Vásquez de Coronado's Route

This copy of the panel at the Fort Craig rest area stands near a place the expedition did reach. After the siege of the Tiwa stronghold in 1541, Castañeda wrote, Coronado sent a captain to Chia, a large village four leagues west of the river that had offered its submission. Finding the people peaceful, the Spaniards left four bronze cannon, in poor condition, in their keeping. Chia is Zia, a few miles up the Jemez from this frame. The panel hangs in an older board routed Official Scenic Historical Marker, a header the newer frames shortened.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historical Marker Vasquez de Coronado's Route In 1541 an expedition from the army of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, New Mexico's first explorer, marched south 80 leagues to investigate the pueblos along the lower Río Grande. The group reached that part of the infamous Jornada del Muerto, now covered by Elephant Butte Lake, where the river disappeared underground.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jemez Historic Site — 19 mi
  The stone walls of a 1620s mission church standing among the ruins of Gisewa, a Jemez village named for the hot springs beside it.
• Valles Caldera National Preserve — 28 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

• Pueblo of Zía — 2.5 mi
• Trinidad Gachupin Medina (ca. 1883-1964) — 2.5 mi
• Colorado Plateau — 3.5 mi
• Pueblo of Jémez — 9.2 mi