Pueblo of Santa Clara

The pueblo the panel describes gave federal Indian law one of its landmark cases. A 1939 ordinance admitted the children of Santa Clara men who married outside the pueblo but not those of Santa Clara women. Julia Martinez married a Navajo man in 1941 and raised their children here; under the rule they could not vote, hold office or inherit her house. She and her daughter Audrey sued, and on May 15, 1978, the Supreme Court held that federal courts could not hear the claim: who belongs to Santa Clara was the pueblo's own to decide.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Pueblo of Santa Clara Founded around the fourteenth century, Santa Clara traces its ancestry to Puye, an abandoned site of cave dwellings on the Pa- jarito Plateau. Increasing ten- sions with the Spanish led to its participation in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The mission church, once thought to be the narrowest of its kind, has been reconstructed several times since the 17th cen- tury.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• El Santuario de Chimayó — 9.0 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.
• Fuller Lodge — 13 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 — 17 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.
• Palace of the Governors — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• Pablita Velarde, Tse Tsan, Golden Dawn — steps away
• The Bond House — 1.5 mi
• Santa Cruz de la Cañada / Santa Cruz Plaza on the Camino Real — 2.8 mi
• Española Valley — 3.1 mi