Old Town Albuquerque
[2] However, prior to its establishment as a city in the Santa Fe de Nuevo México province, many indigenous tribes lived there including Diné, Pueblo, Apache, Tiwa, and others.
[3] Old Town is a popular tourist destination with a large number of restaurants, shops, and galleries, and is also home to the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History.
Old Town occupies an area of about 0.8 square miles (2.1 km2), roughly bounded by Rio Grande Boulevard, Mountain Road, 19th Street, and Central Avenue.
The central plaza layout was favored by Spanish colonial authorities and is found in many other cities and towns throughout New Mexico, including Santa Fe, Taos, Las Vegas, and Mesilla.
[5] The indigenous peoples residing in the Paak'u region engaged in subsistence farming and hunting, managing complex, intertwined systems of government and religion.
[5] As they discovered the resources that the Sandia mountains and the Rio Grande had to offer, they slowly spread into different pueblos as far as Angostura, a village 131 miles northeast of Albuquerque.
Coronado was able to peacefully trade small gifts and items with them at first, but as winter overtook the unprepared conquistadors, they steadily became more and more violent with the Pueblo peoples, demanding more food and supplies and progressively conquering a few of the Puebloan’s smaller villages.
Cuervo reported that the new settlement was home to 252 residents and had been laid out with streets, a plaza, and a church in accordance with the town planning regulations set forth in the Laws of the Indies.
After a formal investigation, the villa was allowed to keep its title, especially as it was established to serve those communities as an outpost on Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.
[6] While many were subjugated to more traditional colonial roles like cooking, cleaning, and homemaking, some quickly became heads of their respective families due to the death of their husbands.
[9]: 29 During the U.S. Civil War, Confederate troops under Henry Hopkins Sibley captured the town in March 1862 but were later forced to retreat back to Texas after losing most of their supplies at the Battle of Glorieta Pass.
The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway reached Albuquerque in 1880, building a depot about 2 miles (3.2 km) east of the plaza.
[16] The plaque was partially funded by his ancestors, however, Teel was a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a group like the Ku Klux Klan, that sought to conquer territory in Latin America with the purpose of establishing an empire based on slavery.
[18] Two other plaques, both which have created controversy due to their historical flaws in the portrayal of events, that commemorated the Skirmish of Albuquerque and buried Confederate soldiers respectively were also removed at that time.
[16] A controversial statue known as La Jornada featuring the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate formerly sat in the middle of Old Town Plaza.
[20] Oñate was later removed and prosecuted by the Spanish crown in 1614, however, the pain and generational trauma he has inflicted on many Indigenous peoples in New Mexico have caused continuing controversy around the statue.
[21] The incident occurred when armed counter protesters from the New Mexico Civil Guard, a paramilitary group, attempted to act in a law enforcement capacity, trying to detain protestors.
During the 20th century, many of the buildings were remodeled to facilitate modern commercial use, often including historically insensitive conversion of authentic vernacular and Victorian architectural details to a more idealized Territorial or Pueblo Revival style.
