History[ edit ] There is evidence of years of habitation in the Chama River Valley including pueblo sites south of Abiquiu. The area served as a trade route for peoples in the present-day Four Corners region and the Rio Grande Valley.
Navajos later used the valley as a staging area for raids on Spanish settlements along the Rio Grande. Written accounts of the Tierra Amarilla locality by pathfinding Spanish friars in described it as suitable for pastoral and agricultural use. During the Californian Gold Rush the area became a staging point for westward fortune seekers. By Catron had consolidated the deeds he held for the whole of the grant sans the original villages and their associated fields.
In , the descendants of the original grant holder's court petitions to reclaim communal land were rebuked. The military encampment was deserted in The first post office in Las Nutrias was established in and bore the name Tierra Amarilla, as did the present one which was established in after an approximately two-year absence.
Army lieutenant described the village as "the center of the Mexican population of northwestern New Mexico". Attempting to make a citizen's arrest of the district attorney "to bring attention to the unscrupulous means by which government and Anglo settlers had usurped Hispanic land grant properties", an armed struggle in the courthouse ensued resulting in Tijerina and his group fleeing to the south with two prisoners as hostages.
Eulogio Salazar, a prison guard, was shot and Daniel Rivera, a sheriff's deputy, was badly injured. Tierra Amarillas' Elevation is 7, feet above sea level. During the winter, mornings are frigid, with as many as Snowfall is much heavier than in more populated parts of New Mexico as Tierra Amarilla is located on a western slope rather than in a valley: the annual average is The maximum snow depth has been 44 inches or 1. The spring season sees the sunniest weather of all and steadily warming temperatures, although over the year as a whole The wettest months have been September and August which each saw 5.
