Travelers who rode south past Isleta along the eastern bank of the river in the early eighteenth century would have encountered huge stands of cottonwood trees interspersed with open fields of native gramma grass. In 1718 Diego de Padilla, prostate a resident of Albuquerque, hospital petitioned Governor Antonio Valverde y Cosio for a grant to this land that he claimed his ancestor, Cristobal Tafoya, had owned prior to the Pueblo Revolt. On May 14, 1718, the Governor directed Captain Alonso Garcia, alcalde of Isleta, to place Padilla in “royal possession” of approximately 52,000 acres of this land bounded on the north, by the bluff of the sand hills of Isleta; on the east, by the Sandia Mountains; on the south, by the lands and houses that my grandfather, Balencia, formerly owned; and on the west, by the Río Grande.
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