Maxwell Land Grant

The Maxwell Land Grant, also known as the Beaubien-Miranda Land Grant, was a 1,714,765-acre (6,939.41 km²) Mexican land grant in Colfax County, New Mexico, and part of adjoining Las Animas County, Colorado. This 1841 land grant was one of the largest contiguous private landholdings in the history of the United States. The New Mexico communities of Cimarron, Dawson, Elizabethtown, Baldy Town, Maxwell, Miami, Raton, Rayado, Springer, Ute Park and Vermejo Park came to be located within the grant,^[1][2] as well as numerous places that are now ghost towns.^[3]

The governor of New Mexico (then part of Mexico) awarded the grant to Mexican citizens Carlos Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda in 1841. Boundaries at first were vague. The owners encouraged settlement on the grant lands. Beaubien's son-in-law Lucien B. Maxwell attained ownership of the grant and sold it to European investors in 1870. Gold and coal mining, ranching, and agriculture were the principal economic activities on grant lands. The grant had been established and first settled on the basis of Mexican land law and practices. Anglo land law clashed with Mexican law resulting in many legal disputes about the ownership of grant lands and rights of the owners, settlers, and miners. In the Colfax County War and Stonewall incident in the 1870s and 1880s several people were killed and the U.S. military had to be called in to maintain order. By 1900, the ownership disputes had been resolved by the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of the European investors, settlers had been expelled from the grant, and the European owners began selling off portions of the land.

Owners of the land within the grant in the 20th and 21st century include the Vermejo Park Ranch, Philmont Scout Ranch, the National Rifle Association of America, the Maxwell National Wildlife Refuge, Fishers Peak State Park, and the U.S. Forest Service.