Madrid was founded in 1869 in an area where Native American inhabitants had mined turquoise and lead as many as 1,500 years earlier, where Spaniards arriving in 1540 sought silver and gold, and where Spanish conquerors in the mid-1600's forced local natives to work in the mines until the Pueblo Revolt of 1680; after the Spanish Crown reconquered the area in 1693, farms and ranches were established around Madrid. Large-scale coal mining began when the Santa Fe Railroad arrived, and by 1892 a 6.5 mile spur from the railroad ran into Madrid canyon from Coal Gulch to carry the coal. Madrid's mines, spread across about 30 square miles and linked by tunnels in the Lucas & White Ash, Peacock, and Cooke mines, supplied coal through the Great Depression and both world wars, reaching a peak in 1928 when more than 180,000 tons were shipped out. At its height, more than 3,000 people lived and worked there, making the company town larger than Albuquerque at that time, with housing, schools, a hospital, a company store, a cafeteria, paved streets, unlimited electricity from a company-owned power plant, and daily water deliveries by railroad tank car under mine boss Oscar Huber, who also organized community activities. Madrid became famous for its Christmas lights, and it is said Walt Disney drew on them for Disneyland's Main Street while Pan American Airlines rerouted air traffic over the town at Christmas. Baseball also became central to town life after coal miners formed the first team in 1920, and the historic ballpark was the first west of the Mississippi to light its field at night. When the coal market collapsed in 1954, most residents left and Madrid became a ghost town, but by the early 1970's artists, craftsmen, and others began restoring it, and the town was reborn as the artist community it is today.