American Southwest

A New Mexico Road Trip: Earth, Sky, & Art

| 2suitcasesfor2years

One of the things we enjoy most about traveling is picking the brains of folks we’ve had the pleasure of meeting throughout our journeys. Whether it’s a tip from a car rental agent about an isolated restaurant in the Azores or from a young Italian attorney who shared her love of Cadiz, Spain, with us, we try to follow through. Sometimes acting immediately, but mostly tucking the tips away into the deep recesses of our minds to consider in the future.

When the same question is asked of us about the best places to see in the United States, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Toas in New Mexico immediately top our list as the most unique destination in the USA. Maybe I’m a little cynical with an over-simplified view that the United States is mostly a homogenized mass of sameness that spans 3000 miles from the Atlantic to Pacific, mostly sharing the same landscapes, urban architecture, and strip malls with the same ubiquitous retailers – Home Depot, Starbucks, Panera, Pizza Hut and McDonalds – from coast to coast. Yes, the same is true, though to a much smaller degree, of the urban sprawl that surrounds Albuquerque. Though here you’ll find Blake’s Lotaburger, frito pies, piñon coffee, frybread-style sopapillas, and pozole (a hominy dish) along with parking lots filled with roasters full of Hatch green chilies every September when the harvest comes in and that wonderful aroma fills the air. We hope these photos and this story pique your interest in New Mexico, an endlessly beautiful, culturally diverse, artistic, and quirky place that is truly the “Land of Enchantment.” And a destination we always enjoy exploring.

Start in the Petroglyph National Monument, then follow Central Ave (Old Rt66), from the original adobe buildings of Old Town, circa 1706, east across town up to the Knob Hill area around the University of New Mexico and beyond to the Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Site and the beginning of The Turquoise Trail. You will have spanned several millennia from the oldest petroglyphs dating from 2000 BC to the present and a blending of cultures that is refreshing. It’s a remarkable stretch of history for a young country that typically dates itself to the English colonies of Jamestown – 1607, and Plymouth – 1620.

A 2013 archeological excavation in northern New Mexico unearthed stone tools used to butcher a mammoth, and radiocarbon testing dated them to be 36,000 years old. These tools are attributed to some of the first people that migrated across the Bering Sea from Asia, the ancestors of Native Americans. Jump forward 35,000 years and you have pueblo Indians living in settlements along the Rio Grande Valley and across northern New Mexico. Their first contact with Europeans comes with a back story and cast of characters worthy of the best fiction writers.

It starts with orders from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain) to Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (from Jerez de la Frontera, near Cadiz, from that great tip earlier) authorizing him to colonize the region between Río Soto la Marina, Mexico, and what is now Tampa, Florida, a distance of 1500 miles. Tragically believing the distance between the two was only 45 miles, Cabeza de Vaca landed north of Tampa in April 1528 with 300 men and forty horses. Unable to rendezvous with their ships, the expedition was doomed. Traveling west across the top of the gulf towards the nearest Spanish settlement of Tampico, Mexico they encountered alligators, venomous snakes, and hostile natives. They were captured, enslaved, beset by disease-bearing mosquitos; they crossed numerous creeks, swamps and rivers. By the time they reached the “Isle of Misfortune,” Galveston, Texas a year later, only 15 remained.  They crossed the Rio Grande near El Paso. With the help of friendly tribes, Cabeza de Vaca and three others, Alonso del Castillo, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and his slave Esteban the Moor survived an eight-year Homeric ordeal, that took them across the Mexican desert to the Pacific Ocean before being reunited in 1536 with their compatriots in Mexico City. The three Spaniards were rewarded with titles and land by the King. Cabeza de Vaca became the Viceroy of Paraguay, gained political enemies and was unjustly tried in Spain and imprisoned in North Africa. It is not known if Esteban the Moor was granted his freedom, but he was not forgotten.

