2012

Rivera, J.

https://repository.unm.edu/bitstream/handle/1928/31857/The%20Roots%20of%20Community%20in%20the%20Historic%20Rio%20Arriba%20by%20Jose%20A.%20Rivera%202016.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Abstract: The community-based acequias in New Mexico and southern Colorado are the oldest water management institutions in the United States of European origin. These irrigated agrosystems date to the time of first Spanish settlement in the northern borderlands of Nueva España during the late sixteenth century with the first Juan de Oñate colony in 1598 and expanded after the Governor De Vargas resettlement of 1692. At the time, the provinces of the north encompassed a vast semi-arid territory rich in natural and mineral resources but short on water supply. Here the Rocky Mountain range of Colorado joins the great Chihuahuan desert from the south and the Llano Estacado from the plains of Texas on the east. The bioregion is drained principally by the Río del Norte, now depicted on maps as the Río Grande heading north from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas.