Zapata Falls is a waterfall located in the San Luis Valley near the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on Bureau of Land Management land adjacent to Rio Grande National Forest and south of Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Alamosa County, Colorado. The waterfall has a drop of about 30 feet.
U.S. Department. of Interior
Bureau of Land Management
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No Drinking Water Warning SIgn
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*I believe the view in the distance is west, toward the San Juan Mountain Range. We are in the Sangre del Cristo Mountain Range.
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Stretching below you is the San Luis Valley, or "El Valle." Fifty wide & 100 Miles long, the Valley encompassses 8,192.
Native People Utilize the Land
Ancient spear points found nearby show that prehistoric people once hunted here. The Valley was the traditional land of the Utes & Jicarilla Apache. Other trikes like the Kiowa, ancestral Puebloan & Hopi also hunted & made religious pilgrimages here.
Europeans Arrive
Until mid-19th Century. Europeans passed through the Valley but most did not settle here. Conquistadores claimed he area for Spain in the late 16th century. Zebulon Pike trekked through the nearby Medano Pass in 1806 on a mission to map the boundary of the new Louisiana Purchase (and perhaps to spy on the Spanish). From 1829-1848, a branch of the Old Spanish Trail passed by here. Mule caravans carried woolen goods from New Mexico to California using the trail.
The Trujillo Family Builds a Homestead
First Hispanic, the Anglo people settled the San Luis Valley beginning in the mid-1800s. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave the area to the U.S. In 1865, sheep rancher Teofilo Trujillo migrated from near Taos, New Mexico with his family & became one of the first to calm the land in the area under the 1862 Homestead Act. Conflict with Anglo cattlemen led to the burning of the Trujillos' home in 1902. They sold their land & moved to another part of the valley. The log home built by Pablo, the Trujillos' son, still stands west of the Great Sand Dunes on the Medano-Zapata Ranch. The homestead is now a National Historic Landmark.
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