By Rick Holben, East Mountain Historical Society
San Pedro Viejo, or “Old San Pedro,” was already a ghost town when Adolph Bandelier passed through the area in 1882. This long-lost community was located north of San Antonito, near San Pedro Creek and the modern subdivisions of San Pedro Creek Estates and San Pedro Overlook, west of North NM-14. In his journal, Bandelier described San Pedro as an “abandoned placita or rancho” originally settled by Serafin Ramirez, located where a dry arroyo entered San Pedro Creek. He noted at the time that very little remained except mounds of stones and earth and some wooden posts he assumed to be an old corral.
Few written records exist for the community, and the ones that do often get confused with the more frequently publicized mining ghost town of San Pedro. That community was established in the 1880s by the San Pedro and Cañon del Agua Mining Co., and was in an area originally called Tuerto, about five miles north of the “old,” original San Pedro.
The original community of San Pedro dates back to 1844 with the establishment of the San Pedro Land Grant with its eight original claimants, several of whom were related to Serafin Ramirez. In 1849, William H. Chamberlain, traveling from Pennsylvania to California, passed through San Pedro and referred to it in his diary as an agricultural community of about a dozen homes. Ramirez, a resident of San Pedro, had by 1860 gained ownership of the entire San Pedro Land Grant through inheritance and purchase from the eight original claimants.
Originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, Ramirez came to New Mexico in the late 1830s and quickly established himself as an influential businessman and politician in New Mexico Territory. The 1860 census puts the Ramirez family at San Pedro, along with 12 dwellings occupied by 40 people listed as “servants” who were likely working the surrounding agricultural lands under the system of peonage.
There is no evidence that any type of official military post or encampment ever existed at San Pedro. However, evidence does exist that the area had been involved in military-related activities, perhaps as a result of Ramirez’s influence. As early as 1850, U.S. Government livestock were being grazed on the San Pedro Land Grant, as were herds of privately owned animals, all likely under contract with the Ramirez family. Records from the Civil War era show Ramirez held contracts with the U.S. government to supply livestock fodder, delivering goods to as far away as Fort Union.
Military records document that Capt. Melquiades Ramirez, Serafin’s brother, enrolled at San Pedro on Jan. 16, 1862, a company of 49 men, who were marched directly to Fort Craig to begin service. A similar document indicates a Capt. Jesus Maria Silva enlisted a total of 79 men from the villages of Galisteo and San Pedro. U.S. Army correspondence from 1865 reveals orders had been received at Santa Fe to raise a contingency of men and proceed to “Don Serafin Ramirez’s place,” and from there send out spies to observe hostile Indians and attack any and all parties of Navajos, of which information could be obtained. Serafin’s father-in-law, Antonio Sandoval, had been killed in late 1861 near San Pedro by Navajos.
During the Confederates’ invasion of New Mexico in 1862, their march northward from Las Cruces took them through the East Mountains, which included a brief stop where they made camp in the area of San Pedro. Later, after the war, Serafin Ramirez sought government reparations for items, including livestock fodder, that allegedly had been plundered from his home by the Confederate Army.
In 1866, Serafin Ramirez finalized the sale of the entire San Pedro Land Grant, along with his interests in the Cañon del Agua Land Grant, to a group of six investors. Ramirez then moved to Tijeras, where he died in 1869. Local area oral histories suggest some of the buildings of San Pedro Viejo were dismantled and taken to San Antonito in the 1870s and were included in the construction of the church that still stands there. In 1876, the Great Western Mining and Reduction Co., which controlled a fractional interest in the San Pedro Land Grant, erected a mill on San Pedro Creek with the intention of processing copper ore from the surrounding mountains. The operation lasted only briefly and had dissolved by 1879; however, ruins of the mill site remain today. No other records of any occupation or use of the old village after Ramirez left have been located. From 1866 well into the 20th century, the site sat on land belonging to Eastern investors and mining companies.