Albuquerque

This panel stood on the West Mesa at the top of Nine Mile Hill, on the old boundary of the Atrisco grant, and is now reported missing; its text survives in a 2015 photograph. The grant was made in 1692 to Fernando Durán y Chaves, a captain in the reconquest, and settled from 1703, before the villa below existed. In 1967 heirs turned it into the Westland Development Company, and in 2006, after a fight among shareholders, Westland sold itself and some 50,000 acres to California's SunCal. The buyer's subsidiary went bankrupt four years later.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Albuquerque On the Camino Real Population 331,767 - Elevation 5,310 Spanish settlers had lived here before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, but the area was resettled when the "Villa de Albuquerque" was founded in 1706. In addition to promoting colonization, the new town was intended to provide pro- tection from attacks by Indians in Río Abajo, or lower Río Grande Valley.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroglyph National Monument — 5.3 mi
  Some 24,000 images pecked into the dark basalt of Albuquerque's West Mesa, protected in 1990 and then crossed by a city boulevard.

More markers nearby

• Old Armijo School — 5.9 mi
• Albuquerque — 6.3 mi
• Founding Women of Albuquerque — 6.4 mi
• La Doctora María Dolores Gonzáles — 6.5 mi