De Vaca and his fellow survivors had returned with legends heard from the Indians they encountered of fabulous riches farther inland. These stories of insurmountable wealth were still fresh in everyone’s minds two years later when Friar Marcos de Niza (from Nice, France) arrived in Mexico City after leading the first groups of Franciscans into Peru with Spanish conquistadors to conquer the Inca civilization. In hope of finding the fabled “Seven Cities of Gold,” a treasure that allegedly rivaled that of the Aztecs and Incas civilizations, the Viceroy of Mexico planned an expedition headed by Friar Marcos de Niza, along with Esteban the Moor who had the most knowledge of the area’s tribes, and their customs. It seems from reading various accounts that Esteban led, and Friar Marcos followed. They both were the first foreigners, a North African slave and a European, to explore the area we now recognize as the American Southwest. This is 27 years before the founding of St. Augustine, in Florida in 1565. Friar Marcos claimed Esteban the Moor was killed near a Zuni pueblo when he reached one of the “cities of gold.” Marcos also claimed to have seen a city larger than Mexico City, with buildings nine stories high glittering on the horizon. Dream, mirage, a pueblo glowing like a sunset – a lie? Wanting to avoid Esteban’s fate, the Friar ventured no further and returned to share his exploits in Mexico City. The lust for gold was consuming and a year later, in 1540, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led an expedition of 400 hundred soldiers with 1500 native porters and Friar Marcos north again to attain that treasure. And boy was he miffed when they reached the Zuni tribe and found nothing but a “poor pueblo.” Accusing Friar Marcos of lying, he sent him back to Mexico. Coronado’s expedition would stay in the region for two years, traveling in several smaller groups west as far as the Grand Canyon and east into Texas and Kansas. They never discovered gold though they did travel through areas where it would be discovered centuries later. They returned emptyhanded. It would be 53 years before Spaniards ventured north again.

In 1595 King Philip II of Spain chose Don Juan de Oñate to colonize the upper Rio Grande valley. In 1598 he led an expedition north that included 20 Franciscan missionaries, 400 settlers, 129 soldiers, 83 wagons, plus livestock, with the stated mission from the Pope to spread Catholicism. But there was still hope that the evasive “Seven Cities of Gold,” would finally be discovered. Fording the Rio Grande near present day El Paso, he proclaimed all the lands north of the river “for God, the Church, and the Crown.” Life in the new territory under Oñate was severe. Some settlers urged a return to Mexico when silver was not discovered, and Oñate executed the dissenters. Pueblos that refused to share winter food stocks needed for their own survival were brutally suppressed into submission. The Spanish imposed the encomendero on the pueblo tribes. This was a colonial business model that granted conquistadores or ordinary Spaniards the right to free labor and tribute from the indigenous population. In return Nuevo México encomiendas were obligated to “instruct the Indians in the Roman Catholic faith and the rudiments of Spanish civilization.” The free land and free Indian labor promised with the encomendero was also used as a recruiting tool to encourage settlers to venture north from Mexico. The pueblos did not submit willingly; any resistance was forcibly repressed until the Pueblo Revolution in 1680. Four-hundred Spaniards died, including 21 priests, but there were almost 2000 Spanish survivors. Warriors followed the fleeing refugees all the way to El Paso to ensure their expulsion from Indian territory. But by then there were three generations of intermarriage, along with shared ideas, technology and customs.

When the Spanish returned 12 years later, they did not try to reimpose the encomendero, and returning missionaries displayed more tolerance of indigenous religious beliefs. Spain instead sought to enlist the Pueblo tribes as allies to resist French and British empire expansion farther west. The vast area claimed by Coronado and Oñate became part of the United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War in 1848. It’s a fascinating multilayered history that continues to contribute to New Mexico’s uniqueness.

But enough about history. Land at the Albuquerque International Sunport, rent a car and hit the road. Head north on Rt25, with the Sandia Mountain Range glowing in the late afternoon light on your right and a spectacular sunset in the west. This sublime experience could be the beginning of a long love affair with the state, as it was for us. The expansive vistas and sky, along with incredible light and dramatic ever-changing weather out here are just awesome, especially if it’s your first time to the Southwest. Fair warning: the state can become addictive with endless ways to satisfy your wanderlust.

The ruins of the old Spanish missions in the Salinas Valley and Mountainair are south of Albuquerque. Route 40 East will take you to the beginning of the Turquoise Trail, a splendid backroad route that gracefully curves, rises and falls through the rugged foothills of the Sandia and Ortiz mountains as it follows NM14 north for 65 miles. Pass through the historic towns of Golden, Madrid, Cerrillos and San Marcos just south of Santa Fe. Follow Route 40 West to see the amazing rock drawings at the Petroglyph National Monument or continue farther to the Zuni Reservation, mentioned earlier.

Veer off Rt25 and head to Jemez Springs where you’ll find, red rock canyons, old logging roads and hot springs. Farther along in the Valles Caldera National Preserve you can see herds of elk grazing in a 13-mile-wide meadow that is now all that remains of a collapsed volcano cone after a massive ancient eruption.

