Vásquez de Coronado's Route

Where in Tiguex the army actually wintered was argued over for centuries, and archaeology has only lately narrowed it. In 1986 excavators near Albuquerque found a Spanish campsite of the sixteenth century in the Tiguex province, with a horseshoe nail of a kind later matched at a Coronado camp in Texas. Copper crossbow boltheads have become the expedition's signature find. At Piedras Marcadas Pueblo in Albuquerque, resistivity surveys and metal detection, planned with Pueblo communities, have since mapped a fight between the expedition and the pueblo's people without digging.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Vásquez de Coronado's Route In the fall of 1540, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's army traveled from Zuni to his chosen winter headquarters in the Tiguex province on the Río Grande. Here the advance guard of the army followed the river from the Isleta area to Alcanfor, a pueblo near Bernalillo, where it camped for two winters.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroglyph National Monument — 19 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.
• Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument — 30 mi
  Three Spanish mission churches raised over Tiwa and Tompiro pueblos east of the Manzano Mountains in the 1600s, each of its own stone, and one never finished.

More markers nearby

• Peralta — 2.6 mi
• Pueblo of Isleta — 2.9 mi
• Pueblo of Isleta Tuei — 3.7 mi
• Valencia — 3.9 mi