Selecting Views of Las Trampas: Contact Sheets by Fred E. Mang Jr. and David Jones at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives

Abstract

The northern New Mexican village of Las Trampas (Spanish for “The Traps”) was established with a communal land grant in 1751 by twelve ethnically and racially mixed families of Gen ızaro, Tlaxcalan, African, and Spanish descent from El Barrio de Analco, a lower-class district located on the south side of the Santa Fe River (McDonald 2002, 36). Bestowed by the provincial governor, the original land grant included 46,000 acres for the development of agriculture and livestock. The place name of Santo Tom as del R ıo de las Trampas is presumed to reference beaver traps along the river; however, writer William DeBuys infers a grim irony in the etymology of the isolated settlement founded as a redoubt (Julyan 1998, 294). These early residents “must have been keenly aware that their future home might eventually be a trap for them,” speculates DeBuys (1981, 72). Although the United States Congress upheld the validity of the Las Trampas Land Grant in 1860, the Anglo-American legal system set another series of traps that dispossessed villagers of their communal property in the early 1900s. After the Las Trampas Lumber Company declared bankruptcy in 1926, the United States Forest Service took ownership of the Las Trampas Land Grant (Guthrie 2013, 183). Held in the David Jones Collection at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, folders of contact sheets (c. 1966–67) made by Jones (1914–88) and his National Park Service colleague Fred E. Mang Jr. (1924–) depict Las Trampas, its residents, and their built environment. Mang, a staff photographer who specialized in scientific and