Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Seboyeta, NM

Seboyeta is a census-designated place in Cibola County, New Mexico, historically spelled Cebolleta.

Seboyeta's roots reach to 1746, when Padre Juan Menchero persuaded several hundred Navajo to settle at Cebolleta and a mission was established there; the Navajo rejected the mission and left in 1750.

The community was formally established in 1749 under the name Cebolleta, Spanish for 'little onion,' after the nearby Cebolleta Mountains, today known as the San Mateo Mountains.

On January 23, 1800, Governor Fernando Chacón granted the Town of Cebolleta Grant to Francisco Aragon and 29 others, and the settlers took formal possession on March 16, 1800, making Seboyeta one of the first Hispanic settlements west of the Rio Grande and the mother village of Hispanic expansion into the Cíbola region.

In 1801 the Navajo forced the colonists to abandon Cebolleta and flee, but in 1803 the Spanish government ordered the settlers to return under penalty of death.

In 1805 a Navajo attack on the village was repelled with help from Laguna Pueblo, a debt acknowledged in an 1826 agreement, approved by Governor Antonio Narbona, that granted Laguna the Rancho de Paquate lands.

Seboyeta's settlers went on to found daughter settlements including San Mateo in 1862 and San Rafael in 1865.

A United States military post was established at Cebolleta in 1849, the first post called Fort Wingate; in 1862 General Edward Canby ordered it moved to San Rafael and renamed Fort Wingate.

The United States patent for the Cebolleta grant was finally issued on January 27, 1882, after a petition first filed in 1859 was delayed by the Civil War.

The village post office opened in 1885 under the spelling 'Seboyeta' because several other places already used 'Cebolleta' in the Post Office directory; the post office operated from February 5, 1885, until January 7, 1995, and 87014 remains the community's ZIP code.