Guest Post: Progress at the Moque Morada

This guest post is by Anne Galer. Thank you for your work, Anne!

With the help of the Abiquiu community, Cornerstones’ adobe experts and volunteers, preservation work on the Moque Morada is nearing completion. When the project began in early 2019, my structural assessment revealed large parts of the interior adobe walls had been melted by water. Faulty drainage from the old metal roof was allowing water to collect at the base of the exterior north wall, and windowpanes were broken. It was clear that intervention was needed before serious damage endangered the entire structure.

The Moque Morada is unusual in that women are its caretakers. Theresa Jaramillo, the Hermana Mayor of the morada, reached out, and Cornerstones got involved. Thanks to Cornerstones’ Stephen Calles, the metal roof which was damaged by winds and age was secured, and a new gutter and downspouts now channel water away from the building.

The biggest, and most time-consuming part of the project–repairing significant water damage to the interior walls of the east section of the building–was taken on by master enjarradora Angela Francis, who continues the historic New Mexico tradition of women adobe plasterers.

Before new plastering could begin, Virgil Trujillo and other members of the community hauled dirt from a traditional source and later helped sift and mix the soil into plaster. In a key part of her approach to the work, Angela did a series of test patches of different soils and mixes to find the strongest mud to apply.

Once preparations were complete, Angela started by removing loose dirt from a badly done patching. With her hands and a trowel, she built up the deeply coved sections at the top and bottom of the walls layer-by-layer and created an even base for subsequent finishing layers of mud plaster.

When I visited Abiquiu for the Santa Rosa de Lima festival in late August, Angela was putting the final touches of top coats on the beautifully smooth walls and carefully finishing off the kiva-style fireplace. A final coat, called aliz, is to be done with the pale yellow-brown local dirt used in the morada’s original construction.

Thanks to Steven, Angela, Theresa, and a community of volunteers the morada is in a good place to survive for another hundred-plus years. Great job!

Photos of Angela by Anne Galer.

It Is Brickmaking Season Again!

Last week, I spent an invigorating day at Plaza del Cerro, Chimayo. There students from Wellesley, Massachusetts’ Village Church volunteered during their spring break. Cornerstones has been honored to be one of their host organizations for nine of the last eleven years. 

The students participated in two projects. One group practiced traditional adobe brickmaking. Instead of using an electric mixer, they combined sand, straw, and clay and then used the “volcano method” to work the water into the dirt. The kids really got into it. They removed their shoes, rolled up their pants and mixed the adobe by stomping around in it in their bare feet. At one point, I heard enthusiastic singing. The kids were serenading themselves as they mixed the mud with their feet. Oh the energy of teenagers! 

The bricks the Wellesley kids made will go to rebuilding Casita Desiderio y Pablita Ortega, made in forms that match the size of the original bricks. Plaza del Cerro is one of the oldest occupied landscapes of its type remaining in New Mexico. Within it, the Casita Desiderio is one of the most deteriorated of the plaza houses. Saving, rehabilitating, and restoring it to a livable condition with modern conveniences will more fully restore the community space encompassed by the rich cultural heritage of this special landscape.

Another group of Wellesley students worked with our project archeologist Charlie Haecker inside Casita Desiderio y Pablita Ortega. This activity had an exciting discovery moment. During the excavation, Charlie and the students located the fireplace of the casita. Charlie explained to the students how the wall joins, as well as the animal bone they found indicated a fireplace to him. The kiva fireplace explains how the house was heated in winter time. Remnants found indicate the original design, making reconstruction possible. The students on the archeology team worked as hard as the brickmakers. A fast-growing cottonwood tree has taken up residence inside the casita. Some time ago, a section of the metal roofing fell and the tree grew into it. Several of the students worked, and worked, until they could remove it.    

Our Chimayo host was Victor Archuleta, Board President of the Chimayo Cultural Preservation Association. Victor’s roots in Chimayo are so deep that when one of the students asked him if any of the pictures at the Chimayo Museum were of his ancestors, he paused briefly as he glanced around and replied, “they all are.” He gave the students a traditional history as well as a personal account of what it was like to grow up in Chimayo. The students and I noticed letters carved in one of the walls at Casita Desiderio. With a boyish grin, Victor told us how sometimes when you were a kid, the pristine white walls were so tempting, you drew on them with a nail. 

Victor led us through a small gap between two buildings. In its original form, Plaza del Cerro was a defensive plaza. By design, access was limited to two or possibly three alleys only wide enough for one person to walk through at a time. The narrowness of the passages made them defensible against attacks from outsiders. A small road was cut from west to east across Plaza del Cerro in the nineteenth century. While the road makes access easier, today it makes it difficult to imagine the Plaza as a closed off space. The experience of walking in this short but close passageway between thick adobe walls gave me a sense of this plaza as fortified space. 

Beyond Casita Desiderio, there are other improvement projects going on at Plaza del Cerro. In one of the land plots in the center of the Plaza, high school students from The Academy for Technology and the Classics in Santa Fe cleared the soil, dug an irrigation ditch, and will return to scatter seeds for flowers. Victor was delighted to discover that several of the neighboring lots had been tidied up as well, perhaps after seeing the work in a nearby area.  

These land plots are another part of what makes Chimayo’s history so fascinating. Families that owned the properties that ringed the plaza had plots of land inside the plaza on which they grew fruits, vegetables, and other crops. The farmed, segmented center was part of how the original community designed for fortification. Areas of the land remained under cultivation until the 1950s. Today, some of those plots are somewhat overgrown. Through the work of Victor, the Chimayo Cultural Preservation Association, and the groups they partner with, Plaza del Cerro is being revived.

Image credit: Don Usner, The Plaza del Cerro in Chimayo: Settlement and Function, University of New Mexico, Center for Regional Studies #104, Spring 1994 

There is much more to say about the fascinating history of Plaza del Cerro. Our team has written several articles about Plaza del Cerro already. Check out our previous Mud Blasts here. Better yet: make a visit to Plaza del Cerro and check out the Chimayo Museum yourself: https://www.newmexico.org/listing/chimayo-museum/754/. 

Out of the Office: A Day At Rael Ranch, by Lucas Burdick

Having worked at Cornerstones for 12 months, going to Rael Ranch felt like a long overdue trip. Just outside La Cienega, a Village downstream from Santa Fe, the historic home of the local Rael family has been a focus of preservation and documentation work of my colleagues for years. I had no excuse but the culture of busy-ness for having never visited. But on a temperate day after a spring snowfall, I joined our Assistant Program Director, Issac Logsdon, and four volunteers, for a day spent with hands not tapping keys but shifting stones, rolling rocks, and digging earth. The rewards were greater than I’d imagined. 

My assignment, as Communications Manager, was to take a different angle on a place Cornerstones has helped maintain for years. I wanted to look downstream from the acequia our staff and volunteers care for, to where that flowing ditch leads. One and a quarter miles long, the ditch has been upkept for lifetimes, and Cornerstones now leads stonemasonry to sustain it for the next century. The acequia itself is impressive for its ongoingness, hard to capture in language or photographs, but obvious walking its length for the first time.

