Highway 12 leads east down the Purgatoire River valley 33 miles (53 km) to Trinidad, the Las Animas county seat, and north over Cucharas Pass in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains 32 miles (51 km) to La Veta.

[2] The Stonewall area was originally part of the 1,714,765 acres (6,939.41 km2) Maxwell Land Grant awarded by the government of New Mexico to two Mexican citizens in 1841.

The investors intended to develop the land for tourism and sought the immediate eviction of the settlers.

A large group of settlers, mostly Hispanics, gathered to protest and surrounded a hotel in Stonewall where the company's employees barricaded themselves.

[5] The Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the ownership of the grant land by the foreign investors and by 1899 most of the original settlers had either been evicted or had come to terms with the company.