The high ground, the Sangre de Cristo mountain chain, is largely owned by millionaires living outside the state. Taylor's southern neighbor is Ted Turner, vice chairman at Time Warner. The villages are the legacy of Mexico's last-ditch attempt, in 1844, to colonize the area in the face of encroachment by the United States. Gen. Taylor's campaign in the Mexican War interrupted colonization plans, and the first village, San Luis, was not established until 1851. Now the oldest village in Colorado, this quiet town still boasts a few adobe houses.
Many families trace their presence here back seven generations.
We know it will come down faster. We don't need a scientist to tell us that. One hydrologist said the gravity-fed irrigation system had long relied on a slow snow melt to provide water to lowland fields of hay, alfalfa, corn and potatoes in August. But that doesn't do the irrigators any good because they need the water later in the growing season. White non-Hispanic farmers who moved into the valley earlier in this century guaranteed a water supply for irrigation by building a reservoir to hold unused runoff from the acequia channels, the oldest irrigation system in the state.