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. Guisewa Pueblo became extinct during the last quarter of the seventeenth century, a result of the consolidation of several pueblos of the Jemez province into fewer and larger towns. Only one town, the present Jemez Pueblo, survives from that time. Excavation and repairs have been made in the ruins of both the pueblo and the mission church. La Mesilla State Monument This colorful State Monument consists of the plaza in the village of Mesilla, near Las Cruces, and the buildings nearby. The Monument preserves an aspect of the Mexican Colonial culture and architecture which flourished here in the early nineteenth century. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 was celebrated in the Mesilla Plaza and the famous desperado, Billy the Kid, once stood trial here for his life. During the Civil War, Mesilla was briefly the Confederate capitol of the Territory of Arizona. Lincoln State Monument