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Ceran St. Vrain (partner in Bent's Old Fort with William and Charles Bent), and Charles Bent (Be is Fort partner and first American governor of New Mexico Territory). The grant is known as the Vigil-St. Vrain, or Las Animas Grant. The historic village of Boggsville was formed within a 2040- acregift from Comelio Vigil, one of the principals in the land grant, to his niece Rumalda Jaramillo- Boggs, and step-daughter of Charles Bent (Carrillo et al. 1997). Under the terms of the several grants, the recipients were obligated to settle permanent colonies of loyal citizens in order to hold the territory for Mexico (Abbot et al. 1982:41; Carrillo 1990). By the 1840s, forts similar to Bent's ' Fort were being built in other parts of present-day Colorado, such as Fort El Pueblo, the northern forts--Lupton, St. Vrain and Vasquez--and the settlements of Hazdscrabble and Greenhorn. The San Luis Valley was sporadically occupied in the late 1840s, and permanent settlement occurred in the ' early 1850s, slightly later than some of the other grants, and due to the friction between particular nomadic Native American groups such as the Apache and the Ute. The settlement of the San Luis Valley was initially made possible by the construction of Fort Massachusetts, established on Ute ' Creek near the base of Mt. Blanca, in 1852, and later Fort Gazland, established in 1858, six miles to the south, and closer to Sangre de Cristo (La Veta) Pass (Lamar 1977:389; White 1971:20; ' Carrillo and Mehls 19926). In the early 1860s, the upper and lower Purgatoire valley region felt the effects of population ' movement with the construction of Fort Wise on the Arkansas river. These migrations took place largely on the impetus of the gold strikes in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and the rapid development of commerce and transportation. New Mexicans had become involved in the wagon trade along the Santa Fe Trail, and in the late 1840s many joined the gold msh to California. During the 1870s, the building and maintenance of railroads also stimulated movement into Colorado (Atheam 1985; Friedman 1985; Swadesh 1974; Tushar 1975). 1 In the late 1850s and early 1860s, present-day southern Colorado witnessed the initial permanent settlement by two distinctly different cultural groups: Hispanics from northern New ' Mexico, and AngloAmericans from the eastern United States as well as Old World immigrants, mainly from the British Isles. The movement of Hispanics from northern New Mexico into different ' areas of southern Colorado was a "budding process," wherein as the resources of one microbasin began to be taken up, the surplus population spilled over to adjacent or nearby microbasins (Kutsche et al 1976). Weber (1980) basically reiterated this position, but additionally asserted that the ' opportunities lacking in the New Mexican economy were available in other areas, and thus contributed to migration: ' By at least the 1870s, Hispanic fanners and herders had learned that available land was finite. It was not so much a question of reaching the ecological boundaries for sheep grazing but of encountering others using the same resource base. Hispanic ranchers had by this time expanded far beyond their own nuclear areas into what is eastern Arizona, eastern New Mexico, western Texas and southern ' [and southeastern] Colorado where they encountered other ranchers who also thought the range was unlimited and the'vs for the taking. (Weber 1980:54-55) ' In the case of the settlement of southern Colorado, and the San Luis Valley, the political • changes that were initiated in the early 1820s intensified during the late 1840s. The accelerated influx of new ideas and material items created the impetus for change in New Mexico. The frontier regions of northern New Mexico had continued to expand slowly northward and eastward due to