Nearby the 11,000-year-old cliff dwellings carved into the canyon walls of Bandelier National Monument are a must stop. There are plenty of interesting detours and quirky stops to make along the way.

Santa Fe and Toas lie in the mountains farther north of Albuquerque and have been popular destinations with artists and writers since the early 1900s – D.H. Lawrence, Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams and many others enjoyed the vibrant Indian and Hispanic cultures. Today Hollywood stars like Julia Roberts, Val Kilmer, Ted Danson, and Oprah Winfrey have homes in the area.

The city retains it early Spanish heritage with historic adobe buildings surrounding Santa Fe Plaza. The Indian market is still held under El Portal in front of the Palace of the Governors, the oldest continually occupied public building in the United States, since its construction in 1610.

The region continues to support artists and craftspeople with numerous galleries, festivals, and fairs. A stretch of 80 art galleries in old adobe buildings along Canyon Road belies its ancient roots as part of El Camino Real, The Royal Road, that ran 1600 miles to Mexico City. Famously Spanish settlers from Mexico introduced chili peppers into the region via this ancient trade route.

The landscapes north of Santa Fe continue to be intriguing, with Black Mesa, sacred to Native Americans, and the Puye Cliff Dwellings which run along the base of a mesa for over a mile. Stairs and paths cut into the cliff face led to adobe structures atop the mesa’s plateau. East of Espanola, the Santuario de Chimayo, built in 1816, still attracts pilgrims seeking miraculous cures from its “healing dirt.”

Heading into the mountains of northern New Mexico, the durability and sustainability of well-maintained adobe structures are evident in the elegant San Francisco de Asis Catholic Mission Church in Rancho de Taos, which dates from 1772.

Impressive Taos Pueblo, a multi-storied residential complex, has been continually occupied since its construction in the 1400s. Today nearly 150 people continue to live traditionally in the pueblo, as their ancestors did, without running water or electricity.

Nearby the Rio Grande River Gorge fractures the earth like a lightning bolt. The view from the center of the bridge looking down into the chasm is magnificent and terrifying. Farther north as the river rises from the gorge it has a totally different character as it meanders through the high desert.

While this far north, it’s worth the effort to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, located just across the state line in southern Colorado.

Over many thousands of years, sands blown across the high desert plains accumulated at the base of the Rocky Mountains here to form the tallest dunes in North America.

Wave when you see us!

Till next time, Craig & Donna

The Turquoise Trail: Scenic, Artsy and Quirky

| 2suitcasesfor2years

We always have a wonderful time in New Mexico, but often we’ve too easily fallen into the fastest route, the Albuquerque to Santa Fe rut. Heading north on Rt25, with the Sandia Mountain Range glowing in the late afternoon light on your right and a spectacular sunset in the west is a sublime experience, worthy of inclusion into the “wonders of the world.” The sky and light out here are just awesome, especially if it’s your first time to the Southwest. Aside from traveling north through Jemez Springs, Valles Caldera and Bandelier National Monument, all great destinations admittedly, there are not many alternative routes to Santa Fe, unless you are willing to circumnavigate northern New Mexico for days and hundreds of miles, which is a great alternative and may inspire future adventures.

Instead of following the “westward ho!” from cowboy movies of our youth, we headed east out of Albuquerque eighteen miles on Interstate 40/Route 66 to the Tijeras Pueblo Archaeological Site and the beginning of the Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway. The trail is a splendid backroad route that gracefully curves, rises and falls through the rugged foothills of the Sandia and Ortiz mountains as it follows NM14 north for 65 miles. Passing through the historic towns of Golden, Madrid, Cerrillos and San Marcos just south of Santa Fe.

Archeological evidence found at multiple sites in Tijeras Canyon traces early habitation going back 9,000 years, near the end of the last Ice Age. The Pueblos people and their first permanent dwellings date to the 10th century AD.

It’s believed that Tijeras Pueblo was built in the early 1300s and had 200 rooms in terraced buildings arranged in a U-shape pattern around a central kiva.  The settlement only flourished for about 100 years before it was abandoned in the 1400s due to extended periods of drought and raids from nomadic Plains Indian tribes.  The Spanish tried to encourage settlement of the area in 1763 with the Carnuel land grant, but that failed after repeated raids by Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache Indians forced settlers to flee. Permanent resettlement didn’t occur until 1819 when the Spanish made peace with the tribes.