Today what the ditch keeps alive is fruit trees. “A number of mulberry, apricot, and 10 apple, a plum thicket, a quince tree, and several pear,” Issac rattled off, surveying the field. Every one of them is fed at their roots by the acequia that runs around three corners of the field. Also, a single, younger and taller tree that I could see wasn’t a fruit tree, which Issac knew was an elm, invasive. The older fruiting trees buffer a field once filled with subsistence crops. In the last handful of decades, crops were abandoned for growing alfalfa for cattle. But that is recent in the life of this place. What a trained eye could see, and a piqued visitor only grasp at, was not a slice of life but a way of life. There was once a vineyard upstream, and that was the wine the Raels drank, summers and winters, living off the ditch I’d raked leaves out of centuries and decades later.

Photos by Issac Logsdon

A sign on the way into the Ranch proudly announces its Ditch, dated 1718. The family, throughout generations, continuously farmed, up until the death of Alonso Rael in 2004. A stately, simple adobe house stands where a few generations of the family lived, probably from the 1890s forward. The economic model in place was one of bartering with surplus, not a division of melon and corn growing labor. The grandeur and expanse of today’s Santa Fe vanished behind hills between there and the time I was learning to see. 

Time, as a concept, flickered in my mind throughout the day, as embodied time deepened and slowed for me the longer I worked around the acequia. Uncounted minutes flowed by in my finding rocks for gravel to lay acequia stones: not too big, not too small, not too much of any one size, just so. The practice of earthen building, as I had felt before while making bricks or watching plastering, is not just the materials or historicity or places, but also the physicality that goes into it. The rocks had maybe been where I’d picked them from since well before I was born, their new tamped place under stone their home for a duration longer than life. I was more somewhere than I ever am while online. And through my smallest of physical contributions, I was building something that would outlast any organization or ideas I have of work or career.

The trees I was learning about, and the sweetening place they played in the lives of the Rael, today ripen under the knowing guidance of arborist Gordon Tooley. His fresh crop of apprentices come here first each year, learning to first prune trees old enough that they need greater care and respect. Diseased branches need to go sooner, as do crossing ones. Opening up trees can improve air circulation, which lowers disease pressure while letting more leaves reach sunlight. But too much exposure can lead to sun scalding of the bark. Pruning young trees is about shaping for growth and structure; elder ones need accommodation for the ways they’ve become. Perhaps these were given truths in an older New Mexico; common sense today that needs pointing out.

While I was learning to see a place through its life in other times, Issac found himself thinking in more elemental terms. Interesting how the landscape and water interact, and the understanding of slope, direction of the sun, how the season changes that all go into making the best use of an acequia. What trees—the apples—are low on the slope, and why that makes all too much sense, in the almost eternal span of physics and biology. Although historic properties are often seen retrospectively, in our last moments there, I got a taste for another variety of time: what’s potential. There’s so much that could be done with a place like this, Issac can see, and that too adds to its importance. So much to be learned, practically and humanly, from the wider understandings that went into places sometimes seen as merely old-timey, or important for being “historic.” If I had already known that, the ancient dirt in my fingernails, the hunger of the long day’s work, and my reluctance to leave made it more intimate to me.

In Celebration of Women’s History, by Joan Brooks Baker

In the month of March, we celebrate Women’s History. Theresa Jaramillo, nearing eighty, is the Overseer, as she calls herself, of one of the two Los Hermanos Penitente Moradas in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The Christian/Catholic “gift of faith” phrase best describes the devotion I recently experienced in speaking with Theresa. We met on a cold morning in the simple beauty of the MoqueMorada (Moque is a Tribal Name) up the hill from the Catholic church and on a dirt road in this small Northern New Mexico village. 

Theresa and I were joined by Dexter Trujillo, who is the Hermanomayor of the Abiquiu Penitentes. The word Morada, meeting place, house of prayer, is the core location of worship for Los Hermanos (The Brothers) Penitentes. Much has been written but little is truly known about the Brotherhood, except that it is a mostly secret society, a lay confraternity that is accepted as part of the Catholic church and adheres to the old traditional teachings of several centuries ago. History tells us that because there were so few priests in the 1800s, the Morada was begun by a group of devoted laymen, although now the MoqueMorada is managed by women, and Theresa has “the managerial key.” 

Theresa Jaramillo

The population has lessened and there are fewer and fewer people to help maintain the Moradas, especially the Moque. It really is up to Theresa. “I come here all the time to care for this place of worship, and I will come until I am not able. Look at the curtains up there, I just sewed the holes in them,” she said with a laugh. “I clean all the little statues, the Bultos, everything.” 

The three of us sat in the sacred and sparse Morada. Benches lined the sides for those unable to kneel for the Mass. A lovely altar displayed the Virgin Mary, the Saints, Jesus on the Cross, and on the ground in front were bouquets of flowers and candles. For an hour we discussed the mission of the Penitentes, the history of the hundred-plus-year-old, plain and rectangular MoqueMorada building. We also spoke of the better known and much older Morada del Alto which sits on a beautiful bluff nearby. Not only do the Brothers preserve spiritual devotion, showing by example “how to better ourselves,” but they also provide many community services.  

I asked about the rigidity of the extreme forms of penance, especially during the procession and inside the Morada during Holy Week. 

“It is about identifying with the Passion and the suffering of Christ,” answered Dexter. “We do not speak of the Penances. We are sworn to secrecy and whatever happens in our Moradas is between us and our God. We ask for Respect.”     

The door to the MoqueMorada.

I had heard that the Abiquiu women had taken over the MoqueMorada. If this was true, I wanted to understand the new role of women. “Are women now included in the Brotherhood, in some way?” I asked Theresa. 

“No, we have not taken over the Morada,” she answered, “We are the Ayudantes, the helpers, the servers,” and Dexter quickly added, “The women are the backbone of the Morada.” Theresa said, “I was chosen by my Aunt Ida years ago when she could no longer serve. I am now the overseer. I was told that I have God in me. Perhaps I do. I took a vow and I intend, all the days of my life, to keep my vow.”  

“But does it bother you that you are solely an Ayudante, not part of the Brotherhood?” I asked. 

“No, I am a devoted Ayudante, But I do like it very much when a Brother calls me Hermanita,” Theresa said with a smile. 

I listened and thought about the role of women, in general. How had it changed over the years, if at all? Putting together the various answers I was told by Theresa and Dexter, a word came to mind for the Women’s role—now and in the past: Stewardship, which is defined as ‘the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care.’ 

The Mother Mary, on the wall inside.

Another word also came to mind: Witness. Theresa and Dexter told me something I had not known. There had been a Benedictine Convent in Abiquiu in the 1950s. The Nuns were highly educated and taught at the parochial school, from which Theresa graduated. The Nuns knew that the Priests were abusing young boys and apparently reported this to the Archbishop. The very celebrated painter, Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived in Abiquiu, also knew of the abuse and supported the Nuns and the Convent. But the outcome of the knowledge of maltreatment had little result, except for the closing of the Convent in the 1960s. Nuns, as witnesses and teachers, were not needed anymore. 

The role of women then and perhaps now—Theresa, the Nuns, Georgia O’Keeffe—caretakers, observers, the truth-tellers; all, as Dexter said, were and are the backbone in Abiquiu.  

In celebration. 

An altar inside the Morada.

Holy Week will be celebrated in Abiquiu from April 14th through the 17th. All are welcome. “Come hear the Alabanos sacred hymns and eat our Panocha.” 

Also, there is a Mass every other Wednesday at 7:30 in the evening in the MoqueMorada and every other Friday at 8:00 in the Morada del Alto. 

For information, Theresa told me it is best to call Dexter Trujillo — 505-685-4660. 

