Tawapa
former squatted settlement
Tawapa was a hippie commune that operated north of Placitas, New Mexico. It was founded around 1970 and dissolved in the 1990s. It was located along Las Huertas Creek near the Sandia Mountains. A spring flowed through Tawapa. Watercress grew by the spring.
History
Lower Farm
At the commune of Lower Farm one Donald Waskey called himself Ulysses, claiming to be the reincarnation of Ulysses S. Grant. He also claimed to be the reincarnation of Vulcan and Jesus Christ. He made a tongue-in-cheek attempt to run for governor of New Mexico in 1969, and murdered two people in 1970. He was the commune's self-proclaimed leader.
Tawapa
In the late 1960s or early 1970s, due to problems at Lower Farm, several couples left and founded Tawapa along Las Huertas Creek.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Tawapa” as former squatted settlement. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as former squatted settlement. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q126959611. Authority coordinates are 35.330, -106.460. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1970 and 1969.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tawapa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.