Across this landscape, people lived and passed by over many centuries. About 1,000 years ago, the Jornada Mogollon people built a village along the ridge, grew corn and beans on the fertile floodplains of the Rio Grande, and gathered clay to make pottery for storing food. About 600 years ago, Apache people camped by the river in brush-covered shelters and roasted agave to make mescal. About 300 years ago, Spanish caravans of wooden wagons called carretas traveled along El Camino Real, gathered at campsites, cooked on fire pits, and collected river water. In 1863, soldiers building Fort Selden made adobe bricks, dried them in the hot sun, and hauled cottonwood timbers.