Monticello, the Hispanic Cultural Gateway to Utah BY W I L L I A M H . G O N Z A L E Z A N D G E N A R O M. P A D I L L A
Monticello, ca. 1942. Photographs not credited otherwise are courtesy of Msgr. Jerome Staff el.
1 HE FIRST HISPANICS T O ARRIVE in San J u a n County were the men who came from northern New Mexico during the last decades of the nineteenth century to tend sheep owned by the Mormon settlers of the Bluff area. Since the latter had a somewhat limited knowledge of the sheep industry, men who were familiar with this type of livestock were needed; and the Hispanic New Mexican, who carried unbroken the sheep-raising tradition brought from Spain and introduced into New Mexico as early as 1598, 1 was the one to fill that need. Dr. Gonzalez is assistant professor of languages and Dr. Padilla assistant professor of English at the University of Utah. They wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the Chicano Studies Program at the University of Utah in the preparation of this paper. 1 In 1598 J u a n de Ohate led an expedition of some two hundred Spaniards to settle an area of the New World located somewhere near where Santa Fe, New Mexico, stands. Along with wagonloads of the equipment required to establish a permanent settlement, Ohate also brought some six thousand head of livestock, of which nearly four thousand were sheep and rams. For a more detailed catalogue of the supplies Ohate took to New Mexico, see Julian Nava, The Mexican American in American History (New York: American Book Co., 1973), p. 30.
