Old Cozart Service Station, Tres Piedras, NM
Tres Piedras, NM (Taos County)
The earliest maps, from the 1770s, show the name Piedras de los Carneros, or Rocks of the Sheep, possibly denoting a population of Bighorn Sheep. While the mountains and valleys east of the Rio Grande were colonized by Spanish agriculturalists & pastoralists some 200 years earlier, the Taos Plateau and Tusas Mountains were used by the nomadic peoples: Ute, Comanche, Kiowa and Jicarilla Apache, and so weren't utilized by the pobladores or Hispano colonists until well after the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) and subsequent presence of the U. S. Army.
The village, named for three outcroppings of granite, was settled in 1879 and became a small ranching and timber village. Homesteaders, sawmills, small scale dry farming and mining activity slowly augmented the population through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some Mormon pioneers from the San Luis valley to the north also made their way to Tres Piedras and established themselves. (1)
References (1) Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Piedras,_New_Mexico
Old Cozart Service Station, Tres Piedras, NM
Tres Piedras, NM (Taos County)
The earliest maps, from the 1770s, show the name Piedras de los Carneros, or Rocks of the Sheep, possibly denoting a population of Bighorn Sheep. While the mountains and valleys east of the Rio Grande were colonized by Spanish agriculturalists & pastoralists some 200 years earlier, the Taos Plateau and Tusas Mountains were used by the nomadic peoples: Ute, Comanche, Kiowa and Jicarilla Apache, and so weren't utilized by the pobladores or Hispano colonists until well after the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) and subsequent presence of the U. S. Army.
The village, named for three outcroppings of granite, was settled in 1879 and became a small ranching and timber village. Homesteaders, sawmills, small scale dry farming and mining activity slowly augmented the population through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some Mormon pioneers from the San Luis valley to the north also made their way to Tres Piedras and established themselves. (1)
References (1) Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Piedras,_New_Mexico