Velarde

The panel's 1875 is a young date for this valley. The state's Blue Book has Juan Matías Velarde settling here around 1750 and calling the place La Joya, the panel's La Jolla, and the name the town carries now is the family's. Velardes still farm the bottomland, by family account for fifteen generations, and the orchards along NM 68 between here and Rinconada keep up the roadside fruit stands that have mostly vanished from northern highways elsewhere. Cherries, apricots, peaches and apples come off these trees through summer and fall.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Velarde On the Camino Real Founded in 1875, this small farm- ing community was first named La Jolla. It was once famous for finely woven blankets. Here the Camino Real left the Rio Grande and followed a canyon northeast to Embudo Creek where it began a climb over the mountains to Taos.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• El Santuario de Chimayó — 13 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.
• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — 24 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 — 25 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.
• Fuller Lodge — 27 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.

More markers nearby

• Embudo Stream-Gaging Station — 3.5 mi
• Los Luceros Hacienda — 5.5 mi
• Doña Margarita Martín — 5.5 mi
• San Gabriel On the Camino Real — 9.9 mi