La Luz

The village's other light came out of its canyon clay. Rowland Hazard, a Rhode Islander who passed through in the 1920s, started La Luz Pottery around 1929 after finding rich clay deposits up La Luz Canyon. Its roof and floor tiles went onto buildings across New Mexico, specified by architects of the Pueblo and Mission Revival, John Gaw Meem among them, and a single firing in June 1931 turned out nearly 16,000 roof tiles. The factory buildings two miles up the canyon are on the National Register. The panel's 1719 founding is disputed.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker La Luz In 1719, Spanish Franciscan missionaries built a chapel here dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Luz, Our Lady of the Light. The naming of the village is also attribu- ted to the will o'wisp light in the canyon, a perpetually burning lamp in an elderly woman's home and a signal fire left by the male settlers, which when seen by the female settlers exclaimed, "¡La luz ! Allá está la luz !, The Light, there is the light!" Settlement of the village did not begin until around 1860, when settlers arrived from other villages devastated by floods on the Rio Grande.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• White Sands National Park — 18 mi
  The largest gypsum dunefield on Earth, a national park since 2019, surrounded on all sides by military ground whose missile tests close its only road for hours at a time.

More markers nearby

• New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired — 4.4 mi
• Commission for the Blind Orientation Center — 5.7 mi
• Tularosa — 6.1 mi
• Calvin Boles — 12 mi