By Jessica Rath​
Once Rio Arriba’s busiest hub, now at the bottom of a lake.
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Ever since I learned that Abiquiú Lake’s water level was so high because El Vado Lake was being drained, I was curious – might there be some visible ruins? Some remnants of human habitation? You may remember that I had spoken with John Mueller, Operations Manager at the Abiquiu Dam, who had explained that in addition to the snow melt our lake received all the water from El Vado Lake because the dam was in need of repair.  He also told me that the name of the lake came from a town that used to be there. WHAT? A town? Under water? I decided to drive up there and look for old ruins. And research the town’s history.

Which means that water has covered all the buildings, houses, railroad tracks, roads, bridges – whatever was there – for nearly ninety years. Would anything be visible, given that most of what we can see in the photographs above was made out of wood and possibly some adobe, neither of which would last very long, being submerged in water all this time?

Although I couldn’t even establish whether El Vado Lake had been drained 100% or whether it was still half-full, in which case one wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway, I was too curious and had to find out. I motivated my friend Peter, who also lives in Coyote, to accompany me for the long ride and possible adventure, and we set off early on a Thursday morning.

We drove north on US 84 towards Tierra Amarilla, and then we turned left on NM 112 which took us to the El Vado Dam and to the El Vado Lake State Park. We reached a boat ramp which was closed for obvious reasons; we could see the Rio Chama and established that the lake had indeed been emptied. But how to get to possible ruins?

​Luckily, the State Park Ranger Station was nearby, and we decided to stop there for some directions. They were closed, but a friendly ranger came out anyway to help us. Without her, we would never have found out where to go!  The thing was to reach the peninsula (which we didn’t know anything about), and to do that, we had to drive back all the way to US 84, go a bit further north, and then turn at NM 95 to go to Heron Lake, pass the Stone House Lodge, and then turn left at the Peninsula Drive. There’s a peninsula – we had no idea. It goes about two miles straight south and from the southern tip one can see the dam. 

The Chama flows to the east of the peninsula, and the town of El Vado was probably on the west side. “It’s steep to go down”, the ranger had warned us, and she was right. It was too steep for me, I was only wearing sneakers and it was too hot. Peter did make it down after we had driven back up for about one mile, but he checked out the side near the Chama, and he found nothing – that’s what the lady had told us to do, but I think she made a mistake. We explored the other side, the area west of the peninsula, and it looks more likely that that’s where the town of El Vado was situated. 

​If you look at the first image at the top, the one with the lumber mill, you notice a little bridge in the foreground. In the image above, you see a small creek, a tributary to the Chama – that could be what the little wooden foot bridge spans.  The photograph was taken from a position not much higher than the front of the bridge and with a wide-angle lens; that’s why figures and items in the distance look further away than they probably were. The second image must have been taken from the opposite direction, looking towards the peninsula. One can see the same smokestacks, and possibly the smoke from a locomotive. 

We did find the old cemetery which of course never was under water, that’s why the wooden cross and the fence posts etc. are still there. I don’t know why I thought we could find old ruins, when wood and adobe clearly wouldn’t last long being submerged for nearly 90 years. To find the metal remnants which must still be there, railroad ties, plates, and other rusty left-overs, one has to hike down the steep slope – wear adequate shoes, possibly bring a hiking pole, and plenty of water. And binoculars would help, too. We’re planning to do this again, soon.

The beauty of the area made the long trip worth it anyways, even without anything resembling Stonehenge or the Colosseum in Rome.  

If you have some other ideas about the location of the town – I know I’m merely speculating – please leave a comment!

~ Jessica Rath

​Did you notice the acute accent over the second “u”? Some websites and printed articles use this spelling, while others do not. Maybe it’s because I was born and grew up in Germany, but for as long as I can remember, I was a stickler for correct spelling and pronunciation. Therefore, I found it puzzling that there were two ways to spell the name but only one (as far as I could hear) to pronounce: I had always heard it with the stress on the first A, or ['æ-bɪ-kjuʷ]. The Spanish language uses accent marks to indicate which vowel or syllable should be stressed, and Abiquiú should be pronounced with the stress on the second U, or [a-βi-'kju] (with thanks  to Len Beké, doctoral candidate at UNM who specializes in New Mexico place names, for the correct phonetic spelling). ​

​So – I concluded that Abiquiú must be wrong, I had only ever heard Abiquiu, even from Spanish-speaking people. But where did this come from? Why would there be an accent mark on the last “U”, when the stress was on the “A”? I realized I had to look deeper, and soon found out that the current village was the site of a much older Tewa settlement. In fact, Native peoples had populated the area of the lower Chama River for more than 10,000 years! 
 
