Grants

The panel credits one Grant; there were three. Angus, John and Lewis Grant, brothers from Ontario, came to build bridges for the Atlantic & Pacific and set up their base at Los Alamitos, a New Mexican settlement already there. The camp became Grants Camp, the depot Grants Station, and the post office opened as Grant, without the s. Spanish-speaking neighbors called the place Grantes, and in 1935 the post office caught up and made it Grants. Between the railroad and the uranium came logging in the Zuni Mountains, then the carrot years.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historical Marker Grants Population 11,451 - Elevation 6,500 Located just north of the great lava bed known as the malpais, Grants began as a coaling station for the Santa Fe Railroad. Around 1880 it was known as Grant's Camp, after the Canadian bridge contractor Angus A. Grant. In 1950, the area's vast uranium deposits were discovered.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• El Malpais National Monument — 15 mi
  The badlands south of Grants: lava 3,900 years old from McCartys Crater, a tube system at least seventeen miles long, and an old trail across four lava flows between Zuni and Acoma.
• Acoma Sky City — 24 mi
  Haak'u, the village on a sandstone mesa west of Albuquerque, seen only on the pueblo's own tours, with a mission whose roof beams were carried on foot from Mount Taylor.

More markers nearby

• San Rafael — 2.6 mi
• Grants — 2.9 mi
• Bluewater Village — 9.3 mi
• Old Acoma "Sky City" — 19 mi