Elizabeth Miller

3 weeks ago | newmexicomagazine.org | Elizabeth Miller

IN 2012, Jemez Pueblo tribal and religious leadership filed a lawsuit to reclaim the Valles Caldera as their aboriginal and most sacred lands. In October 2024, a settlement between the National Park Service and the pueblo resulted in co-management of Banco Bonito. The 3,000-acre portion of the preserve includes shards of traditional black-on-white pottery and thousands of field houses used by ancestral Jemez people while tending crops.

3 weeks ago | l8r.it | Elizabeth Miller

WHEN JORGE SILVA-BAÑUELOS showed National Park Service staff the 40-acre parcel of Sulphur Springs land he wanted to add to the Valles Caldera National Preserve, they were more than a little hesitant. “Are you sure?” they asked. Abandoned vehicles and trailers, black pipes, and the footprints of bathhouses burned to their last timbers would make for a massive cleanup project. But Silva-Bañuelos, the preserve’s superintendent, was positive.

3 weeks ago | newmexicomagazine.org | Elizabeth Miller

WHEN JORGE SILVA-BAÑUELOS showed National Park Service staff the 40-acre parcel of Sulphur Springs land he wanted to add to the Valles Caldera National Preserve, they were more than a little hesitant. “Are you sure?” they asked. Abandoned vehicles and trailers, black pipes, and the footprints of bathhouses burned to their last timbers would make for a massive cleanup project. But Silva-Bañuelos, the preserve’s superintendent, was positive.

3 weeks ago | l8r.it | Elizabeth Miller

IN 2012, Jemez Pueblo tribal and religious leadership filed a lawsuit to reclaim the Valles Caldera as their aboriginal and most sacred lands. In October 2024, a settlement between the National Park Service and the pueblo resulted in co-management of Banco Bonito. The 3,000-acre portion of the preserve includes shards of traditional black-on-white pottery and thousands of field houses used by ancestral Jemez people while tending crops.

Dec 12, 2024 | newmexicomagazine.org | Elizabeth Miller

FOR TWO DECEMBER EVENINGS, farolitos light the stacked sandstone walls of the mission church at the Jemez Historic Site. Even more of the paper lanterns follow the surrounding half-standing walls that mark rooms where Spanish friars worked, cooked, slept, and taught Spanish lessons in their efforts to convert the Jemez Pueblo to Catholicism. Stone ledges and shelves flicker with candlelight from thousands of tiny flames.