Pueblo of Picuris

The panel gives a meaning for Picuris, not the name its people use. Picuris is the Spanish rendering of a word glossed as those who paint; in Tiwa the pueblo is P'įwweltha, one gloss being mountain pass place. Its men went to the 1680 siege of Santa Fe under Luis Tupatú, who led the northern pueblos after Po'pay. The church of about 1776 replaced one that stood outside the walls and was sacked in a Comanche raid in 1769, after which Governor Pedro Fermín de Mendinueta ordered the new one built against the pueblo.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Pueblo of Picuris When Spaniards arrived at Picuris in 1591, they described the pueblo as con- sisting of nine-story roomblocks. The church is named for its patron saint, San Lorenzo, and according to oral tradition has been rebuilt five times. The original church was destroyed in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt and rebuilt ca. 1776. Following a multi-year restor- ation, it was rededicated on August 10, in 2000, an annual feast day and the 320th anniversary of the uprising. The name Picuris means "those who paint" in Tiwa. Once one of the largest pueblos, today Picuris is among New Mexico's smallest.

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.
• 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.
• Rio Grande Gorge Bridge — 20 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.

More markers nearby

• Maria Ramita Simbola Martinez, Cora Durand and Virginia Duran — 1.4 mi
• Las Trampas — 4.9 mi
• Pilar — 6.9 mi
• Captive Women and Children of Taos County — 8.2 mi