Doña Elena Gallegos, daughter of early seventeenth-century Hispanic colonists Antonio Gallegos and Catalina Baca, fled New Mexico as a newborn with her family during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt and returned in 1693 with two brothers and an uncle. She married Santiago Gurulé, a tattooed Frenchman born Jacques Grolet who had been a member of the ill-fated La Salle expedition, and everyone bearing the Hispanic form of his surname, Gurulé, has roots in New Mexico. After his death in 1711, Captain Diego Montoya conveyed to Elena the vast landholding that came to bear her name. The Elena Gallegos Land Grant stretched from the crest of the Sandia Mountains to the Rio Grande Valley and covered 70,000 acres, roughly the northern half of Albuquerque up to Sandia Pueblo. Its exact extent remained uncertain, with some believing its eastern border lay at the foothills, until a nineteenth-century court interpreted the word “sierra” in the original document to mean the crest of the mountains. That adjudication helped make possible the preservation of part of the grant as open space and a picnic area for public enjoyment.