To encourage settlement of the San Luis Valley, the Mexican government offered large land grants, la merced, making it possible even for poor men to establish homesteads. These pobladores, or land grant settlers, lived in communal, self-sufficient pueblitos organized around the church, or iglesia, and plaza as the spiritual and cultural center of daily life. They farmed narrow strips of land called varas, shared acequias, or irrigation ditches, under the oversight of the mayordomo, or ditch rider, and relied on the vega for common grazing, the foothills for leña, or firewood, and hunting. The acequias their ancestors dug by hand more than 100 years ago still water fields in the valley today. Residents still sometimes find the rock markers and wooden corner posts that once defined the boundaries of the Mexican land grants. The Town of San Luis lay within the 998,780.46 acre Sangre de Cristo Land Grant, and the San Luis People's Ditch, or Acequia de la Gente, established in 1852, remains the oldest water decree in Colorado still in use. A traditional sharing system called the partido also managed livestock, with a patrón placing sheep in the care of a partidario, who was paid with a percentage of the lambs' wool he produced.