San Francisco de Asis Church

The panel's 1813 to 1815 rests on two documents. The village received permission to build a church in 1813, and late in 1815 Fray José Benito Pereyro asked the bishop at Durango to allow burials inside the nave. Pereyro was the friar at San Gerónimo de Taos, serving the whole valley from 1810 to 1818, and took on Ranchos as well around 1815; the village had no priest of its own. Architectural historians put the building itself at about 1814 to 1816. The heading carries its own slip, Rancho for Ranchos.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker San Francisco de Asis Church Rancho de Taos, New Mexico This Mission Church is one of the oldest churches in America dedicated to San Francisco de Asis. It was constructed between 1813 and 1815 under the direction of the Franciscan Fray José Benito Pereyro. It is an outstanding example of adobe, mission architecture. This Church continues to this day to be a place of worship and an integral part of the community.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — steps away
  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.
• Taos Pueblo — 6.6 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 — 11 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.
• El Santuario de Chimayó — 31 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.

More markers nearby

• Taos — 2.9 mi
• Kit Carson Memorial Cemetery — 4.0 mi
• Taos Canyon — 5.0 mi
• Taos — 5.7 mi