Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Abiquiu, NM

Abiquiú is an unincorporated census-designated place in Rio Arriba County, in northern New Mexico, about 53 miles north of Santa Fe.

Its name is the Spanish rendering of the Tewa name Phéshú Búuˀu, meaning "timber end town," and the village is also known as Santo Tomás de Abiquiú.

Abiquiú was first settled in 1742 by 24 Tewa Pueblo families led by a Roman Catholic priest, Francisco Delgado, who had returned to New Mexico after a long residence among the Hopi people in Arizona.

After a 1747 Comanche raid carried off 23 women and children and forced the town's temporary abandonment, Governor Tomás Vélez Cachupín in 1754 granted land to 34 genízaro families to hold the frontier, making Abiquiú the third genízaro settlement in New Mexico, after Belén and Trampas.

Abiquiú became the archetypal genízaro settlement, and its residents struggled through the 19th century to keep their roughly 16,000-acre grant, which the United States Court of Private Land Claims validated in their favor in 1894.

Abiquiú was the starting point of the Old Spanish Trail's Armijo Route: Antonio Armijo's caravan of 60 mounted men left Abiquiú on November 7, 1829, and reached Mission San Gabriel in California 86 days later.

On December 30, 1849, U.S. Indian Commissioner James S. Calhoun signed the Treaty of Abiquiú with leaders of the Ute people at the town.

Artist Georgia O'Keeffe lived in Abiquiú from 1929 until 1984, and the Georgia O'Keeffe Home and Studio is preserved in the village; she also owned property at nearby Ghost Ranch, and many of her paintings depict the country around Abiquiú.

The 2020 census counted 181 residents in Abiquiú, down from 231 in the 2010 census.

The 2020 census counted 102 housing units in the CDP, which covers about 0.95 square miles along the Rio Chama at an elevation of 6,172 feet.