Water

Celebrating Santa Fe’s Cuartocentenario invites reflection on the history of water resources in the Santa Fe River valley. The Santa Fe River, one of the City’s major water sources, is described throughout the last four hundred years by maps, letters, deeds, lawsuits, physical data, and the cultural legacy of acequia agriculture. In these sources, evidence of water struggles abound. Yet, sustainability is inherent to the practice of acequia agriculture and the lives of Santa Feans through the centuries. Today is no different. This article describes how water resource use molded the current physical and cultural landscape of Santa Fe.

According to tree-ring data and stream flow reconstructions, the decade of settlement was one of the wettest in the last six hundred years. The area likely looked abundant, with a reliable water supply plentiful enough to satisfy the needs of the tiny villa. A small number of settlers and their Indian slaves immediately began digging irrigation ditches (acequias) and clearing fields (milpas) for planting. Following the local topography, unlined ditches diverted water from the river high up in the valley, and delivered it via gravity to crops surrounding the royal buildings (casas reales). An acequia refers to an irrigation ditch, but also to a cultural group or group of farmers and their families that rely on the ditch for water. The cultural group using each acequia practices sustainability in the daily application of water, its division, and spreading on their lands. The ancient traditions of Spanish irrigated agriculture (derived from Moorish and Roman influences) dictate the practice of applying water for beneficial use, limiting waste, and ensuring that the resource is divided equitably; all tenets of water resource sustainability.

As decades passed and the population grew, more pressure was placed on the river to provide water for the expanding acequia system and surrounding fields. By the mid-1700s, fields had spread upstream beyond the current Santa Fe Canyon Preserve and downstream beyond Agua Fria, and acequias snaked across the landscape delivering water to all arable land. Francisco Dominguez stated during his visitation of the missions in 1776, “although it carries enough water to be called a river, it is not overabundant. Indeed, it is usually insufficient, and at the best season for irrigating the farms, because there are so many of them, it does not reach the lowest ones, for the first, being higher up, keep bleeding it off with irrigation ditches, and only in a very rainy year is there enough for all.” The variable climate made the water source unpredictable, and given the number of acres in irrigation, it had reached its carrying capacity of approximately 2,000 acres. As a result, water was at a premium, and in drier years, farmers struggled to divide the resource and provide food to the villa. Interestingly enough, however, the application of trillions of gallons of water to the land over hundreds of years left the subsurface saturated and added water to the river through subsurface flow. As a result, the physical landscape of Santa Fe was wetter than it would have been under natural conditions. Many are often surprised at the idea of a moist Santa Fe, but historical evidence of wetlands, springs, seeps, and ponds abound; present-day Water Street and Cienega Street are classic examples.