 

Notes from the Field: Las Trampas Revisited

Driving north on the scenic High Road to Taos with spectacular views of Truchas peaks as a backdrop, one passes through the Village of Las Trampas. On the right-hand side of the road, you can’t miss the National Landmark San Jose de Gracia Mission Church that sits prominently in the Village of Las Trampas, itself a National Landmark District. The patina of age radiates from this Church. The adobe walls are weathered. But its prominent size, design, and location along this mountainous highway arrest any passersby. Travelers often stop, take pictures, and go to the locked door, wishing to enter. In times past, Jose Lopez—a frequent Mayordomo and elder who lived just opposite from the Church—would often come out to open the door. He graciously entertained visitors and responded to their questions and comments. The north windows in his house lookout at San Jose, and he had a habit of glancing that way anytime he passed those windows. Jose’s connection to San Jose was about as deep as a connection to a building could be. It was in his blood. He was and is not the only one.

I had passed San Jose de Gracia in 1972 for the first time on my way to the mountain Village of El Valle, located along the Rio de Las Trampas. The Rio descends from Truchas peaks down the valley passing through the Village of Las Trampas. My first encounter with the Las Trampas community was later, in 2009, when I began working at Cornerstones Community Partnerships. Sorting through the inbox, I discovered we had been awarded a grant from the National Park Service Heritage Preservation Program to help preserve the San Jose de Gracia Church. With not much to go on, I called the parish office of the Holy Family Church in Chimayo. I connected with Pat Oviedo, the Chief Financial Officer of the parish that includes San Jose de Gracia. She was unaware of the grant and suggested I speak with a community elder to see how the funds could help maintain the Church. Following her suggestion, I got in touch with Emilio Martinez, a community elder who rotated into the Majordomo role from time to time. Mayordomos are the keeper of keys for the churches. They carry on the tradition. They are the authority that has jurisdiction over the maintenance of the church. This tradition extends back to the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

Emilio was not especially pleased to hear about the grant. He was surprised to hear the government was offering funds for the preservation of the Church—without anyone in the community knowing about it. Since I was new on the job at Cornerstones, I could profess ignorance (which was accurate). I suggested he and I work together to find a good use for the funds. I sensed Emilio was thinking, “here we go again: outsiders coming to las Trampas with aid, help or advice.” Driving away, I felt like the gringo crossing a stream of thin ice going from “Anglo world” to “Norteño world” and not being too sure of the safe steps across. Cornerstone’s mission provided the solace to try to make it across to the other side. For the check of the grant to be released, a need, a proposal, a budget, and responsible parties were the I’s and t’s of the bureaucratic freezing river I needed to cross.

A process of dialogue ensued in which these questions were converted to governmental lingo and the funds were released. The process involved others in the community, including Rosemary Vigil and Frank Lopez Jr. Goals included some infrastructure to be repaired under contract and a largely volunteer effort focusing on adobe repairs, mud plastering the Campo Santo walls, and plastering major sections of the Church walls. A schedule was set, and volunteer days were announced. Cornerstones provided scaffolding and a mixer for the project.

I volunteered, and on the first day, Emilio directed me to a large pile of dirt, the adobe dirt screen, handed over a shovel, and walked away. I figured I knew how to do it and started throwing dirt through the screen. Pretty soon, Emilio was back. He smiled, took the shovel, and demonstrated the flicking technique, tossing towards the top and not letting the shovel impact the screen. I began to appreciate the fact that such a simple task could have important nuances I had here to fore not considered. I was in learning mode, and it felt good having been a supervisor for so many years.

Volunteers began to stream in, and as the day progressed, I could see that this was both a work experience for some but a social event for all. A meal was served in the Morada behind the Church, and the day captured the essence of community gathering for a joint purpose. My second learning experience was working alongside community elder enjarradoras (women who traditionally did the plastering). Three senior women were mudding a section of the Campo wall. They were willing to let me help. Their dialogue was almost entirely in Spanish, so observation again was key to learning. What appeared to be a simple process of tossing a handful of mud on the wall and following with a swipe of the palm of the hand was anything but simple. They were very patient with me and eventually I managed the fundamentals.

These set days, usually Saturdays, extended into weeks as the work progressed. Eventually, we were on to the Church walls with routines and regulars established. One day the volunteer group was particularly large. That day was the day that word had spread around through the grapevine about the work at Las Trampas and extended relatives, descendants, and a few low riders assembled in the parking lot and around the Church. The cultural connectivity was heavily loaded up in the atmosphere of Las Trampas on that occasion.

These set days, usually Saturdays, extended into weeks as the work progressed. Eventually, we were on to the Church walls with routines and regulars established. One day the volunteer group was particularly large. That day was the day that word had spread around through the grapevine about the work at Las Trampas and extended relatives, descendants, and a few low riders assembled in the parking lot and around the Church. The cultural connectivity was heavily loaded up in the atmosphere of Las Trampas on that occasion.

One day while in my Santa Fe office, a stranger knocked on the door and asked if he could talk about volunteering. He introduced himself to me with the usual conversation niceties. Gradually, it came out that he was a vet suffering from PTSD due to experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. He wanted to do something simple and straightforward. Something meaningful. At that very moment, I was writing up the work in Las Trampas. In this moment of synchronicity, I asked how he’d feel about participating in the work up there. I explained the mud plastering process and the importance of San Jose de Gracia. Being New Mexican he knew something about it. He considered and asked to be contacted if it turned out to be possible. As soon as he left, I called Pat at the Parish office to see how they’d feel about such a troubled individual and a non-community member helping out. No one objected—in fact, they were very welcoming. I made arrangements with the vet. After a few weeks, a little nervous, I called to check in and learned the community had embraced him. And he seemed to really enjoy the work. Later he called to thank me—saying few experiences had helped him as much as mudding those walls with the community. His comments reinforced the idea that mud plastering the adobe mission churches can be more than just a typical day of manual labor. Putting that mud on the wall after so many have gone before, repeating this very old tradition to extend the life of the mission, builds community. This ancient process has faded but remains alive. The vet connected those dots.

Five years later, in 2014, I worked with Pat to apply for a grant from the Historic Preservation Division of the State Office of Cultural Affairs, to produce a preservation plan for San Jose de Gracia. Typically experts in historic preservation produce preservation plans. For this grant, Cornerstones decided to instead try to involve the community as much as possible. The challenge was to find professionals connected to the heritage of the place. Another goal was to bring elders into the conversation thereby honoring the legacy of their ancestors. The community had grown tired of outside “experts” advising how best to care for their church. So, we found a community photographer for documentation; another community member oversaw the architecture; another researched written documentation; another was a local editor. Those choices meant that the preservation specialist from outside the community only reconciled issues with the Secretary of Interior's Standards for Historic Preservation—key to receiving the State-awarded grant.

The challenge is to reconcile these preservation requirements with the living building and the community ties it has fostered. One, like San Jose, has evolved over centuries with interventions made by those who are connected there, both in the original construction and then succeeding years as decedents assumed their responsibility for it. One has to ask about the jurisdiction of such a place and who has the right to make determinations. Tensions can arise while adapting larger notions of historic preservation to fit community hopes, expectations, and building uses.