Ancestral Tewa Pueblo people had lived along the Rio Chama from around 1300 AD to the early 1600s. Poshuowingeh, 2.5 miles south of Abiquiu, was occupied from around 1375 to 1475. The Tsama Pueblo, an address-restricted area near Abiquiu, was occupied from around 1250 until around 1500, and Sapawe (or Sepawe) Pueblo, near El Rito, another ancestral Tewa site, was occupied from around 1350 until around 1550.

It’s fascinating, if difficult, to imagine life in these villages or cities before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the southwest. Chaco Canyon, for example, was an urban center of impressive proportions, with “suburbs” reaching as far away as 155 miles. Some 30,000 to 40,000 people are supposed to have inhabited the whole region, with a few thousand residing in the great houses in the center. These were impressive multi-storied structures, up to four stories high, some with balconies, and some with 600 and 800 rooms. ​

​Other pueblos closer to Abiquiu were smaller, with Poshuowingeh (“Village Above the Muddy River''), for example, consisting of about 700 ground floor rooms, each being two or three stories high. Two plazas and a large kiwa completed the town. They  were growing their  traditional crops in fields on the east side of their pueblo.

​Closer to the Pedernal is another Tewa village, Tsi-p’in-owinge', or "Village at Flaking Stone Mountain".  The pueblo was built around 1275 A.D. At its peak, more than one thousand people lived there. The pueblo was abandoned by 1450, long before the Spanish arrived in the mid-1500s. The multi-story pueblo was constructed of stone blocks quarried from the volcanic tuff (a welded ash material). Piñon nuts, juniper berries, ferns, willow reeds, and the fruits of the cholla and prickly pear cactus were some of the useful plants collected from the streams and woodlands. The people hunted in the mountains and along the Chama River to the north. They grew corn, beans, and squash in gardens located on the mesa and along the streams below.

​When I researched  the question of the pronunciation of Abiquiu, I came across an article on the website for  New Mexico's History and State Records Center which claimed that the word “Abiquiu” had its origins in Tewa language. But what does it mean and how would it be pronounced? I sent an email to the current State Historian, Rob Martinez, and Deputy State Historian Nicolasa Chávez , and explained my predicament concerning the pronunciation. Mr. Martinez’s terse answer made complete sense and I felt like an idiot for not having thought of it: “When I say it in English, I accent the A. When I say it in Spanish, I accent the U.” Yes, sure, but…  Ms Chávez  was more explicit: “I  think the pronunciation with the emphasis on the first A is most likely the anglicized version of the spelling and pronunciation with the accent mark over the U. That said, the accent mark was probably a Spanish addition and the spelling a Spanish version of a Tewa word.”  Now I can see better what happened: the Tewa word stressed the last U. When the Spanish wrote the word, they added the acute accent to the U to indicate where the emphasis should be. And when the Anglos read the word they ignored the accent and stressed the A. Now I just had to learn something about the original Tewa word!

Luckily, I found Dr. Melissa Axelrod, Linguistics Professor Emerita at UNM, who specializes in Native American languages. She forwarded my email to UNM doctoral candidate Len Beké, who wrote back: “Pronunciation in Spanish is [a-βi-'kju] with final stress;  English pronunciation is ['æ-bɪ-kjuʷ] with initial stress. No idea about Tewa. Initialization of stress in borrowed place names seems common for English generally, e.g. Amsterdam has final stress in Dutch but initial stress in English”. Well, I didn’t know this about Amsterdam, but I really wanted to find out about the Tewa word, so I asked Dr. Axelrod for help once again. She contacted Andrés Sabogal, a linguist who works on Tewa, and he sent me the last puzzle piece: “In Tewa it has final stress and like Len said the initial accent is the English pronunciation.  In Tewa this is a compound word meaning chokecherry path, Ávé-shú' and the stress always falls on the second member of the compound, its head, in this case shú'.”

When I researched  the question of the pronunciation of Abiquiu, I came across an article on the website for  New Mexico's History and State Records Center which claimed that the word  
Chokecherry Path! What a lovely name. I bet the current citizens of Abiquiu still collect them to make jam and other preserves, just as they still harvest watercress, purslane, chimajá (spring parsley), piñon nuts, and many other wild berries, nuts, and herbs. I was thrilled to find wild raspberries one early summer in the Santa Fe National Forest – nothing tastes better than foraged edibles!

Back to my original question. I’ve decided that Abiquiú is indeed the correct spelling AND pronunciation, based on the original Tewa word Ávé-shú'. Writing in English while leaving the accent mark out means you misspell the word. It’s a bit of a bother with an English keyboard, but it’s worth the effort – what do you think?