On my Arizona road map there is a large tract of land northwest of Prescott marked as the Luis Maria Baca Grant. Can you tell me what that is?

Luis Maria Cabeza de Baca was a descendant of Alvar Cabeza de Vaca, whose family was ennobled by the Spanish crown in 1212. The family started out as ordinary peasant folk named Alhaza, but Martin Alhaza showed the Spanish army trails to help it get around Moor-held mountain passes in Spain. To do so, he marked the route with a cow's skull. The Spanish won a big victory and the Alhaza family was given the name "Cabeza de Vaca" (head of a cow). I don't know when the family switched to "Baca."

Anyway, Luis Maria Cabeza de Baca was given about 500,000 acres of land, most of it in the Territory of New Mexico, by the king of Spain.

Unfortunately for the de Bacas, Indian depredations were so severe that the family was driven from the land.

After Mexico gained its independence from Spain, it moved new settlers onto the de Baca lands.

When the United States took over what would become New Mexico, including what would become Arizona Territory, after the Mexican War, the de Baca heirs laid claim to their original grant.

Considering de Baca had 19 children, figuring this out gets thorny.

After some hemming and hawing and complicated studies of deeds and so on and so forth, the U.S. finally agreed to honor the heirs' claims.

The problem was that the people living on the de Baca lands were now U.S. citizens and the government didn't want to just kick them off. So it offered the de Bacas a deal. If the family would "float" its rights to the original property, the government would let it pick five other tracts of 100,000 acres each.

Hence, the Luis Maria Baca Grant Float No. 5.

The property has changed hands many times over the years and mainly has been a cattle ranch. Today, the land is privately owned, and visitors are not welcome.

You can read more about this at the Web site of the most excellent Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott. The address is www.sharlot.org.