Sadly, today all that is left of the Tijeras Pueblo is a terribly eroded mound of rubble with a self-guided trail that winds through the ruins. There is a small museum attached to the Park Ranger Station, which is only open on weekends.

If you haven’t taken the Sandia Peak Tramway, due to the fear of heights or its expense, you can still enjoy the view with your feet firmly planted on the ground. Follow NM14 north, turn left in the village of San Antonito onto Sandia Crest Road, and follow the signs to the 10,678-ft summit. Entrance to the park is free, but there is a small parking fee at the top. The views across Albuquerque are fantastic!

Past San Antonito the desolate, sparsely populated nature of the old west returns, with open vistas and greater distances between dirt tracks that spur occasionally left or right from the road and lead who knows where.

Legends of “Seven Cities of Gold,” and treasure that was rumored to rival the Aztec’s wealth brought Francisco Vazquez de Coronado with 2000 conquistadors north from Mexico City in 1540. On the Rio Grande north of present-day Albuquerque, Coronado commandeered a pueblo as headquarters for his expedition. His men spent two years searching an unknown region that spanned from Texas and Kansas to the Grand Canyon, searching for gold. He never found any because the Pueblo tribes attributed no value to it. Turquoise was the gold they mined for. Spiritual properties attributed to the stone are courage, good fortune and protection of the wearer in battles. The stone was a valuable trading commodity and pieces of Cerrillos Turquoise have been found by archeologists at indigenous sites in Canada and Aztec and Mayan tombs in Central America. Two years later Coronado returned to Mexico empty handed, though his camp was only 30 miles from the stream where this precious mineral glittered in the water.

In 1825, decades before the California Gold Rush, when New Mexico was still part of the Spanish Empire, the mineral placer gold was discovered in Tuerto Creek which ran down from the Ortiz Mountains. Two rough mining camps grew into small villages named El Real de San Francisco and Placer del Tuerto. Built with adobe bricks in 1830, the San Francisco de Asis Catholic Church congregation sought to soften the rough mining town’s edges.

This first discovery of gold west of the Mississippi brought prosperity to the villages for several decades. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War in 1848 and allowed the New Mexico territory to be annexed to the United States and the villages were combined and renamed Golden. At its zenith, the town supported many businesses, several saloons, a stock exchange, school, and post office. By the mid-1890s the luster of gold had worn away and ranching had become the dominant enterprise. Folks moved away for better opportunities; the last nail in its coffin and the beginning of its transition to a ghost town was the closure of its post office in 1928.

Not much has changed since then for Golden. If you blink you’ve driven through it. But the quirky Bottle House is worth a quick stop and sets the tone for the area that’s full of independent, eccentric, and colorful personalities. The towns along the Turquoise Trail all share similar once-prosperous histories followed by decades of decline, until a slow rediscovery began in the 1970s. It started to attract folks and artists drawn to the ruggedness and beauty of the terrain, those seeking an alternative lifestyle, wanting to live off-the-grid, or just wanting to be left alone. Evolution happens and of course there are now more homes, restaurants, RV parks, small museums, shops, and galleries. But fortunately, there seems to be some unspoken agreement between the old timers and newcomers to keep the area “historically quaint and Old West,” as if time has stopped. You’ll have to drive to Albuquerque to find a strip mall.

A short distance farther along, the San Francisco de Asis Catholic Church and cemetery still stand and command a small knoll above the road.  Its original adobe bricks were covered with a concrete veneer during a 1960’s restoration. But walk around the back of the church and it’s possible to see them where the veneer has broken away. The church supports a small congregation and holds mass on Saturdays at 4:00 pm.  Annually, every 1st Saturday of October, the church hosts the Fiesta de San Francisco de Assis which begins with a 11:00 am mass, followed with the blessing of the graves in the cemetery and a procession lead by Matachines dancers.

The vistas between the towns are epically endless and evoked thoughts of how folks centuries ago managed to survive on this wild frontier. Drive too fast and you’ll whiz by many interesting roadside attractions.

Compared to Golden, Madrid is a metropolis! Coal was discovered in the Ortiz Mountains during the mid-1800s, spurring a squatter’s camp called Coal Gulch. MAD-rid, not Ma-DRID, was founded in 1869. So much coal was being mined that the Santa Fe railroad constructed a spur down from Cerrillos into the town in 1892. We wet our whistles on the patio of the Madrid Brewing Company & Museum, in front of an ancient steam train with what we must say was one of the best craft beers we’ve tasted.