One of the most gratifying experiences of the project was walking with Jose Martinez around the grounds of the Church as he pointed to and explained many features of the building. It was like walking with a kindly professor sharing his accumulated knowledge of his favorite subject. We went through the nave, into the sacristy, up into the choir loft, and to the balcony. We discussed the issues of the differential fill outside on the north wall of the baptistry where moisture problems have been persistent. In this room, now a baptistry, he pointed out little dark reddish spots on the upper wall and ceiling, explaining that it was the blood of the penitentes from a time when the hermanos practiced flagellation. Seeing this brought home a vivid recognition of something I had only ever read about.

We concluded our assessment tour in front of the Church looking at a white cross painted on the exterior of the balcony door. Jose said, “I painted that cross on there because sometimes a high wind would blow the door open and I couldn’t see that from my window. With the white cross there, I can tell if the door is blown open or not.” I thought to myself that a strict reading of the Secretary of the Interiors Standards wouldn’t allow such an alteration. I let the thought go.

Jose passed away on May 15, 2018. I attended his funeral service at San Jose de Gracia. The Church was so crowded it wasn’t possible to get inside. The sanctuary was packed with family members and friends. From outside, I listened to the Priest’s comments about Jose’s devotion to San Jose. I felt honored to have known him. We dedicated the Cornerstones 2017 Annual Report to him. In the cover photo, Jose stands in front of his church. A dignified elder in front of the similarly aging church. While he has passed, San Jose de Gracia lives on for others to step in his shoes to continue the work.

After notes

San José de Gracia Church in Las Trampas, NM was built between 1760 and 1776. The Church ceiling is painted with 18th- and 19th-century motifs. It features 18th and 19th-century Santeros and is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and is a U.S. National Historic Landmark census records show two families living in Las Trampas in1751. Both the Church and the district are National Historic Landmarks.

San José de Gracia is New Mexico’s best-preserved example of both vernacular building practices and eighteenth-century Spanish Colonial ecclesiastical architecture.

Built of adobe with a hand-plastered mud exterior, its walls are 4 to 6 feet thick and about 30 feet high. The structure is roofed by large vigas that rest on corbels set into the walls and are covered with split cedar planks (rajas) and several feet of packed earth.

The Church was repaired and stabilized by the Committee for the Preservation and Restoration of New Mexican Churches in 1932 when it received new roof timbers, new tower bases, and a new balustrade and beam for the balcony. In 1970, after being designated a National Historic Landmark to prevent its alteration by the widening of New Mexico State Highway 76, the Church was re-plastered, re-roofed and its wooden belfries were restored to their original appearance based on a design by John Gaw Meem.

Adobe Construction: A tour of the Past, Present, and Future with The Earthbuilders’ Guild

Cornerstones is part of a community of practice that is passionate about earth construction. On a sunny Saturday last month, I attended a tour organized by The Earthbuilders’ Guild. The Earthbuilders’ Guild preserves and promotes the age-old building methods of adobe, rammed earth, and compressed earth block construction. This group joins examinations of history with innovative applications of earthen architecture. 

The two projects on the tour wonderfully compare and contrast passions common in the earthbuilding community—the restoration of an important part of a community’s heritage and the realization of a nearly life-long dream with a newly built private home.

One of my takeaways from my day on the tour: I should spend more time in the Village of Corrales, a village within the bounds of Northern Albuquerque. This community, like others in New Mexico, is part of a bigger city on the surface. But when you slow down and spend some time there, its unique character and history reveal themselves.  

The Earthbuilders’ Guild tours are open to the public. We began at the Corrales Old Schoolhouse, part of a set of buildings that  John Perea is transforming into a community center. The structure was used as a schoolhouse from 1870 to 1925. As we toured the site, the group asked wonderful questions about the history of the site and discussed the techniques used in its restoration so far. Over the last three years, John, Rick Catanac (an adobe restoration contractor) and other specialists from New Mexico MainStreet, a program of the New Mexico Economic Development Department, have completed a mountain of projects. They installed a new roof, cleared the site of a dense growth of Tree of Heaven, eliminated old plaster, and removed interior walls, just to name a few. What stood out to me most was the work to raise a large portion of the middle of the building that sagged due to repeated flooding by the Rio Grande.  

Above, John Perea shares his vision for the Old Schoolhouse property. The section of the building around him used to sag several inches below the rest of the structure.  Click to zoom.

John also owns the building next door. Perea’s Tijuana Bar & Restaurant is housed in one of the oldest buildings in Corrales. This 200-plus-year-old structure is constructed of terrónes. This type of earthen architecture uses slabs of naturally compressed earth instead of formed adobe bricks. The slabs are cut from boggy river bottoms. In the history of these sites in the floodplain, the river was both the source of building materials and a threat to the structures. 

As the group moved to the second tour location, I made a quick detour to see the exteriors of two other important adobe buildings: San Isidro Church and The Gutierrez/Minge House. (Thanks for the tip, Anne Galer!) This confirmed my initial impression that there is more to discover in Corrales.  

Most of my discussions at Cornerstones center around the preservation of historic adobe buildings. Our next stop, the second project on the tour, gave me the opportunity to learn about the use and potential of adobe in new construction. Barbara and Bud Burns’ home is the culmination of a nearly 40-year dream. A key to achieving this was Bud’s collaboration with Danny Martinez of Casa del Sol Construction. The home has a mix of longstanding construction techniques (14” thick adobe exteriors walls) and new technologies (10Kw of solar photovoltaics on the roof) and room for future upgrades (batteries).  As we toured the home, I listened in on many conversations about the application of new technologies in adobe construction – particularly with regards to sustainable construction.  

This tour encapsulated much about Cornerstones today. We continue to be deeply connected to the past through projects that preserve New Mexico’s communities and their heritage. We are actively involved in the use of solar power on heritage sites. And we are keeping an eye towards new technologies that will support communities long into the future. 

My thanks to everyone at the Earthbuilders’ Guild for sharing their passion and their expertise– extra special gratitude to Pat Martinez Rutherford for organizing the day and being so welcoming!  

Learn more about: 

The Earthbuilders’ Guild: https://theearthbuildersguild.com/what-is-teg/    

New Mexico MainStreet: https://www.nmmainstreet.org/ 

Scholarship to Terra 2022: Bringing Together the Earthen Builders Communities

Happy New Year!

When I launched this column a year ago, it was an opportunity to look back through the history of Cornerstones and give you a moment to learn or reminisce as I read up on the organization. This year, I am broadening the scope of my column to provide more information about what we are doing today. I will continue to publish columns about our history - there are still a lot of fascinating stories to share - but I want to highlight some of the new initiatives that the Cornerstones team is working on now.

One of the pillars of Cornerstones' mission is supporting individuals and communities continuing the architectural traditions of the Southwest. Educational and professional development opportunities are among the ways that we do this. Right now, with funding from the Getty Foundation and the Chamiza Foundation, we are providing scholarships to Terra 2022, the 13th World Congress on Earthen Architectural Heritage, the largest international gathering of earthen building practitioners and professionals. I was delighted that the Getty Conservation Institute approached us last year to partner with them on this scholarship.

The scholarship is for professionals and students from the 19 Native American pueblos and tribes in New Mexico, tribes and pueblos from Southwestern states and Northern Mexico, to attend the Terra.  It is important not only that those communities are included in further skill-sharing around earthen architectural practices, but also that their knowledge, experience, and traditions are highlighted to other parts of the professional community.

