Gran Quivira, Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument
On the web:
www.nps.gov/sapu/index.htm
Once, thriving American Indian trade communities of Tiwa and Tompiro speaking Puebloans inhabited this remote area of central New Mexico. Early in the 17th-century Spanish Franciscans visited the area and found it ripe for their missionary efforts. However, by 1677 the entire Salinas District, was depopulated of both Indian and Spaniard alike.
Cultural Resources
What remains today are austere yet beautiful reminders of the early contact between Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonials. The ruins of four mission churches, at Quarai, Abó, and Gran Quivira and the partially excavated pueblo of Las Humanas or, as it is known today, Gran Quivira. Established in 1980 through the combination of two New Mexico State Monuments and the former Gran Quivira National Monument, the present Monument comprises a total of 1,100 acres.
Natural Resources
Salinas Pueblo Missions was set aside because of the importance of the cultural resources, however, there is a major connecting link to the natural resources. The link is the importance of man's adjustment to a marginal land and the man-land relationship during the past 1,000+ years of occupation.
About Gran Quivira
Long recognized as one of the most important of the earliest Spanish church or mission ruins in the Southwest, the Gran Quivira was set aside as a national monument November 1, 1909, with an area of 160 acres. On November 25, 1919, the monument reservation was increased to 423.77 acres to protect the numerous Indian pueblo ruins situated near by.
The Gran Quivira stands upon an eminence of about 7,000 feet altitude, and commands a wide view of the surrounding country. The old church, of which only a few ruined walls remain, was established about the time the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock. The "new" church was built about 1649, of blue-gray limestone laid in mud mortar in the form of a cross, with the short arms forming the side chapels. Its walls, in places nearly 40 feet high and 4 to 6 feet thick, roofless and ragged at the top, indicate a floor space of 4,978 feet.
The extensive monastery and convents attached are plainly indicated by ruined walls. Excavations carried on by the School of American Research of Santa Fe, under permit from the Interior Department, during several years past, have resulted in cleaning up the ruins and revealing many interesting details of the Indian pueblos. Both churches are said to have been built by the women and children of the Piro Tribe of Indians.
These important ruins of dual interest can be reached by automobile from Mountainair, about 25 miles from the monument. In addition to the ruins of the Gran Quivira National Monument, the ruins of Cuarai and Abo, neighboring mission churches, may be reached from Mountainair. Cuarai, the largest, and Abo, the mother church, built of native red sandstone, present picturesque scenes among the cedar-lined hills.
Info and images courtesy National Park Service and National Center for Cultural Resources