It’s difficult to believe that at its zenith the town once boasted a population greater than Albuquerque’s 3000 folks in 1906. All the small claims were eventually consolidated into the Albuquerque and Cerrillos Coal Company. It became a company town and the extraction of coal from the hills surrounding the town was king. The company provided the booming town and its employees with everything.

Houses were bought in Kanas, disassembled, and shipped on the railroad to Madrid to satisfy the demands of a growing population. The company built a community center, school, and hospital. Most importantly, after it burned down on Christmas Day in 1944, the company rebuilt the Mineshaft Tavern, with its famous 40′ long bar where miners could stretch out after a long shift hunched over underground. The first lighted baseball field west of the Mississippi was built for the town’s minor league baseball team, called the Madrid Miners. Electricity produced at the local coal fired power station ran the mines and was provided free to all the residents of the town. Free electricity encouraged extravagant Christmas light displays that drew in visitors from afar to see lights that covered every building and were strung up the mountainside.

The company brought 160,000 gallons of water daily by train tank cars into the town and legend says every home had a green lawn. The price of coal collapsed in the 1950s when natural gas was beginning to be piped into homes, and the company and town’s economy collapsed as well. In 1954 the entire town was offered for sale for $250,000.00 in the Wall Street Journal. There were not any buyers. Except for a few squatters, the town sat abandoned for twenty years until it was decided to sell the company homes one at a time. Studios, shops, museums, restaurants, and galleries now line the 20 mph main stretch. Packed with tourists on the weekends, it’s almost impossible to find a place to park. Like the rebuilt bar, the town today is a phoenix risen from the ashes.

Just north of Madrid, a huge contemporary metal sculpture similar to a Trojan Horse highlights the landscape. You can’t get very close to it, as there’s no visible gate and it’s behind a rancher’s barbed wire fencing. As of this writing I haven’t been able to identify the artist. The sculpture is intriguing, and its placement is mystifying. Other artists have also placed their creations along the drive.

The turn for Cerrillos lies just beyond the bridge that crosses the over the Arroyo Viejo, a seasonal creek. It’s the only town on the Turquoise Trail that you have to turn off NM 14 to reach. That half-mile journey takes you back 150 years to a village with dusty dirt roads, wide enough to turn around a team of horses and a wagon. Cerrillos retains its old west authenticity, with many original adobe structures and 1800s era rough-hewn lumbered storefronts. It is deemed so authentic, many western movies have used the town for their location shoots, most notably the 3:10 to Yuma (2007) starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, along with Young Guns (1988) which had a huge famous cast that starred Jack Palance, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, and a cameo appearance by Tom Cruise as a soldier shot in the climatic scene. The action comedy with Clint Eastwood Every Which Way but Loose (1978) was also filmed here. A few miles away John Wayne filmed The Cowboys (1972) in San Marcos.

Pueblo Indians had been conducting small open pit mining with hatchets on Mount Chalchihuitl, which is now part of Cerrillos Hills State Park, since the 900s. The stone was gathered for its believed sacred properties, along with lead sulfide, which was the source of glaze paint used to decorate native pottery. Spanish settlers arrived in the 1600s and mined the same hills for silver. There was an uneasy coexistence, and silver mining ceased with the Pueblo Rebellion in 1680. Small mining efforts returned to the area after the Spanish renewed efforts to live peacefully with the Pueblo tribes. New Mexico was a United States territory when gold was discovered around Cerrillos in 1879.  The railroad arrived in 1880. The boom town supported thousands of miners with 4 hotels, 5 brothels, 21 saloons, and an opera house which once hosted a performance by the famous French stage actress and singer “the Divine Sarah,” Sarah Bernhardt.

Four thousand prospecting pits, mine shafts and holes were dug in the area by 1884. The town’s prosperity and recreation attracted outlaws like the Ketchum Gang, Silva’s White Caps and Billy the Kid. Cowboys from Cerrillos were recruited to join Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders for their campaign through Cuba during the Spanish American War. The president of a gold and silver mining company began promoting turquoise and silver Jewelry to visitors arriving by train. Tiffany & Co. at one point even owned their own mine to provide the stone for their booming turquoise jewelry sales that lasted into the 1900s. The St Joseph Catholic Church standing today was built in 1922 and replaced an earlier 1884 structure. A Methodist Church graced the other end of town. It was never a ghost town, but slowly, one by one, the area’s mining operations played out and closed until only several hundred people remained in the area.

