Take for Grant-ed: New Mexico town takes its name from a band of entrepreneurial brothers

Editor’s note: The Journal continues “What’s in a Name?,” a once a month column in which Elaine D. Briseño will give a short history of how places in New Mexico got their names.

While many names around New Mexico pay homage to our American Indian ancestors, the state is also littered with monikers paying tribute to the area’s immigrant population.

The city of Grants, which sits at the foot of Mount Taylor, 78 miles west of Albuquerque, is one of those spots. It got its start as a railroad camp established by three brothers from Canada.

Antonio Chavez settled in the area before the Civil War on the south side of the Rio San Jose tributary of the Rio Puerco. He was followed by Don Jesus Blea, who owned contracts for the railroad and established a homestead there in 1872. He called it Los Alamitos, meaning the little cottonwoods, after the trees Chavez had planted there.

It would be less than a decade when the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad line arrived, bringing with it the forebearers of its permanent name and more people.

Angus, John and Lewis Grant, brothers from Ontario, Canada, and of Highland Scotch ancestry, previously were in Kansas working as railroad contractors when they were hired to construct the bridges for the New Mexico line.

The brothers arrived and established a work base at Los Alamitos that became known as Grants Camp. Because of its location between Albuquerque and Gallup, the site became an ideal location for a coaling station. That was followed by a depot and a station called Grants Station and eventually a general store.

However, it was the arrival of the post office that would make the name official. It opened as the Grant post office. So why is there now an “s” at the end?

“Over the years, local Spanish-speaking people used the brothers’ name in its plural form, calling the place Grantes,” Robert Julyan writes in his book “The Place Names of New Mexico.”

The post office name was changed to Grants in 1935 to recognize this usage, according to Julyan. By this time, the population in Grants had mushroomed thanks to the arrival of electricity and running water in 1929.

Meanwhile, there was another man who was integral in turning the dusty Grants railroad stop into a thriving community. George E. Breece moved his lumbering operations from the Zuni Mountains to the west side of Grants, building a railroad roundhouse and company housing that became known as Breecetown. It was the railroad logging that allowed the town to prosper, according to the town website.

The discovery of uranium ore 10 miles west of town near Haystack Mesa by Navajo shepherd Paddy Martinez in the 1950s resulted in the town’s most dramatic boom that spanned into the 1980s. The population of Grants jumped from 2,251 in 1950 to 10,274 in 1960, topping out at 11,500 in 1980, according to the census.

On July 16, 1979, one of the largest releases of radioactive materials in U.S. history occurred when the disposal pond at the Church Rock uranium mill near Gallup breached its dam and spilled into the surrounding land. The decline of mining sent the town into a depression but it was able to find new economic footing by rebranding itself as a tourist destination.

Its current population sits at about 9,200 and according to the town website it has become a “gateway to a number of national parks, monuments and Native American pueblos,” including Acoma, Laguna and the Navajo Nation. It is the county seat for Cibola County, which was created in 1981.

Despite its Anglo name, the city of Grants remains an important part of American Indian history. Its first known inhabitants were the Ancient Puebloans who established the advanced Chaco Canyon civilization north of Grants in the 12th century.

It was also the site of the Comanche Massacre. Navajos ambushed a party of Comanches who had raided their lands and stolen some of their horses, according to Julyan.

Ironically, the Grant brothers spent most of their time in Albuquerque and later California. They started the Albuquerque Morning Journal newspaper. The eldest brother, Angus Grant built the Grant Opera House in 1883, on the northwest corner of Central Avenue, which was called Railroad Avenue at the time, and Third Street. The opera would not last. It was not the economy or waning public interest that lead to its demise. The building caught fire in 1898 and although it was rebuilt, the opera house was not included.

Angus Grant spent the final years of his life in San Francisco but he was instrumental in ushering Albuquerque into the modern era by establishing the city’s first public utilities.

He owned one of the city’s inaugural water companies and the Albuquerque Electric Light Company. In 1895, he purchased the property for the Albuquerque Gas Company, according to a New Mexico American History and Genealogy Project article by Charles Barnum and Judy White. In 1897, Angus Grant and others organized the Albuquerque Land & Irrigation company in order to “build, construct and maintain reservoirs and feeders, canals, ditches, pipe line” in order to supply water for irrigation, according to a Dec. 31 notice in the Santa Fe New Mexican that year.

Take for Grant-ed: New Mexico town takes its name from a band of entrepreneurial brothers

He was also an early stockholder in the First National Bank, of which he served as director until his death in 1901.

He left Canada when he was 21–years-old to work in Michigan’s lumber business and later would travel to Lawrence, Kansas, to become a foreman of a construction crew for the Santa Fe Railroad. He would eventually found the Grant Bros. firm with his brothers, which continued after his death.

On July 24, 1901, the Albuquerque Citizen ran the Los Angeles Times obituary on Angus Grant. His brother John Grant preceded him in death but Lewis, according to the obituary, was still alive and it was at his home in Los Angeles that Angus spent his final hours.

According to the obituary, at the time of his death, Angus Grant was the largest individual property owner in Albuquerque and his estate was valued at several hundred thousand dollars.

Curious about how a town, street or building got its name? Email columnist Elaine D. Briseño at ebriseno@abqjournal.com as she continues the monthly journey in “What’s in a Name?”