Terra 2022 will take place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 7-10, 2022, as a hybrid event with both in-person and virtual options. Hundreds of specialists in the fields of conservation, anthropology, archaeology, architecture and engineering, scientific research, site management, and sustainable development of earthen architectural heritage will attend. Workshops, presentations, posters, and digital media will illuminate current research and teach best practices in conserving earthen heritage across the world. Up to 600 attendants are expected to participate either in-person or virtually. 

We are accepting applications now. The scholarship will substantially or fully cover attendance, accommodation, and travel costs to Santa Fe to attend Terra 2022. 

The full scholarship application and more information is available here: https://www.cstones.org/terra-2022 If you know someone who might want to apply, please forward this letter to them or share this link. 

Above Splash Photo of Taos Pueblo by Tracey Enright.

From the Field: A Reflection from Jake Barrow, Program Director

Working on a Cornerstones project often presents surprises. Sometimes these are of another category, like being astonished or awed. For me an occurrence during the late summer of 2011 at San Miguel Chapel put me into another dimension. Our focus was San Miguel adobe wall repair and plastering of the north and east side of the nave which was part of our continuing project to preserve the entire exterior of the Chapel started in 2010. A Save Americas Treasures Grant and other donations funded the project. In 2011 the National Park Service, Vanishing Treasures Program (VT) provided special funding for training Pueblo youth in adobe conservation skills as a “hands on” “learn by doing” project. At the time we had Pat Taylor on our team who is a recognized expert in stitching adobe and all things adobe. We launched this workshop training with five youth, mostly Ohkay Owingeh trainees. One Navajo youth participated. The Ohkay Owingeh center village rehabilitation project was just beginning to take off, so the coincidence of our training program was precipitous. In that project the Pueblo has embarked on a multi-year strategy to rehabilitate the historic center village back into use as a contemporary living place. The center village is built entirely of adobe. The youth being supported by VT funds were also some of the same youth employed on the pueblo project.

One requirement of these VT funds was to provide honoraria for an elder from the Pueblo to participate with the youth to bring cultural context to their work. The concept was based on an idea that the youth would learn the historical and cultural context of the housing project and the significance of adobe construction in their history. The agreement made it clear that this involvement was to be in the purview of the Pueblo, and we might or might not know anything about it. The partnership allowed for a flexible schedule so the trainees could go back and forth between the two projects. Adobe wall repairs take a few days to dry, so the arrangement provided a full work week for trainees and worked very well for both projects.

Work on San Miguel in 2010-11. Click to enlarge.

The north wall of San Miguel had two very intense structural concerns. At the southwest front corner we removed old stucco and uncovered a large section of fired brick that had been set into the deteriorated adobe corner as a substitute for adobe. In discovering this our supposition was that during a repair campaign, either in the 1887 reconstruction or a later intervention, adobe was not “au currant” in the building spectrum and the workers of the time chose fired brick laid in cement mortar to stitch the corner. All our San Miguel repairs were to be traditional using only hand-made adobe and natural materials for mortars. We want to achieve structural continuity across any repairs using like materials. The brick represented a structural discontinuity. Simply stated this rigid block of masonry creates a non-compatible separation of structural sections. Being at a corner this situation was completely unacceptable to our team. We supported the roof and braced the walls and removed the brick. Deteriorated adobe associated was removed. Painstaking, step by step, adobe by adobe was placed back into the wall with structural connections at every adobe joint. New built into old in such a way as the dead load of the wall is always transmitted into adobe below. A second finding was a vertical crack running almost entirely through the wall at the juncture of the nave and apse. The crack extended from the base of the wall all the way to the parapet. Adobe by adobe, section by section a team member stitched this crack back together. These two challenges took most of the summer to repair. This constituted the core of the training curriculum. The work was going very well, and we could accomplish adobe wall preparations for mud plaster in other areas of the elevation with our volunteers.

One workday morning in late summer when I drove up to the rear of the Chapel, where we routinely staged work, I encountered a situation I was unprepared for. The team was standing in a semi-circle around a man dressed in Pueblo attire who was conducting a ceremony. A column of smoke was rising from a small bowl set on a parking bollard. I pulled over and joined a handful of people who had stopped to observe. Everyone was very quiet and attentive as the elder (I realized by this time that this was a situation of the tribal elder leading the youth in a prayer ceremony) spoke in Tewa to the youth. Having watched a number of Puebloan ceremonies over the years, I realized the solemnity of this happening. He spoke for some time and reached a conclusion. He then recognized the few non-natives of us who were observing and translated into English, still speaking to the youth. As is so often the case in these translations, the English is always much shorter than when spoken in native tongue. I always guess that much of what is said probably does not translate well into English. He explained that the work being undertaken was, in part, a reconciliation process. During the revolt of 1680, their ancestors had participated in the destruction of San Miguel. And now some 321 years later these youth were working on making repairs to age old damages. A thread of time that connects over centuries was suddenly brought to light in his prayer. My eyes were opened a little wider that day. I had a new appreciation for our work and the way it was being accomplished.

This the first of a series of "From the Field" columns that will appear bi-monthly in the Mud Blast. The reportage will come from Program Director Jake Barrow and other Cornerstones field staff who are working on preservation projects throughout the Southwest. We hope you enjoy this first installment.

A National Heritage Network

Cornerstones’ heritage preservation work falls into two tracts. The first is what we call core mission projects. These are the preservation projects central to why we were founded 35 years ago: projects that are direct collaborations with community members to preserve their heritage. Recent examples of this work are Plaza del Cerro in Chimayo, churches in Mora County, and the Women’s Morada in Abiquiu. We fund these projects through generous gifts from individuals and companies as well as grants from foundations. 

The other tract is projects that take place under the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESU) Network. This is a nationwide group of organizations that collaborate with the federal government to steward many of our country’s natural and cultural resources. I love that we are part of this effort because it signals to me that Cornerstones is not only a “go-to” organization to care for some of our national heritage, but we are also seen as qualified to train others. An important part of these projects is conducting “hands-on” historic preservation training workshops on public lands for federal employees and volunteers. The federal government funds these projects. 

We are currently working on CESU projects in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. In this column, I am focusing on one of them. Ryan Ranch in Joshua Tree National Park has an interesting story that illustrates one of the key periods in the recent history of the American West. But honestly, the motivation for this column came when I was preparing a slide show for a presentation. Many gorgeous photos of Ryan Ranch grabbed my attention.

Click to enlarge.

Photos by Issac Logsdon

The area that is now known as Ryan Ranch, or Lost Horse Valley, shows evidence of human impact at least 5,000 years ago by the Pinto Culture. They were followed by the Serrano, the Chemehuevi, and the Cahuilla groups. In the 1800s, cattlemen and miners began to occupy the land. 

The discovery of the gold seam, and how Lost Horse Mine got its name, is a campfire classic that features several nefarious characters. The Ryan family - wealthy ranchers from Wyoming - purchased the mine sometime after 1895. In 1896, the Ryans built a residence from adobe bricks that contained some mine tailings.

The mine was successful for a short time, yielding 9,000 ounces of gold and a “respectable” amount of silver in the years between 1896 and 1899. When the original tunnel hit a geological fault, the miners were unable to locate the gold seam again. There were attempts to revive the mine in the early twentieth century, but it has been dormant since 1936. 

According to a 1971 National Park Service inventory form, the ranch site consisted of “an adobe residence, two small adobe structures, a well, a graveyard and the remains of a corral.” F. Ross Holland, the historian who prepared the report, recommends a budget of $9,000 for emergency stabilization.  

