Abo Ruins: A Pueblo on the Trade Route

Less than a mile north of here stand the sandstone walls of Abo, one of the largest Pueblo Indian villages in the pre-contact Southwest. The Tompiro people built this community over many centuries before the Spanish arrived, and they chose the location deliberately: Abo Pass was the principal east-west trade corridor through the Manzano Mountains, connecting the Rio Grande valley to the Southern Plains.

Spanish Franciscan missionaries arrived in the sixteen twenties and built the Mission of San Gregorio de Abo alongside the existing pueblo. The walls still rise more than thirty feet in places. Like the other Salinas pueblos, Abo was abandoned in the sixteen seventies when drought, famine, disease, and Apache raids made survival impossible. The refugees merged with other Tiwa communities farther down the Rio Grande. Abo is now part of Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.