Another Time in This Place
Historia, Cultura y Vida en Questa, New Mexico, USA
Tessie Rael de Ortega and Judith Cuddihy

An Introductory Note
…first-person accounts of Rio Colorado [Questa] have been included to give a first-hand view of what life was like here over the years.

Table of Contents
Front Matter From Our Hearts and Minds From the Record The Cycle of Birth, Life & Death Everyday Life in the 1920’s to 1940’s Appendix


Everyday Life in the 1920s to 1940s
Water was and is the basis of everyday life in this high mountain desert. Acequias were often built even before the houses or church in

The Founders of Questa, by J.P. Rael
J.P. Rael’s poem Los Pobladores de Questa (The Founders of Questa) is probably the first written history of Questa.


A New Frontier
By 1840 San Antonio del Rio Colorado was well established and new settlers were continually arriving and more houses were being built all along the
Questa area timeline
Questa area timeline. 300 million years ago Area covered by shallow ocean 36–25 million years ago Sangre de Cristo Mountains formed, Rio Grande Riftbegins to

The 20th Century Comes to Questa
Our story now becomes less detailed. The end of the Indian raids and of the gold rush changed life in Questa to a more cyclical

The Indian Threat Ends
For almost a century, settlers in Rio Colorado had been subjected to the raids of Indian tribes. By the end of the 1870s, these raids