San Luis Peoples Ditch

The ditch runs the old way. San Luis's acequia carries water from the Culebra to the fields under a mayordomo the irrigators elect, one vote each however much land they farm, and its water has been shared by need as well as by date. Courts fixed priorities among the Culebra ditches in 1889, and in 2009, largely at Costilla County's urging, the legislature recognized acequias and their customs in law. The plate below this 1952 bronze names twenty-nine people the first right was decreed to, eight of them women, among them Dario Gallegos, who opened the town's first store.

What the plaque says

This tablet is the property of the State of Colorado Commemorating the San Luis Peoples Ditch The oldest continuously used ditch in Colorado, with court decree priority No. 1, and dating from April 10, 1852. Dug by the pioneer settlers of Colorado. Colorado's greatness is built upon irrigation. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado, the heirs of the pioneers, and the Irrigation Centennial Commission. April 10, 1952 Original water rights decreed to Dario Gallegos · Soledad Pacheco Donaciano Gallegos · Francisco Barela Juan A. Trujillo · Isabel Pacheco Maria Rosa Vigil · Roberto Allen Jose Ylario Valdez · Mariano Pacheco F. Jaramillo · Juan Pacheco Rumalda Gallegos · Juan Antonio Baca Eulogia Gallegos · A. A. Salazar Rafaela Sanchez · Eulogia Herrera Juan Martinez · Juanita Herrera Francisco Valdez · Antonio Pacheco Manuel Vigil · Miguel Martinez Eusebio Bargas · Rumaldo Martinez Juan Valdez · Donaciano Martinez Francisco Sanchez

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Shrine of the Stations of the Cross — 0.4 mi
  A parish's own Calvary on the mesa above Colorado's oldest town, with bronze stations by a San Luis sculptor whose models went to the Vatican.

More markers nearby

• San Luis Valley — 0.3 mi
• Colorado's Earliest Settlements — 1.0 mi
• Fort Garland — 16 mi