Bernalillo

The panel's last line is a deathbed. In the spring of 1704 Vargas led a campaign down the valley against Apache raiders; on April 1 he fell desperately ill, and he was carried to the Bernalillo house of Fernando Durán de Cháves. There he dictated a twenty-page will, asking for a coffin lined with plain woolen cloth and the military honors due a nobleman of Castile, and signed it as Marqués de la Nava de Brazinas on April 7. He died the next day, at sixty, and was carried to Santa Fe for burial.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Bernalillo On the Camino Real Population 2,763 - Elevation 5,050 The Pueblo Indian province of Tiguex, in the area of Bernalillo, served as winter headquarters for Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1540-42 during his explorations of the southwest. Bernalillo was founded after the Spanish recon- quest of New Mexico by Diego de Vargas in 1692. Vargas died here in 1704.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroglyph National Monument — 17 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

• Spanish Entrada Site — 2.9 mi
• Bernalillo — 4.1 mi
• Women Veterans of New Mexico — 4.2 mi
• Dulcelina Salce Curtis (1904-1995) — 5.2 mi