The community is located about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) south of Interstate Highway 25 and Ribera, a census designated place.

[2] In 1794, 52 families led by Lorenzo Marquez petitioned the Spanish government of New Mexico for permission to settle in what would become the San Miguel del Vado area.

[4] In 1803, the Spanish government divided the irrigated agricultural land of the grant into allotments for each of the 58 families then living in San Miguel del Vado.

[5] San Miguel was the political and military center of the Spanish settlements east of the Rocky Mountains in the Pecos River valley.

Occupations of the men enumerated in the census were 401 farmers, 217 day laborers, 93 craftsmen, 2 merchants, and 1 school teacher.

Crops produced on the irrigated lands near the Pecos River included "corn, beans, wheat, chiles, tobacco, peaches, and apricots."

The comancheros (traders) and ciboleros (bison hunters) of 19th century fame were mostly men from the settlements in the Pecos River Valley.

On August 16, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, U.S. General Stephen W. Kearney and his soldiers occupied San Miguel and thereafter the village was under United States control.

In 1897, the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States reduced the size of the San Miguel del Vado Land Grant from 315,000 acres (127,000 ha) to 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) thereby depriving the residents of San Miguel and other communities of common ownership of the "pasture, timber and other resources" within the grant area.