Laguna Pueblo: Newest Pueblo, Oldest Visible from the Road

The white-walled village on the mesa to your north is Laguna Pueblo, home of the Kawaik people. It was established in sixteen ninety-nine, making it one of the newest of the New Mexico pueblos, founded after the Pueblo Revolt of sixteen eighty when refugees from several villages gathered here and built a new community. The Mission Church of San José de la Laguna was built between sixteen ninety-nine and seventeen oh one and dedicated to Saint Joseph.

It remains one of the finest examples of Spanish colonial mission architecture in the Southwest. Ancestors of the Kawaik people have lived in this area since at least thirteen hundred. In his nineteen forty-six guidebook to the highway, writer Jack Rittenhouse noted Laguna as the only major pueblo still visible from Route sixty-six.

That view is still there, forty-five miles west of Albuquerque, for anyone who slows down to look.