Chimayo

The defensible plaza the panel ends on is a short walk from it: Plaza del Cerro, the plaza of the hill. Salvador de Espinosa bought land here in 1736, a 1785 baptism names the Plaza de San Buenaventura, and its one-story adobes faced inward with no doors or windows to the outside, a square of about an acre and a half. The oratorio of San Buenaventura still stands on its west side. A ditch was cut through the plaza in the 1930s, the houses slumped after the Second World War, and the National Register listed it in 1972.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Chimayo Indians occupied the Chimayo valley centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards. The village of Chimayo, founded in the early 18th century, shortly after the reconquest of New Mexico, has been a center of the Spanish weaving tradition for over 250 years. The village retains the his- torical pattern of settlement around a defensible plaza.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• El Santuario de Chimayó — 0.9 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.
• Palace of the Governors — 22 mi
  The long adobe on the north side of the Santa Fe plaza, called the oldest public building in continuous use in the country, though its own founding date is in dispute.
• Fuller Lodge — 22 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.
• Bandelier National Monument — 25 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.

More markers nearby

• Santuario de Chimayó — 0.9 mi
• Cordova — 1.9 mi
• Truchas — 6.2 mi
• Santa Cruz de la Cañada / Santa Cruz Plaza on the Camino Real — 6.6 mi