Within a decade after reaching the site for their high plaza (plaza del alta) at La Loma de San Jose, many of the 14 founding families had moved to other locations along the Rio Grande to establish family plazas.  An early tax record book retrieved from obscurity within the vault of the old Conejos County courthouse listed several of these plazas.

    The earliest tax lists divided the Loma settlers into two groups, those of the upper plaza area (plaza del arriba) and those living downstream along the Rio Grande (plaza de abaja).  In following years, taxes were assessed for settlers at Los Piños en La Loma (the Montoya family settled west of modern Del Norte, Colorado, on Piños Creek); plaza de San Francisco ( the Chavez family home on San Francisco Creek); plaza de Don Hilário abaja en La Loma (Hilário Atencio's family plaza near present-day Seven Mile Plaza); La Loma del Norte (on the north bank of the Rio Grande at the location of the ancient ford used by native peoples, explorers, and traders following the Old Spanish Trail).

    Agapito Lucero's son, Manuél Lucero, who had returned to New Mexico from La Loma de San Jose because the winter was too cold, established his own plaza of Lucero a few miles up river from modern Monte Vista, Colorado, in 1865.  Guadalupe Torres also developed a small plaza with a store east of Lucero plaza.   This site became known as Torres Siding when the railroad extended tracks from Alamosa, Colorado, toward the Creede mining camps.

    Another La Loma settlement of Hispanic origin occupied the north bank of the Rio Grande upstream from La Loma del Norte.  By 1874 a group of miners also occupied this area which they platted to form the Loma Town Company in competition with the Del Norte Town Company.  The influx of miners seeking wealth in the Summitville area or farther up river at Creede, Colorado, is evident in the tax records for 1873 with all residents being listed under the broad heading of Loma.

    The territory now known as Rio Grande County initially lay within Conejos County.  Records show considerable haggling among the miners who were as interested in  controlling traffic into and out of the gold and silver mines as looking for the mother lode in the San Juan Mountains.  Dyersville and West Del Norte were two camps that emerged at the mouth of Piños Creek west of Del Norte.  For a short time West Del Norte held the honor of being the county seat of the newly created Rio Grande County.

    The mining camp of Loma (north of the Rio Grande) held the first post office with Luis Alarid being one of the early postmasters.  After losing a competition with the Del Norte Town Company to build a toll road to the mines at Creede, the Loma miners abandoned their town and moved to the south bank of the Rio Grande or homesteaded on public lands which often overlapped land initially promised to the New Mexican families under the Guadalupe grant.  (See the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, 1848.)

    During decades of legal battles over the status of the Guadalupe land grant, the miners and other homesteaders filed for water rights along the Rio Grande and its tributaries.  Although Judge Reed ultimately ruled the grant invalid, he gave the land grant families the right to retain their homes and lands under the Homestead Act.  Lacking access to water, most of the original land grant families had little choice but to sell  their land and become laborers on other men's farms and ranches.