At what is traditionally the dividing point in New Mexico between Rio Arriba
(Upper River district) and Rio Abajo (Lower River district) travelers on the
Camino Real could choose one of three ways to reach Santa Fe. (1) La Bajada
Hill was the most difficult; (2) the Santa Fe River Canon (la Boca) was
the most used in the colonial period; and (3) traveling Galisteo creek
to over the escarpment in the Juana Lopez Grant was used in territorial times.

Galisteo Creek was also traveled to a point south of San Marcos Pueblo where
the road turned north past the pueblo and headed to San Juan Pueblo or
to Santa Fe. 

La Bajada hill is located 11 miles southwest of Santa Fe. From 1598,
when Spanish colonists trudged beside lumbering oxcarts, to the early
20th century, when American tourists drove Model A automobiles, the steep
and abrupt escarpment of La Bajada Hill was a notorious landmark on the
road between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. The old route up La Bajada Hill
was barely 1.5 miles long, but it traversed tough volcanic rock; in
the 20th century it included 23 hairpin turns and was the scene of
countless frustrations and mishaps, from overturned wagons to boiling
radiators. Residents of the village of La Bajada (see entry) at the
hill's base named a spot on the hill Florida because a truck carrying
oranges overturned there. In 1932, a new route up the escarpment was
laid out, followed today by I-25, and the original route, 5 mi N
and W, fell into disuse, though a few drivers still attempt it to
test their vehicles' toughness. The name La Bajada now is gradually
being transferred to the new route.

During colonial times, La Bajada Hill was the dividing line between the two
great economic and governmental regions of Hispanic NM, the Rio Abajo,
"lower river," and the Rio Arriba, "upper river." The large, sprawling mesa
on whose edge La Bajada Hill is located is called La Majada, "sheepfold,"
or "place where shepherds keep their flocks," but because the road from
Santa Fe to the Rio Abajo descended from the mesa here, the escarpment took
the name La Bajada, "the descent." "Hill" was added to the name much more
recently, an addition that often causes confusion to Spanish speakers,
as the name now seems to consist of two generics.

Robert Julyan
The Place Names of New Mexico
2nd. ed., University of New Mexico Press, 1998 

? 2004-2010  New Mexico State Record Center and Archives  

Pictures