In 2003, the National Park Service listed the structures in poor condition. A team stabilized three adobe structures on the site in an effort to slow down the natural process of decay. Unfortunately, another issue was not so natural – the effects of vandalism. More preservation work was done by teams in 2006 and 2012. 

Now, under the CESU program, Cornerstones is removing past preservation attempts, applying a clay-based plaster, cleaning out and improving the drainage system, and working with the Park to establish a cyclical maintenance program compatible with an unamended earthen plaster. Earthen structures require ongoing care. Part of this collaboration is the training and planning for this care so that this historically interesting and visually arresting ruin will continue to be a tangible connection to the history of American mining. 

Last April, Issac Logsdon, Cornerstones Assistant Program Director, and Angela Francis, Cornerstones Lead Plasterer, led a workshop at Ryan Ranch. We call these sessions “workshops” because under the CESU program, training is an essential aspect. At the same time, these workshops provide considerable progress in preserving the site. The photos from that workshop are what led to this column. I will let them speak for themselves.

More information about CESU is available at: http://www.cesu.psu.edu/ 

There are several publications that tell the story of Ryan Ranch. This National Park Service Historic Structures report from 1969 is an enjoyable resource that is also an artifact of its time. http://npshistory.com/publications/jotr/hsr-lost-horse-mine.pdf 

San Miguel Chapel: History & Sustainability

A Letter from Executive Director Tracey Enright

Photos by Tracey Enright. Click to zoom.

Over the past few months, I looked back at Cornerstones restoration projects and described what we are doing in those same communities today. Our best collaborations are long-term relationships. Many of the communities that we work in are small, and their wonderful stories are often not well known outside the immediate area. 

With this column, I am diving into the story and plans for one of our most high-profile projects: San Miguel Chapel, which is often cited as the oldest church in the United States. In 2010, Cornerstones collaborated with several organizations to launch an ambitious restoration project nearly 10 years in the making. Over the decade since, we have continued to maintain and restore portions of the Chapel. Today, we are moving forward with a new type of project at the Chapel, one that is potentially a game changer for historic preservation.

If you know me, you probably know I am a fierce advocate for more opportunities to tell the history of the Western United States. Even before I joined Cornerstones, I took friends and family who visited Santa Fe to San Miguel Chapel. I encouraged them to look closely at and touch the exterior walls. We discussed the difference between adobe mud plaster and the cement stucco that covers many buildings in Santa Fe. I told visitors that a local organization removed the cement stucco and returned the walls to mud plaster. I never guessed that I would someday lead that organization.  

The story of San Miguel, like the building itself, is fascinating and contains many layers. Entire books and scholarly papers have been written on its history. Cornerstones’ files on San Miguel Chapel are well over a foot wide. 

I like this drawing from Stanley Stubbs and Bruce T. Ellis’ 1955 publication Archeological Investigations at the Chapel of San Miguel and the Site of La Castrense because it shows the many layers of history uncovered in the 1955 restoration. 

Inside the Chapel, I am intrigued by the pre-1628 alter steps, uncovered in the 1955 restoration that included an extensive archeological survey. They are visible today under glass several feet below the modern altar. This survey also discovered Native American floors, potsherds, and garbage below one of the original side chapels. I like to try to imagine the lives of people who have experienced this spot in its various uses.  

Obviously, there’s more history than I can cover in this column, so I will skip to where Cornerstones became part of the story. In 2001, Cornerstones joined a group that came together around concerns about the physical condition of the Chapel. After years of planning, fundraising, and assessment, in June of 2010 the restoration project began. The most dramatic visible change was following the removal of exterior cement plaster and repairs to the walls and base; the chapel’s exterior was plastered with three to six thin layers of earthen plaster. 

Watch this video for some gorgeous images of the church and action shots of the restoration:

We often speak about how our projects wouldn’t happen without the help of volunteers: 1,415 volunteers contributed 7,095 hours of labor to the initial restoration of San Miguel. The Chapel is privately owned by St. Michael's High School, based on a Lasallian Christian Brothers tradition. St. Michael’s students volunteered for the mud plastering to contribute to the project. Major funding came from The Getty Foundation, The Catholic Foundation, The National Park Service, The National Endowment for the Arts, The History Channel and Save America’s Treasures, and Heritage Hotels among many others.  

Since that time Cornerstones has worked closely with the High School to maintain the chapel.  

If you live near Santa Fe and you haven’t been to San Miguel Chapel lately, please take a moment to visit and get up close to the exterior walls. Notice the difference between adobe and cement stucco.  

With a bit of planning, you can see the interior or attend a performance. As I write this the Chapel is open to visitors, and live performances have resumed. (Check the website for performance dates: https://www.sanmiguelchapelsantafe.org/) 

Live performances are a wonderful way to experience this building as the active space that it still is today. San Miguel Chapel, like Cornerstones’ other projects, is still very much alive and useful to the community, not a static artifact of the past.  

San Miguel Chapel is a tangible representation of New Mexico’s long layered history, a gathering space for artistic expression, and soon it will be an example of adapting historic structures to modern times in a sensitive manner. For the last several years, with funding from a Richard Moe Family Foundation Grant, Remy’s Good Day Fund, and the San Miguel Preservation Program supported by St Michael’s High School, Cornerstones has been exploring how to bring solar energy to San Miguel Chapel.

Today, that plan is coming together. Stay tuned, in a future post I’ll move from history and preservation to technology and engineering stories.

Abiquiu: History of Community in Two Moradas

The story of New Mexico’s Penitente Moradas is fascinating and quintessentially New Mexican. Their history illustrates another case where New Mexicans defined for themselves the form that organizations in their community would take. The Penitente brotherhood (Hermanos) is a lay association of Catholic men who have a spiritual practice and provide a wide variety of services to their communities. Their traditions have a foundation in the Spanish Catholic Church but over time and distance they transformed to meet the needs and reflect the character of Northern New Mexicans. The Moradas are meeting houses where their spiritual ceremonies and some other community gatherings take place. I had read that visitors outside the Brotherhood cannot enter a Morada, but that was not my experience in Abiquiu one day last spring.  

A foundational part of Cornerstones model is partnering with communities in a way that our role is shaped by what the community feels they need most. Many of you have seen the Abiquiu Alto Morada which sits alone on a bluff with an impressive view. In 1992, the building was vandalized. The Hermanos engaged Cornerstones to collaborate with them to raise the funding they needed to repair the Morada. Cornerstones’ files on Abiquiu are a testament to how beloved this Morada and the community are. The documents in the files show that there was a benefit auction, a specially commissioned poster, and several children reached into their piggy banks. All of this was part of an incredible and successful effort to restore Abiquiu’s Alto Morada. 

Click to zoom.

The Hermanos carried out the restoration project so swiftly that they were able to use the Morada for Ash Wednesday services in February of 1993 and completed all the work in time for Holy Week services that April. Sam Baca, the Director of the organization now known as Cornerstones, notes that the Hermanos themselves accomplished a great deal of the work that normally might have been done by a contractor.  

Today, Cornerstones and the Abiquiu community are again working on a Morada. But this is a different Morada. Abiquiu has two. The Moqui Morada is also sometimes referred to as the Women’s Morada. Now, that got our attention! In most, if not all communities, members of the Women’s Group are the helpers or Ayudantes for the Hermanos. In the case of this Morada, they are in charge of it. 

