GRANTS, N.M. – The story behind the name Grants begins with the railroad, but not on empty land.
According to local history and archival records from the Library of Congress, the modern City of Grants grew from a railroad construction camp established in the early 1880s at or near Los Alamitos, the name for the area today called Grants.
The camp was established by the Canadian-born Grant brothers, railroad contractors from Glengarry County, Ontario, whose work followed the westward expansion of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad.
The camp became known as Grant’s Camp, then Grant Station or Grants Station, and eventually Grants.
The brothers most often connected to that story are Angus A. Grant, Lewis A. Grant and John R. Grant.
City history and Britannica describe the town’s name as honoring the Grant brothers. At least one New Mexico historical marker, however, singles out Angus A. Grant, describing the place around 1880 as Grant’s Camp after Angus, a Canadian bridge contractor.
The Grant brothers were not recipients of a personal land grant that became Grants.
The larger land-grant framework belonged to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad under federal law. The brothers were contractors working within that railroad system.
Their role was practical and physical. They helped build the railroad infrastructure that turned Los Alamitos into a transportation hub. Historical marker text describes the railroad stop as a place where the line ended for a time while work continued west. The site developed railroad functions including a telegraph office, depot or station activity, coaling operations and stock pens that allowed local ranchers to ship cattle and sheep east.
But the name Los Alamitos Came First.
Local history associates the older settlement with Antonio Chavez and Don Jesús Blea.
By the time the railroad camp appeared, the area already sat within a much older landscape shaped by Indigenous communities, Hispano families, ranching, travel and trade. The arrival of the railroad did not begin the history of Grants. It changed the direction of its growth.
The brothers’ own story stretched far beyond Grants.
The available biographical record places them in railroad and bridge construction across the Southwest and West. Angus Grant later became a significant Albuquerque businessman, with interests in construction, water, electric light, gas, banking, publishing, irrigation and real estate.
Lewis Grant later led Grant Bros. Construction Co. and became involved in business interests in California.
John Grant remained connected to the family construction enterprise and was later remembered as a pioneer railroad builder.
Their work in the Grants area appears to have been important but not permanent. The available record is stronger on their railroad camp and business activity than on long-term residence in the modern Grants townsite.
Grants would later grow through rail transportation, livestock shipping, logging, Route 66, agriculture and uranium. The Grant brothers belong to the earliest railroad chapter of that story. They did not create the later uranium boom that made Grants nationally known in the 1950s.
Some details remain unsettled. Sources vary on the exact year the camp became Grant’s Camp, when Grant Station became Grants Station, and when the final spelling of Grants became standardized. Some sources point to the mid-1930s for that final shift. The historic record is also thin on the brothers’ direct personal interactions with Indigenous communities, local families or later Grants residents.
What can be said with confidence is that the name Grants came from the railroad era and from the Grant brothers’ work in that era.
But the city’s history is larger than its name.
Before Grants was Grants, it was Los Alamitos. Before the railroad, the surrounding region already carried deep Indigenous and Hispano-New Mexican histories.
After the railroad, generations of families, workers, ranchers, business owners, miners, teachers, churches and civic leaders made the place into a community.
The Grant brothers helped give Grants its name.
The people who lived here before and after them give Grants its story.