Agua Fria

The panel credits the springs for the name and stops there. The state's 2017 marker text reaches further back: Santa Clara people, it says, called this place P'o'Karige in Tewa, cold water place, which the Spanish name matches word for word, and the village was later the capital's breadbasket. It keeps the Camino Real's original line as Agua Fria Street, recognized by a county proclamation in 2012, and Santa Fe County named it a Traditional Historic Community in 1995. The board stands in front of the elementary school.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Agua Fria Caravans entering and leaving Santa Fe on the Camino Real wound their way through scattered agricultural settlements south of the capital. Although this section of the Santa Fe River Valley was initially utilized as pasture for livestock, in the 17th century farmers were attracted to it's arable lands and to the fresh water springs from which the community derives it's name.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palace of the Governors — 4.1 mi
  The long adobe on the north side of the Santa Fe plaza, called the oldest public building in continuous use in the country, though its own founding date is in dispute.
• Bandelier National Monument — 17 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.
• Pecos National Historical Park — 19 mi
  The red walls of a 1717 mission church inside the foundations of a far larger one, beside the kiva Pecos people dug in front of the old church during the revolt of 1680.
• Fuller Lodge — 23 mi
  The upright-log dining hall of a boys' ranch school, which fed and housed the Manhattan Project after the Army bought the school in 1942.

More markers nearby

• San Isidro Catholic Church — 0.5 mi
• Santa Fe — 1.2 mi
• Inez Bushner Gill (1918-1982) and Maralyn Budke (1936-2010) — 3.9 mi
• Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche — 3.9 mi