Mid-week in early spring, the only door that swung open was at the Casa Grande Trading Post and Cerrillos Turquoise Mining Museum which has a mind-boggling array of displays and trinkets. It is a large 28 room adobe hacienda that looks like it has been there for centuries. But in fact the owners, Todd and Patricia Brown, along with family and friends, started construction in the 1970s that eventually utilized 65,000 handmade adobe bricks.

Some Interesting highlights from the Cerrillos Historical Society include:

1888 – The dark stain on the floor of Dr. Palmer’s second-floor office, the relic of Black Jack Ketchum’s bullet wound, is the local must-see attraction. The first meeting of the Cerrillos Masonic Lodge is held at the Palace Hotel in their upstairs room.

February 19, 1890, 11am – Nelly Bly, the famous New York World reporter was racing back to New York on her round-the-world-in-80-days journey (she made it in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, 14 seconds). Her train stopped at Cerrillos only long enough to take on water. The 67 miles from Albuquerque to Lamy by rail was done at the breakneck speed of 46 miles an hour!

August 1892 – The new railroad spur to Coal Gulch is completed and the town of Madrid is born.

1899 – The Cochiti Gold Mining Company builds an Edison coal-fired dynamo at Madrid, which provides Cerrillos with its first electric lights. Those were the days!

Just past an interesting geological rock formation called Garden of the Gods, we reached our farthest point north and turned around on the Turquois Trail in San Marcos at the intersection with the road that leads east to Galisteo and eventual the pueblo ruins at Pecos National Historical Park. Along the road here are some whimsical wind sculptures created by David Hickman.

We could have continued north on NM14 to Santa Fe, but we chose to return to Albuquerque via Madrid and stop for a crisp cold beer at the Mine Shaft Tavern and stretch our legs.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

South of Albuquerque: Mountains, Missions and Bottomless Cups of Coffee

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In all our previous trips to Albuquerque, we had always opted to head towards Santa Fe, never exploring south of the city. But we only had a few days to ourselves this time after attending our daughter’s wedding and decided to do day trips from the Duke City. The nickname references the city’s naming in 1706 honoring the 10th Duke of Albuquerque and/or the Albuquerque Dukes, a beloved minor league baseball team.

The pueblo ruins around Mountainair piqued our interest. We mapped out a circular route; south on I-25, east on NM-60 to Mountainair, then north on NM-55 & NM-337 to Tijeras where we would pick up I-40 West back to town. The day dawned with a crisp blue sky, and we headed south. We would have preferred a slower drive through the Rio Grande Valley nearer the stately Manzano Mountain range, but with 153 miles to go and multiple stops it would be a long day. The panoramas from I-25 were expansive.

Francisco Vazquez de Coronado’s failed mission to find the legendary “Seven Cities of Gold,” in 1540 did not discourage other explorers from trying, which brought Don Juan de Oñate onto the scene. A marriage to Doña Isabel de Tolosa Cortés de Moctezuma, granddaughter of conquistador Hernán Cortés, and the great-granddaughter of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II, gave Don Juan de Oñate new prestige and influence. In 1595 King Philip II of Spain chose Ornate to colonize the upper Rio Grande valley. In 1598 he led an expedition that included his nine-year-old son, a nephew, 20 Franciscan missionaries, 400 settlers, 129 soldiers, 83 wagons, plus livestock, north from Mexico City, with the stated mission from the Pope to spread Catholicism. But there was also hope that riches rivaling that of the Aztecs and Incas would be found again. Fording the Rio Grande near present day El Paso, he proclaimed all the lands north of the river “for God, the Church, and the Crown.”

They eventually reached three pueblos in the Abó Pass area, which were on an ancient route between the mountains that facilitated trade between the Plains Indians of Eastern New Mexico and the Pueblo peoples that lived in the lush Rio Grande Valley. This area that at the time was thought to have a population of 10,000 talented farmers, weavers, stone masons, ceramicists, and adobe making Pueblo Indians, which the Spaniards quickly began exploiting. They eventually reached three pueblos in the Abó Pass area, which were on an ancient route between the mountains that facilitated trade between the Plains Indians of Eastern New Mexico and the Pueblo peoples that lived in the lush Rio Grande Valley.

