Named for Roque Lovato, the Lovato Grant is a Santa Fe neighborhood wholly south of Cordova. Or, it’s a neighborhood that spreads out from the edge of South Capital, across Cordova, up and over the hill –depending on who’s drawing the lines. According to City–Data.com, the boundaries of the Lovato Grant are Galisteo, East Coronado, Don Gaspar, and East Cordova. Yet, in the Multiple Listing Service, Lovato Grant includes properties on Madrid, Alicante, Lupita, and Seville as well.

However you define it, Lovato Grant offers value and character in an appealing location. Homes there often have more acreage and square footage than is typical of downtown Santa Fe. Some spreads even have wells, old orchards, and a pastoral feel. Best of all, that extra room is just a short distance from the many restaurants, shops, and amenities of Cordova Road.

According to historian J.J. Bowden, in 1785, Roque Lovato, the armorer of the Presidio of Santa Fe “petitioned Governor Juan Bautista de Anza for a “piece of public land in the northern suburbs of Santa Fe [on which he could] …build a house and cultivate land for the support of his family.” The original grant was modest: by one report it appears to have been about 15 acres in size. After Lovato’s death,  his widow, Josefa Armijo, sold the grant to Jose Ribera, who in turn, sold it to Gaspar Ortiz y Alarid, a land speculator. Whether through murky memory, lost records, or outright fraud, the grant Ortiz claimed had grown to 3,840 acres. Yet when his widow tried to formalize possession of the land, the U.S. government declared the old deed from Lovato’s widow, Josefa Armijo a forgery and denied her claim. To this day, the matter of the neighborhood’s boundaries is unsettled in the court of public opinion.