History
El Cuartelejo was a cultural refuge in western Kansas and eastern Colorado where Plains Apache communities lived with Pueblo people who fled Spanish rule in what is now New Mexico. At Ladder Creek in present-day Lake Scott State Park, a small seven-room stone-and-adobe pueblo built by 1696 became the northernmost known pueblo in North America and the only known one in Kansas. The region supported farming through springs, streams, irrigation, and a sheltered canyon climate, and it also figured in Spanish expeditions across the Plains. Conflict in the early 18th century helped drive Apache communities away, and El Cuartelejo was abandoned by the 1730s. Archaeology later revealed a long record of Apache-Pueblo cohabitation.
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Kansas · United States
