Rowe, NM

Rowe is a San Miguel County census-designated place of 304 residents in the 2020 census, set along Interstate 25 near Pecos National Historical Park. The community grew in the late 1870s and early 1880s as a labor settlement for the Santa Fe Railroad. Many residents came from Las Ruedas, a former community two miles away on the Pecos River; a pipeline carried water from Rowe to the railroad's steam engines, and Las Ruedas gradually emptied as people resettled here. Pecos and Santa Fe remain the larger regional reference points.

Rowe's location keeps it tied to broad histories. Interstate 25 follows high-country routes toward Santa Fe, while Pecos National Historical Park preserves Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, Anglo, Santa Fe Trail, and railroad stories around the valley. Rowe lies in Pecos Independent Schools; a bookmobile served the CDP in 2001, when it had no permanent library. The community remains a small roadside place with a railroad origin, a vanished river neighbor, and a national-park landscape just beyond its roads.