Around 1876, when Colorado was in the process of becoming a state, Maximo Vigil acquired approximately 200 acres under the 1862 Homestead Act and established a farm near Capulin. During this time the water was also registered. The farmland has been worked by six generations of the Vigil family. Maximo worked the land for many years until his son Venancio Vigil took over in the late 1930s. Venancio worked the farm with his children growing peas, alfalfa, and barley.

The Capulin area was settled in the 1860s by early pobladores (settlers) that came to the San Luis Valley from Northern New Mexico, and an initial Catholic church was built in 1878.