“The disagreement escalated quickly. Armed groups were brought in…”
Before Colorado became part of the United States, the Mexican government awarded an enormous piece of land stretching across what is now New Mexico and Colorado to private owners, hoping to encourage settlement and development in the region.
At its largest, the Maxwell Land Grant covered about 2.7 million acres, more than twice the size of Rhode Island.
Through marriage and a few buyouts, one man, Lucien Maxwell, ended up with control of the entire grant in 1868. For a while, life on that enormous stretch of land was pretty good for Maxwell. He ranched, traded, and got involved in mining after gold was discovered on the property in the 1860s.
Then, hundreds of people flooded onto the grant looking for gold, filing mining claims and bringing a whole new set of problems with them. Maxwell was involved in the mining boom himself, but the growing number of prospectors, settlers, competing claims, and disputes over the enormous property made the grant increasingly difficult to manage.
By 1870, Maxwell apparently had enough. He sold almost all of the enormous grant to a group of Colorado businessmen and moved to Fort Sumner in New Mexico, leaving the new owners to deal with the people already living on the land.
The new owners wanted to make money from their enormous purchase, so they began telling settlers already living on the land that they needed to pay rent or leave. The settlers pushed back. Many believed they had a right to stay because Maxwell had allowed them to live, ranch, or mine there.
The disagreement escalated quickly. Armed groups were brought in, settlers organized to defend their homes, and violence spread across the area. In 1875, Reverend Franklin J. Tolby, a supporter of the settlers, was murdered. More killings and gunfights followed, and the conflict eventually became known as the Colfax County War.
The dispute continued for years through lawsuits, evictions, and violence before the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld the company’s ownership of the grant in 1887.
It’s a pretty remarkable story to find in the history of a property.
The records behind stories like this are the same kinds of records we work with every day at Real Title Services. Sometimes, following a property’s history means going back much farther than the most recent deed.
Angela Sharp
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