Gran Quivira Pueblo Ruins, New Mexico

On our first lengthy motorcycle ride, Gryphon and I drove to the village of Mountainair, New Mexico, to meet friends from Motor Maids for lunch. After lunch we all headed out to the Gran Quivira site of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument to explore the historic ruins there.

From the National Park Service web site for the monument:
Once, thriving American Indian trade communities of Tiwa and Tompiro speaking Puebloans inhabited this remote frontier area of central New Mexico. Early in the 17th-century Spanish Franciscans found the area ripe for their missionary efforts. However, by the late 1670s the entire Salinas District, as the Spanish had named it, was depopulated of both Indian and Spaniard. What remains today are austere yet beautiful reminders of this earliest 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.

Looking up at newer uncompleted church What was this room for? Butterfly, accidentally looking butch Kiva Mounds of unexcavated areas Metates or grinding stones - course, medium, and fine Overlooking a house block to the newer church Another view of the newer church The largest house block Site from the 1500, built over site from the 1300s Little blue-striped lizard or skink Gryphon, Benjy, and H.A. Gryphon, and H.A. Kiva House block Part of la conventa La conventa This church was never completed Sockets for vigas in the sacristy Part of the new church Part of the new church

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