Josefa Baca / Pajarito Land Grant

Josefa Baca's will, dictated on October 5, 1746, is the source for what she owned and who she was. It lists 500 sheep, 100 goats, two horses, a musket, a new cart, hoes and axes, serge skirts old and new, and a bed with a mattress, an estate valued at 2,822 pesos. It also names six children, Antonio, Joseph, Domingo, Manuel, Rosa and Isabel, whom she declares she had as a miserable and weak sinner and raised and married off herself. Who their father or fathers were, the record does not say.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Josefa Baca c.1685-1746 Josefa Baca, a descendant of colonists arriving in 1600, acquired the Sitio de San Ysidro de Pajarito, which included a hacienda and large tract of land south of present-day Albuquerque. Establishing a ranch with 950 head of sheep, horses, cattle, and goats with her livestock brand, Josefa became the progenitor of generations of New Mexicans. The Village of Pajarito developed around the Baca family compound. Official Scenic Historic Marker Pajarito Land Grant Josefa's son, Antonio, sold the Pajarito tract to Clemente Gutiérrez. His heirs sought confirmation of their claim to the land from the surveyor general in 1877. The Court of Private Land Claims, on the presumption that a grant had been made to Josefa Baca, confirmed the Pajarito Land Grant in 1894 and patented it in 1914. Five generations after Josefa's death, her land and ranch remained within the same family, passing to a fifth great-granddaughter and direct descendant, Juliana Gutiérrez, wife of James Hubbell. The hacienda, lands, acequias, and orchards that survive today are a testament to the family's prosperity.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroglyph National Monument — 11 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

• Juliana Gutierrez y Chaves Hubbell / Gutierrez-Hubbell House — steps away
• Pajarito — 0.2 mi
• Los Padillas — 2.3 mi
• Old Armijo School — 4.8 mi