Maria Gertrudis Barceló, Doña Tules

The panel's notorious courtesan is largely the invaders' portrait. American writers after 1846 drew Gertrudis Barceló as a madam to stand for a supposedly immoral Mexican Santa Fe, and their accounts contradict one another on nearly everything except her skill at monte. Mexican authorities fined her in 1825 for running a gambling room for miners, and she adopted a daughter the following year. In 1846 the occupying Army borrowed from her to pay its troops. She died on January 17, 1852, leaving some $10,000 and several houses.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Maria Gertrudis Barceló Doña Tules (c. 1800-1852) Maria Gertrudis Barceló or Doña Tules, a notorious gambler and courtesan, operated a gambling house and saloon on Burro Alley in Santa Fe. She traveled up El Camino Real from Sonora, Mexico in 1815. Bishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy allowed this controversial lady to be buried in the south chapel of La Parroquia, the Santa Fe parish church, and used the money from her funeral for badly-needed repairs. Official Scenic Historic Marker New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative The New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative was founded in 2005 by members of the New Mexico Women's Forum in a statewide effort to recognize women's contributions to New Mexico history on the state's Official Scenic Historic Markers. The Initiative ensures that women's diverse histories will be remembered and told, and will inspire and provide a guide for future generations. The 2006 Legislature funded the project.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palace of the Governors — 16 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 — 19 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.
• Fuller Lodge — 26 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.
• Valles Caldera National Preserve — 29 mi
  A crater thirteen miles across, floored with grass, left by an eruption 1.25 million years ago and owned privately for 140 years under a law that called it vacant land.

More markers nearby

• Three Wise Women — steps away
• Sisters of Charity — steps away
• Laura Gilpin (1891-1979) — steps away
• Bicentennial Celebration / La Bajada — steps away