A curator-custodian is on duty at the Coronado Museum headquarters, which is open all year.
Pecos State Monument
Off U.S. Highway 84-85, three miles south of Pecos, is this State Monument. It became a National Monument during late 1966.
This mission, the Church of Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de Porciuncula at Pecos, dates from the year 1617. It is fitting that this mission, which was one of the first two, with Jemez, established by the Franciscans in New Mexico, should bear the name “Our Lady of the Angels of Porciuncula,” for with his own hands, St. Francis, founder of the Order, rebuilt the decaying chapel of Our Lady of Angels at Assisi, which he called his Porciuncula or “Little Inheritance,” and there established the headquarters of the Franciscan Order.
Pecos was well fortified because of its location on the eastern edge of the pueblo area and its contact with the Plains Indians. It resisted the raids for many years, but when a smallpox epidemic in 1838 reduced the population to seventeen survivors, they moved to Jemez Pueblo, abandoning Pecos.
A part of the massive adobe walls of the ruined mission has been excavated and repaired, as have some of the rubble masonry walls.
Jemez State Monument
This Monument is at Jemez Springs, sixty miles north of Albuquerque on State Highway 4.
One of the finest early mission churches was established at Giusewa Pueblo. Giusewa means “place of the boiling waters” in the language of the Jemez Indians, and refers to the famous Jemez Hot Springs nearby. The mission, with Pecos, was one of the two earliest in New Mexico. These were founded one hundred and fifty-two years before the first California missions.
The original settlement of the Giusewa Pueblo goes back hundreds of years before Columbus’ discovery of America, as does the settlement of the other pueblos, Quarai, Abo, and Pecos.