrated in the Blanca-Ft. Garland vicinity to the N and the Mesita-Jaroso vicinity due W and SW of the acequia bottomlands. Source: Google Maps (screenshot).
The Upper Rio Grande/Rio Arriba Watershed (highlighting location of center-pivot sprinkler circles) Note: Green dots are center-pivot farm and ranch operations, most with junior groundwater withdrawal rights and subject to court-ordered mandates designed to mitigate damages to farmers with senior surface rights (including acequias) and to augment deliveries to the Rio Grande Interstate Compact. Source: NASA/MODIS files at: http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/baumanpr/geosat2/Dry_Land_Water/Dry_Land_Water.htm
Fig. 7. Tunicate white flint. From 2010 harvest at Almunyah Dos Acequias. Viejo San Acacio, CO. Compare with (c) in Fig. 6. Photograph by D. G. Peña
Fig. 6. Diagram of teocintle, tunicate, primitive, and modern maize. Source: Beadle (1980).
Fig. 5. Center of origin teocintle and maize land race populations. The light blue dots include accessions from northern New Mexico and the San Luis Valley in Colorado. Source: Matsuoka, et al (2002).
What we are working to protect. Culebra-Gallegos maíz de concho grown at Acequia Institute farm in Viejo San Acacio. Photograph by Devon G. Peña
San Pedro Acequia. The headgate of the second oldest acequia in Colorado. Photo by Devon G. Peña
Fig. 2. Mexican Land Grants in Colorado and New Mexico. The Baumann map depicted here mislabels these Mexican land grants as “Spanish”. Source: Paul R. Baumann 2001. SUNY-Oneonta.
Water from acequias, a shared collection of gravity-fed irrigation ditches have been a historical part of irrigation in the San Luis Valley. Acequia San Antonio via Judy Gallegos
Acequia cleaning prior to running the first water of the season
Acequia del Cerro, San Luis
The country’s second largest potato producing region, is in its 18th year of drought in 2020. The San Luis Valley in Colorado is known for its agriculture yet only has 6-7 inches of rainfall per year. San Luis People’s Ditch
San Luis People’s Ditch via The Pueblo Chieftain