Agueda S. Martinez (1898-2000)

The panel's matriarch built a women's line in a men's tradition. Born in Chamita in 1898, Agueda Salazar learned to weave rag rugs from a neighbor at twelve, married the Chimayó weaver Eusebio Martínez in 1916 and studied with Lorenzo Trujillo. She supported ten children on woven goods and her garden, and set her daughters at the loom as soon as they could stand at it, in a craft long dominated by families like the Ortegas and Trujillos. In her late sixties she began teaching weaving herself. She died in Medanales in 2000, at 102.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Agueda S. Martinez, (1898-2000) "You Will Find Me Dancing on the Loom" Agueda is the matriarch of Hispanic weaving in New Mexico. From a very young age, she was known for her complex designs and natural dyes. She was the subject of the Academy Award-nominated documentary film, "Agueda Martinez: Our People, Our Country." Her weaving is carried on by fifty-two direct descendants and can be seen today in many museums, including the Smithsonian. Official Scenic Historic Marker New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative The New Mexico Historic Women Marker Initiative was founded in 2005 by members of the New Mexico Women's Forum in a statewide effort to recognize women's contributions to New Mexico history on the state's Official Scenic Historic Markers. The Initiative ensures that women's diverse histories will be remembered and told, and will inspire and provide a guide for future generations. The 2006 Legislature funded the project.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• El Santuario de Chimayó — 19 mi
  A small adobe shrine on the High Road to Taos, built around 1816 over earth that pilgrims still carry away in hope of healing.
• Ghost Ranch — 20 mi
  Red, yellow and white cliffs above the Piedra Lumbre basin, where Georgia O'Keeffe bought seven acres in 1940 and paleontologists found a hillside full of dinosaurs in 1947.
• Fuller Lodge — 20 mi
  The upright-log dining hall of a boys' ranch school, which fed and housed the Manhattan Project after the Army bought the school in 1942.
• Valles Caldera National Preserve — 27 mi
  A crater thirteen miles across, floored with grass, left by an eruption 1.25 million years ago and owned privately for 140 years under a law that called it vacant land.

More markers nearby

• Abiquiú — 8.0 mi
• Doña Margarita Martín — 9.7 mi
• Los Luceros Hacienda — 9.7 mi
• San Gabriel On the Camino Real — 11 mi