On a beautiful April day, I visited the Women’s Morada with Jake Barrow, Angela Francis, Anne Galer, and Barb Odell. Theresa Jamarillo hosted us. Theresa has cared for the Morada since 1996 as the head of the Women’s Group. Her relationship with the building goes much further back. She shared that when she was 8 years old she took a pledge to care for the Morada.  

During the tour we discussed many technical aspects of the building and what types of repair it might need. Last year Anne, an architectural preservationist specializing in adobe building conservation, wrote a historical and structural report for Cornerstones on the Morada. She brought a great deal of context to our tour. It is also obvious that she has built a wonderful relationship with Theresa over the course of her research. Angela is a talented and skilled adobe plasterer with an impressive eye for what is going on with the building and potential solutions. In the background, Barb Odell documented our visit and the condition of the building. She even brought a drone so we could safely get pictures of the roof. 

We were also joined on our tour by Dexter Trujillo. Dexter manages the Alto Morada and has connections to the Women’s Morada. He brought a great deal of history to the conversation. His greatest gift to us came as we concluded the tour. Anne requested that Dexter sing the “Madre Dolores” aria. I cannot possibly convey in text the magic of his rich voice on the adobe walls. That moment was confirmation of why Cornerstones exists: the physical structures like the Morada need to be cared for so that the intangibles of culture and community, like Dexter’s song, can also survive and thrive.   

Abiquiu Women’s Morada Exterior 

Abiquiu Women’s Morada Exterior 

Roof of the Morada, photo taken using a drone 

Anne Galer, Angela Francis, Tracey Enright, Dexter Trujillo, Theresa Jaramillo, Teresa Jaramillo’s sister, and Jake Barrow 

If you would like to support our work at the Abiquiu Morada and other projects like it, please use the button below to donate online, or go to https://www.cstones.org/donate

If you prefer to donate by check, please use the address below:

Cornerstones Community Partnerships 
P.O. Box 2341 
Santa Fe, NM 87504-2341 

Thank you to Barb Odell for allowing me to use her images and bringing her drone! 

The history of Abiquiu and its Moradas is fascinating and complex. I have not done it justice in this short article. If you want to dig into the story, I suggest you get a copy of Richard Ahlborn’s, The Penitente Moradas of Abiquiu. You can read it online via Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44678/44678-h/44678-h.htm) or at the Santa Fe Public Library in their reference collection. Anne Galer recommended it to me. Her work and Ahlborn’s were essential to me for this piece. Thank you Anne. 

Tracey Enright, Executive Director 

Photos Barb Odell, All Girls Media 

Santa Teresita Church: Vibrant and Thriving

Last week I tagged along on a photo safari to document the conditions of several churches in Mora Valley. Our guide for the day was Rebecca Montoya. After our day together I think of Rebecca as the advocate for these churches. She is knowledgeable and passionate about all of them, but she is especially devoted to Santa Teresita Church in El Turquillo. She has served the Mayordoma of Santa Teresita since 2008.  

Even on a grey rainy day, I was struck by the vibrancy of Santa Teresita. This is true for its appearance and the role that this church and Rebecca play in the community. Like Rebecca, her church is warm and welcoming. As you step into the vestibule you immediately want to enter and explore the extraordinary interior.  

Santa Teresita demonstrates that some historic adobe churches are thriving and change with the needs of their communities. For example, Rebecca shared with me how she installed a porch on the side of the church to use during pot lucks. Previously she had been dragging out 2x4s to keep the tables steady on the uneven ground. The roof protects people and food in hot weather. 

This church is the center of many traditions that the community has restored over the past decade or so. In addition to a regular Mass schedule, they host Posadas during Christmas, Rosary to the Blessed Mother in May and an annual Feast Day of Saint Therese, Good Friday Pilgrimage.  

Watch Rebecca describe the story of the many projects at Santa Teresita.

Video by Barb Odell, All Girls Media 




A Brief History of Santa Teresita Church 

The Historic Building Inventory Form in Cornerstones’ files dates this church to 1920.

The Historic Building Inventory Form in Cornerstones’ files dates this church to 1920.

Our files also have an image of a photo from the late 1800s of Jacinto Duran and Maria Ignacia Rivera with notes indicating that they are both buried in Santa Teresita. 

Santa Teresita Duran and Rivera.jpeg

In 1983 after the church had been closed for 15 years, several members of the community joined together to make repairs to the church which included a new roof, new interior wood framing and sheetrock, and a cement slab. They halted plans for a concrete contrapared1 when Sam Baca, Cornerstones’ then Program Director, advised them that this is not the best treatment for wet adobe walls.  

Tragically, in 2001 a drunken driver smashed into the church.  

Photo Credit: Mac Watson

Photo Credit: Mac Watson

From 2003-2006 Cornerstones worked with the community to restore Santa Teresita’s physical structure. A special aspect of this collaboration was a Mora Valley Youth and Mayordomo training program. Participants learned the process of mud plastering so that they can continue to restore and preserve churches for future generations. 

In a letter in our files Rebecca describes that “during our work days, we have formed a family and community…as we gather during our pot luck lunches and share stories of our childhood days attending mass at Santa Teresita and memories of our ancestors.”  

Santa Teresita is a project that I think of as mission critical. These are buildings and communities that represent the real core of why Cornerstones was founded in 1986. While our mission has expanded to encompass other types of work, projects like this hold a special place in our heart. 

Photo Credit: Tracey Enright

Photo Credit: Tracey Enright

If you would like to support the mission-critical work that we do at Cornerstones, you can donate online and find details on how to send us a check at https://www.cstones.org/donate 

 

Tracey Enright 

Executive Director 

Cornerstones Community Partnerships 

Celebrating more than 300 years of the Rael Acequia

Loyal readers of the Mud Blast know that in 2019, the Bureau of Land Management engaged Cornerstones to do a Historic Structures Report and ongoing maintenance of Rael Ranch. As part of that work, Susan Buck, a Conservator with expertise in architectural materials visited the property with our team. She conducted cross-section paint microscopy to begin to understand the story of the changes to the structure over time.

One of the major parts of maintaining the property is keeping the acequia (communal irrigation ditch) clear. This is no small task. The Rael Acequia is more than a mile long. I spent a winter afternoon walking the acequia with Issac Logsdon, Cornerstones’ Project Manager for Rael Ranch. This acequia contains some ambitious engineering. I was particularly impressed with the places where it hugs the steep side of an arroyo.

The health of the Rael Acequia is integral to the historic character of the Ranch. When you drive up to the property one of the first things you see is a hand lettered sign “Rael Ditch circa 1718.” Cornerstones hopes to revive a historic fruit orchard that currently on the property. This ditch is essential to that goal.  

Throughout the year, Issac does a great deal of work maintaining the acequia. The day I walked with him, he broke up ice dams at the head gate. However, the clean up in advance of the spring opening requires a lot of labor. The group pulls weeds, shores up eroded walls and shovels out sand….lots and lots of sand.

Photo by Barb Odell

Photo by Barb Odell

The history of acequias and their annual spring cleaning spans many centuries. The Spanish formally organized settlers into ditch associations in the 16th century AD, but Native American people were watering their crops in the Southwest using irrigation systems at least as far back as 800 AD.

In some communities, the ditch associations became part of the municipal government. In small rural communities the ditch associations were the municipal government. As such the spring cleaning was a big annual event. All members of the community were required to contribute in some way. After the clean up, the head gates were opened and water crew followed the first flow of water. Communities often came together for blessings and celebrations.

