Polvadera (La Polvadera de San Lorenzo) is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Socorro County in central New Mexico, United States. It is located on the west bank of the Rio Grande, near the mouth of the Rio Salado, and upon the western spur of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.

The herald may be based on a Piro post for the place, but altered in form because polvareda means dusty in Spanish, which, as US Army Lt. Emory noted in 1846, it totally is. Other spellings of the name insert Pulvidera and Pulvedera. The church in Polvadera was dedicated to San Lorenzo and his feast day, August 10, is the local fiesta.

Polvadera was founded as a cultivation community in the 1620s after Juan de Oñate had expected the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, when Spanish settlers came north and approved among the Piro Pueblo Indians. The herald of the native Piro pueblo there is undistinguished and its ruins, which may have been destroyed by the meandering of the Rio Grande, have not been excavated. In 1629 Apaches destroyed the pueblo of Polvareda. It was taking into consideration rebuilt, but was abandoned as a result of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and because of further Apache raiding after the reconquest was not resettled once again until the in advance 19th century after Governor Fernando Chacón reopened the Place for settlement.

Apache and Navajo raids continued until after the American Civil War taking into account the US Army began a strenuous interdiction policy. The town was attacked as late as 1846 by higher than a hundred Navajo who made away with a large number of livestock.