What happened when Congress declared the land grant requested by Charles Beaubien and Guadeloupe Miranda to be valid?

When Congress declared the land grant requested by Charles Beaubien and Guadeloupe Miranda to be valid, it became the largest grant ever made. It also created a large share of controversial comments and bitter complaints, because it was said that fraud had been involved.

Explanation:

Carlos Beaubien was a Mexican citizen living in Taos, New Mexico, who, in 1841, applied for a land grant to the Santa Fe governor, Manuel Armijo. He did this in company of her partner, Guadeloupe Miranda, who was the governor's secretary. It was Beaubien's idea that new settlers would be encouraged to come to this land in order to make use of its resources - the land he was requesting a grant for was the largest ever made: a two million acre land that included the western part of Colfax County, New Mexico, and the southern part of Las Animas County, in Colorado. All this was surrounded by natural beauty - mountains, valleys, streams and hillsides.

The governor approved the grant three days later on condition that Beaubien and Miranda put the land to good use by colonizing and cultivating it. In 1860, an act of Congress declared the boundaries of the land to be valid. This became a matter of controversy due to the fact that the maximum of land grant was 92,000 acres and the Beaubien-Miranda land had not been surveyed until 1877, measuring over 1,700,000 acres by that time.

Shortly after the grant was declared to be valid, Beaubien hired a man called Lucien B. Maxwell, a pioneer and explorer. Maxwell married one of Beaubien's daughters and settled down in New Mexico. It is widely believed that Maxwell had expanded the boundaries of the original grant by means of fraud.

In 1875, Maxwell and the land settlers declared war to each other in what is known as the Colfax County War.

Congress established the grant, but it was not within legal limits.