Jémez State Monument

The ruins came into public hands by deed. On June 21, 1921, the Jemez Land Company conveyed the seven acres to the School of American Research and the Museum of New Mexico, and in 1935 State Land Commissioner Frank Vesely proclaimed the state monument. The church and pueblo were dug and stabilized in 1910, 1921 and again by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935-37. A 2011 legislative memorial asked for a study of handing the site's operation to the Pueblo of Jemez; it became a National Historic Landmark in 2012 and is now the Jemez Historic Site.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Jémez State Monument The village of Giusewa was occupied by ancestors of the Jémez Indians before the arrival of the Spanish in 1541. Its ruins lie close to those of the great stone mission church of San Jose de Los Jeméz, which was built by the Franciscans around 1622.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jemez Historic Site — steps away
  The stone walls of a 1620s mission church standing among the ruins of Gisewa, a Jemez village named for the hot springs beside it.
• Valles Caldera National Preserve — 12 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.
• Fuller Lodge — 23 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 — 23 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

• Evelyn M. Vigil, Phan-un-pha-kee (Young Doe) — 9.8 mi
• Pueblo of Jémez — 9.8 mi
• Valle Grande — 14 mi
• Colorado Plateau — 17 mi