This area that at the time was thought to have a population of 10,000 talented farmers, weavers, stone masons, ceramicists, and adobe making Pueblo Indians, which the Spaniards quickly began exploiting. Life in the new territory under Oñate was severe. Some settlers urged a return to Mexico when silver was not discovered, and Oñate executed the dissenters. Pueblos that refused to share winter food stocks needed for their own survival were brutally suppressed into submission. The most notorious crime occurred at the Acoma Pueblo, north of Albuquerque, when the inhabitants resisted seizure of their winter provisions, killing Oñate’s nephew during the upheaval. In response, soldiers under his command massacred 800 men, women, and children. The 500 surviving villagers were enslaved and by his decree every Acoma man over the age of twenty-five had his left foot amputated. Word of his atrocities eventually reached the Spanish throne, and in 1606 he was recalled to Mexico City, tried and convicted of cruelty to colonists and natives. With a slap on the wrist, he was banished from Nuevo México, and allowed passage to Spain where the king appointed him Minister of Mining Inspections.

In 1621, Fray Francisco Fonte was assigned the task of building a mission at Abó Pueblo. First occupying rooms in an existing pueblo and later commandeering labor, including a large number of women, to build a separate church and convento which radically incorporated a kiva into its structure. This effort at syncretism was most likely modeled after the Catholic church’s success in Peru where Pachamama, an “Earth Mother” goddess who was celebrated to facilitate the indigenous population’s conversion to Catholicism. This  technique was adapted from Julius Caesar who allowed conquered peoples to keep their religions, as it “eased the acceptance of Roman rule.”

Two other Church missions in the Salinas Valley at Gran Quivira and Quarai pueblos were also constructed around the same time as Abo’s and also incorporate Kivas. This was a controversial practice as the Spanish Inquisition, (1478–1834), was still going strong. This threat couldn’t be used against the Puebloans, as they were not yet considered citizens of Spain without conversion. But it was a dangerous tight rope for the friars who constantly heard from the regional Spanish civil authorities that they were overly tolerant of the Indians “pagan beliefs,” and the Puebloan’s religious studies took too much time away from the encomendero. The encomendero was a colonial business model that granted conquistadores or ordinary Spaniards the right to free labor and tribute from the indigenous population. In return Nuevo México encomiendas were obligated to “instruct the Indians in the Roman Catholic faith and the rudiments of Spanish civilization.” The free land and free Indian labor promised with the encomendero was also used as a recruiting tool to encourage settlers to venture into the wilderness. The pueblos did not submit willingly; any resistance was violently suppressed. Though out-numbering the Spanish invaders, the Indians’ weapons of stone-tipped arrows and spears were no match against the Spaniards’ guns, armor, metal swords, and horses. Relations with Puebloans ultimately deteriorated when the friars, under civil pressure, refused to allow the kachina dances in the Kivas and filled them with rubble and dirt to prevent their use.

An extended period of drought and frequent raids from the plains tribes led to abandonment of the three Salinas pueblos by 1678, two years before the Pueblo Revolution in 1680 in which they surely would have participated. Four-hundred Spaniards died, including 21 of the 33 priests, but there were almost 2000 Spanish survivors. Warriors followed the fleeing refugees all the way to El Paso to ensure their expulsion from Indian territory.

When the Spanish returned 12 years later, they did not try to reimpose the encomendero and returning missionaries displayed more tolerance of indigenous religious beliefs. Spain instead sought to enlist the Pueblo tribes as allies to resist French and British empire expansion farther west. But the Salinas Valley remained deserted until Spanish shepherds returned for a few years in the early 1800s, only to be forced out by nomadic Apaches. Successful resettlement did not happen until the mid-1860s.

We turned off NM-60. Long ago the road was known as the Atlantic and Pacific Highway, one of the original Auto Trails in the early years of motoring. It was a route marked with colored bands on utility poles, that started in Los Angeles, California, and ended 2700 miles later in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Those were the days! We followed the single lane road into a gully and through a seasonal stream before rising to a field in which the earth-red stone ruins of the Abó mission glowed in the morning sun. The ruins of the mission church are massive. The complex must have been a wonderous sight when it was built next to the pueblos. Unfortunately, only piles of rubble remain of the pueblos themselves and I could not find a record as to why they were destroyed. But there is an entry from a Spaniard’s journal that describes the Salinas villages before the mission was constructed; “Each of these pueblos must have about 800 people, young and old. They were close to the plains and had bison-hide (acquired by bartering salt with the Apaches,) as well as cotton and deerskin garments; they had maize and turkeys; their houses were well-built, of slabs and rocks and whitewashed inside; the province was well forested with pine and juniper.”

