Historical Marker

Doña Elena Gallegos (c.1890-1731) / Elena Gallegos Land Grant

Historical marker location:

7100 Tramway Blvd, NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico

( Elena Gallegos Open Space and Picnic Grounds, 7100 Tramway Blvd, NE,)

Side 1

Doña Elena Gallegos was a daughter of early seventeenth-century Hispanic colonists, Antonio Gallegos and Catalina Baca. They fled New Mexico with their newborn daughter during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt but returned in 1692. Elena wed Santiago Gurulé, a tattooed Frenchman, born Jacques Grolet, a member of the ill-fated La Salle expedition. Everyone with the Hispanized form of his surname, Gurulé, has roots in New Mexico. Approximately two years after her husband’s death in 1712, Captain Diego Montoya conveyed to Elena the vast landholding that has since born her name.

Side 2

From the crest of the Sandia Mountains to the Rio Grande Valley lies the Elena Gallegos Land Grant. It covered 70,000 acres, approximately the northern half of Albuquerque up to Sandia Pueblo. The extent of the grant—some felt its eastern border was the foothills—was uncertain until a nineteenth-century court interpreted the word “sierra” in the original document as the crest of the mountains. The adjudication helped make it possible to preserve part of the land grant as open space and provide a picnic area for the enjoyment of all. .