Today, by New Mexico law only properties that have three or more land owners with water rights can form a ditch association. Rael Acequia is a private ditch because there are only two water rights landowners. So, Issac recruited teams of (socially distanced and masked) volunteers to work on the project with him. I like to think that that group of volunteers that worked to clean out Rael Acequia over the last few weeks are Cornerstones’ community. People working together to keep this precious water resource running and the tradition of the acequia alive.

We expect to be opening the acequia soon and we recently completed the pruning of 6 apple trees, a pear, a quince, and a plum thicket in the orchard. We are estimating they were planted 75 years ago.

You can watch a gorgeous video of the crew opening the ditch last year.

Are you or your family part of a ditch association? Do you have stories of spring acequia cleaning? Please enter them in the comments below. We’d love to read about your experiences!

Plaza del Cerro

The Value of Stories

Most residents of and visitors to New Mexico know Chimayo for the Santuario. There’s another part of this village with a significant history: Plaza del Cerro, believed to be the last surviving fortified plaza in the United States. It survives, but Plaza del Cerro is also very endangered. Fortunately, Cornerstones received a Save America’s Treasures grant to preserve part of the plaza.

Our files on Plaza del Cerro contain an extensive and fascinating research report by Don Usner, “The Plaza del Cerro in Chimayo: Settlement and Function.” His methodology immediately caught my interest as he sets out to “unravel the historic and social patterns of the Plaza using a previously untapped resource – the memories of long-time residents.” Usner interviewed 18 people with “first hand knowledge of the Plaza” between 1900 and the early 1990s.

These oral histories provide a rich sense of what life was like on the plaza during the first half of the 20th century. Usner literally maps the interconnected lives of the three main families: the Ortegas, Trujillos and Martinezes. He describes the crops grown in the area and the items available in the Victor Ortega’s General Store, “since they knew it as children, many Chimayosos remember best the candy on sale.” Interviewees described the festivities of the annual Mes de Maria during which a “walk began at the Oratorio and proceeded counterclockwise around the Plaza. Periodically, the resadoras stopped to pray and the flower girls sprinkled them with the rose petals they had gathered before the ceremony.”

I encourage you to read this earlier post on Cornerstones website. You will find a brief history of the establishment of the Plaza del Cerro and the restoration of Casita de Martina in 2017 at Casita de Martina, Plaza del Cerro, Chimayo, New Mexico. There’s a note at the end that planning was underway to complete the earthen floor. I am happy to report that we completed that part of the project too.

The Save America’s Treasures grant enables Cornerstones to bring awareness and demonstrate the potential of usability of the plaza houses, particularly the small ones. This is a complex project that we see as a long relationship with community. There are approximately 30 separately deeded properties in the plaza with 23 owners.

Usner’s report is available as a book Sabino's Map: Life in Chimayó's Old Plaza. If you love oral histories or the history of New Mexico, it is worth locating a copy. Usner did critical work documenting these stories to preserve them for the future. The stories make the work to restore the physical environment of the Plaza del Cerro all the more important and tangible.

Tracey Enright
Executive Director
Cornerstones Community Partnerships
March 8, 2021

The Immaculate Conception Church

The Immaculate Conception Church in Lourdes was built sometime prior to December of 1876. Ernie Leger began corresponding with Cornerstones to preserve the church in the 1990s -- the Leger family remains deeply connected to this place and this landscape. Their ancestors are buried there. This community represents some of the real story of New Mexico settlement and agricultural use from colonial times leading to the Second World War.

Jake Rodriguez completed the initial The New Mexico Historic Building Inventory Form in 1986. Later on, Jake joined Cornerstone’s board, a position he retired from just last month. We thank him for his long years of dedication to this organization. Jake’s profession as an architect is reflected in his tidy handwriting and the simple, but careful drawing that he made on the report.

New Mexico Historic Building Inventory Form - Mission Church Survey (Click to view)

More often than not, there is more work to be done than there are funds available. The team prioritizes what is most important with the hopes that more can be done later. In May 1996, the Historic Preservation Office completed an Assessment which concluded that the “primary concern was the stability of the roof.” There are detailed drawings and plans in the files that reflect this.

Conception Church Roof Assessment (Click to view)

The McCune Foundation provided support for this project in 1997.  Now, twenty-four years later, McCune continues to provide financial support to New Mexico communities via Cornerstones’ work. Funding also came directly from the community. Our files contain a copy of a $5 ticket from a raffle that the community organized to raise funds to repair the church.

Cornerstones projects almost always include hands on support from our volunteers. In this case photos show a great crew working on remudding the church. Where you one of them? If so, we’d love to hear from you in the comments. Click the images to see a larger version and captions.

Now the Church would benefit from renewed attention. Jake Barrow and I made a trip to the Church last week. The location is spectacular and remote - 10 miles off I25 in San Miguel County. The setting of this mission church in the valley is breathtaking.

We saw that the roof replacement done in the late 1990’s has done more to save this building than anything else.  The very hard and durable mud plaster had eroded about 25% over a 20 year period and needs to be re-done. A structural crack on the left corner by the door telegraphs through to the inside.  There are broken windows and a doorway without a door, but with unusually decorative trim for a rural New Mexico church of this genre. The interior is more or less intact. It is very simple and very beautiful in that simple way.  It is a place that is in transition. A roof, stable walls, interior protection, and some level of monitoring/maintenance are needed.

As was the case when the team did the initial work on the Church, we will look at the financial resources that we have available to decide what work we can accomplish and what work is most essential. We will be looking at this project in the context of the many adobe structures in New Mexico that would benefit from our work. If you would like to support these kinds of projects, please donate to Cornerstones.

Immaculate Conception also captivated Jeff Black, a talented professional photographer. He sent us some incredible images that he generously allowed us to use for our work to restore churches.

Tracey Enright
Executive Director
Cornerstones Community Partnerships
February 8, 2021

San Rafael Church

Happy New Year!

I am thrilled to join the Cornerstones team as Executive Director. For those of you who are Jake Barrow fans (and I’m one of them too!) he is staying with us. Jake will now be able to devote his time to two things that are central to our mission and that are his true passion – working with communities to preserve their heritage, particularly adobe, and mentoring.

As the newest member of the team, I will be studying up on the important work that Cornerstones has done since its founding. I invite you to join me on this learning journey or for some of you who have been involved with Cornerstones for many years, a walk down memory lane. Each month I will highlight one of our previous projects. If you follow us on social media, I welcome your responses there. Many of you have traveled to these sites or were volunteers on the projects. We would love to hear your memories and see your pictures if you have them.

I’m launching this series with San Rafael Church, La Cueva, New Mexico. You can read all about it in a blog post on our website from 2017.

The blog post mentions that San Rafael was again in need of maintenance. As a result of the assessment then, we launched a campaign to re-plaster the exterior and to repair windows and doors. This work was completed in 2019. This is a great example that Cornerstones projects have a continuing life. In the early years the church was saved and restored. More recently, as with all historic buildings preservation, maintenance is required. Don Sena, representing the Diocese, will be inspecting the Mora churches soon to determine needs for the 2021 season. Rebecca Montoya continues to be our Mora community liaison for all work there.

It is an honor to join with members of New Mexico’s communities to work on these important historic structures.

Thank you for joining with us!

Tracey Enright
Executive Director
Cornerstones Community Partnerships
January 15, 2021