We imagined a small town nestled into the mountains. Yes, it sits on the summit of Abó Pass at an elevation of 6,500 feet, in the vast expanse of the high desert. The mountains were way behind us. Mountainair is a misnomer, though the air is crisp and the town catches the winds blowing in from the eastern New Mexico plain. It’s a quaint crossroads that keeps its frontier spirit alive. In the early 1900s it was also “The Pinto Bean Capital of the World,” when peak production filled over 750 train carloads of beans in one season. A 10-year drought in the 1940s forced farmers to become ranchers. The town had passenger rail service between 1907 and mid-1960s. The railroad is an important part of the town’s heritage and BNSF Railway now owns the old Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway depot which is on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s a good spot to watch freight trains, many over a mile long, on the Southern Transcon route, pass by.

One block south of the main thoroughfare the Shaffer Hotel anchors a quiet corner. It has welcomed guests since “Mom & Pop” Shaffer built it in 1923 and decorated it with chandeliers, hand-carved vigas, and Indian art patterns painted on the walls and ceilings in bright primitive colors. The façade features four Navajo Whirling Logs, ancient symbols that represent wellbeing, good luck and protection, but unfortunately, they are often misinterpreted as nefarious swastikas. During the Depression the hotel claimed itself to be “The Most Unique Hotel in the World.” The hotel boasts a colorful history and one on legends tells of the time when Mom fired a shot at Pop when she found him in the arms of another women. She missed, but the bullet is still lodged in the ceiling above the stairs. The marriage continued. Mom died before she got to kill him.

Mr. Shaffer lived on to become a well-regarded creative wood sculptor, using twisted roots and branches from local juniper trees to carve imaginary beasts. Eleanor Roosevelt arranged an exhibit of his unique folk-art in Washington, D.C. An unusual rock-inlaid fence that Pop built still surrounds the side yard of the inn. At the Mustang Diner good food and, surprisingly, bottomless cups of coffee (star****’s is a foul word in my vocabulary) were a welcome break.

Gas stations are far apart out here, and Mountainair will be your last opportunity to fill the tank for many miles. From Mountainair we could have driven south to Gran Quivira, but it would have been a sixty-mile roundtrip, so we chose to save it for another time.

The views across the high desert were endless as we headed north on NM-55 to the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument Quarai Unit. To the east white puffy clouds raced across the sky. We turned west and drove into the rain. The storm was clearing by the time we stopped at an old church in Punta de Agua, not far from the Quarai mission, that dates from the 1860s.

A sign at the entrance warned visitors to stay on the paved trail to avoid rattlesnakes. It was an easy one-mile loop that took us through the church ruins and mounds of the fallen pueblos before circling back through a forest and picnic area. Four massive centuries-old logs still firmly held the weight of the thick stone wall above the church entrance. The scale of the church was immense, and the ruins towered above us.

The three Salinas Valley missions share similar histories, but there is an interesting side note to the Quarai mission. It served as the seat of the Spanish Inquisition in Nuevo México during the mid-1600s. A Spanish Inquisition panel consisting of three priests would send abusive encomenderos, (Indians did have certain rights under Spain’s complex laws), and mis-guided priests guilty of liaisons with native women, back to Mexico City for trail. The women would be sent to Santa Fe to be whipped by civil authorities.

The Quarai mission also had an unusual square kiva built within its walls, but there are not any historical references to why this shape was used. As with the one in Ado it’s thought that the kiva’s location within the walls of the mission represents the church’s syncretic approach to teaching the Puebloans the gospel. By the 1630s, there were 25 mission districts encompassing 90 pueblos in northern New Mexico, with 50 friars trying to convert nearly 60,000 Indians.

The good condition of the ruins today are the results of repairs and stabilization projects started in the 1930s by the Depression era Work Projects Administration, WPA, under the guidance of the Museum of New Mexico.

Our route back to Albuquerque traversed many isolated hamlets without many amenities. Coffee and food was a thing of the past until we reached Duke City. But we did pass several nicely done religious murals along the way in Manzano and Chilili.

The mural on the side of San Juan Nepomuceno Church in Chilili looks like it’s a scene from a Spanish Iberian village and we questioned the choice of a scenic river and bridge as a background, only to realize later that, behind the church, we had in fact crossed over a bridge that spanned the Canon De Chilili, and left centuries behind.   

Till next time,

Craig and Donna