Pilar

The panel has Utes and Jicarilla inflicting losses, and leaves out who attacked whom. Lieutenant John W. Davidson was sent from Cantonment Burgwin on March 29, 1854, to watch a Jicarilla camp in the mountains above Cieneguilla, not to strike it. He attacked the next morning anyway and lost twenty-two of his sixty men killed and many more wounded. A court of inquiry cleared him in 1856; a 2009 Forest Service archaeological report called the fight a Jicarilla Apache victory. The village kept the name Cieneguilla until its post office took Pilar in 1918.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Pilar In 1795, twenty-five families were granted land along the Río Grande at Pilar, then known as Ciene- guilla. The Battle of Cieneguilla was fought at Embudo Mountain near here in March 1854. A large force of Utes and Jicarilla Apaches inflicted heavy losses on sixty dragoons from Cantonment Burg- win near Taos.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — 12 mi
  The adobe church at Ranchos de Taos that artists always paint from behind, kept standing by the mud its parish spreads over it every June.
• Rio Grande Gorge Bridge — 15 mi
  A steel truss strung across a slot in the basalt west of Taos, 565 feet above the river by the careful measure and 650 by the signs, built when the road beyond it did not yet exist.
• Taos Pueblo — 18 mi
  Two terraced adobe houses facing each other across Red Willow Creek, lived in for something like a thousand years, with no electricity or running water inside the old walls.
• El Santuario de Chimayó — 20 mi
  A small adobe shrine on the High Road to Taos, built around 1816 over earth that pilgrims still carry away in hope of healing.

More markers nearby

• Captive Women and Children of Taos County — 4.3 mi
• Maria Ramita Simbola Martinez, Cora Durand and Virginia Duran — 5.6 mi
• Pueblo of Picuris — 6.9 mi
• Las Trampas — 9.6 mi