Site of Tienda de Carbajal

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Somewhere in El Paso County, out near where the San Elizario Road crosses the old Acequia Madre, there is a piece of ground that has been quietly holding its secrets since the nineteenth century. The marker calls it the Site of Tienda de Carbajal, and even that name carries weight if you let it settle.

A tienda. A store. But before it was a store, it was something grander.

A walled hacienda, the kind of place that appears on an 1852 map like it owns the landscape, because for a time, it did. Those walls went up in the nineteenth century, and for years the hacienda stood there at that road crossing, solid and purposeful, the Acequia Madre running nearby like it always has, carrying water through country that doesn't give water up easy. Now, nothing stays grand forever out here.

By 1873, part of that building had been razed. Gone. But here is the part I like, the part that says something about this stretch of Texas.

The surviving portions didn't just sit empty and mourn what was lost. They got put to work. Juan Carbajal set up his store in what remained, and some municipal offices moved in alongside him.

The old walls of a hacienda, now housing commerce and local government, side by side, practical as the desert itself. Today the site is only partially reclaimed, the marker says. Which means the ground remembers more than it's letting on.

What the marker says

Site (partially reclaimed) of a 19th century walled hacienda appearing on 1852 map near San Elizario Road crossing of Acequia Madre. By 1873 part of building was razed, but surviving parts were occupied by store of Juan Carbajal and some municipal offices. (1972)