Maria Ramita Simbola Martinez, Cora Durand and Virginia Duran

Three women from one small pueblo kept a cooking pot alive. Potters at Picuris have worked mica-flecked clay from the nearby mountains since about 1600, a tradition shared with Taos twenty miles north. Cora Durand learned it from her grandmother and passed it to her grandson Anthony, now a known potter himself. Virginia Duran added an extra slip of mica for more glitter and from the 1960s gave demonstrations, teaching others to build the vessels. Maria Ramita Simbola Martinez, Summer Harvest, made thin-walled pots meant for use. The panel stands where the pueblo road leaves NM-75.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Maria Ramita Simbola Martinez "Summer Harvest" (1884-1969), Cora Durand (1904-1981), Virginia Duran (1904-1998) Picuris Pueblo Maria Ramita Simbola Martinez, Cora Durand, and Virginia Duran helped to preserve the distinctive micaceous pottery tradition that is important in Picuris and other nearby pueblos. Made with locally mined mica-rich clay, these unusual pots have a glittery sheen. They are fired at a low temperature which makes them ideal for cooking. While valued for their utility, these pots are also now considered works of art.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — 13 mi
  The adobe church at Ranchos de Taos that artists always paint from behind, kept standing by the mud its parish spreads over it every June.
• El Santuario de Chimayó — 18 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.
• Rio Grande Gorge Bridge — 19 mi
  A steel truss strung across a slot in the basalt west of Taos, 565 feet above the river by the careful measure and 650 by the signs, built when the road beyond it did not yet exist.
• Taos Pueblo — 20 mi
  Two terraced adobe houses facing each other across Red Willow Creek, lived in for something like a thousand years, with no electricity or running water inside the old walls.

More markers nearby

• Pueblo of Picuris — 1.4 mi
• Las Trampas — 5.0 mi
• Pilar — 5.6 mi
• Captive Women and Children of Taos County — 7.5 mi