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Vado Cemetery of Dona Ana County Photographed by Marcena Thompson Š2005 Below are photos of a burial site in Dona Ana County. It is not known how many graves have been plowed under. Marcena net met with John Holguin in Vado and walked to the
little cemetery in August of 2005. The remainder of the cemetery is gone. The
cemetery is off NM 227 just after the canal and just before getting to Holguin
Road in the middle of a farm field on your left. Vado, Spanish for "ford," has an unusually diverse past. It was
first platted in Doņa Ana County in 1928, though it existed as a community
decades before that.
Mexicans lived in the area before the Gadsden Purchase in 1854, according to a
history written by Isaiah Montoya, a chronicler of the town. Following the Civil
War, black settlers moved to the site. A family named Herron began a broom
factory, and in 1886, the town came to be known as Herron.
Quakers migrated to the area in 1888 from Ohio and Illinois, and the community's
name changed until 1912 to Earlham. After that, the town was renamed again, this
time to Center Valley. A black couple, Frances and Ella Boyer, from near Roswell
moved to Vado in 1920, helping to establish it as a predominantly black
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