Pecos, New Mexico

The village of Pecos sits near the ruins of one of the most powerful pueblos in the pre-contact Southwest. Cicuye, as it was called, held roughly two thousand people when the Spanish arrived and commanded the main pass between the Rio Grande valley and the Great Plains. Coronado's expedition passed through in fifteen forty.

The Spanish built a great mission church in the early sixteen twenties. The pueblo survived the Pueblo Revolt of sixteen eighty and the Reconquest of sixteen ninety-two, but a century of smallpox and Comanche raids left it hollowed out. In eighteen thirty-eight, its last seventeen survivors walked west to join the Jemez Pueblo.

A small Hispanic farming village then grew on the Pecos River, established around eighteen twenty-one as the Santa Fe Trail opened trade to Mexico. Pecos National Historical Park preserves both worlds.