Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument - Quarai Ruins

Today we drove a few miles south of Manzano to view the Quarai Ruins, one of three pueblo ruins in the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.

Between 1100 and 1500 AD, the area of the Salinas Pueblos became one of the most populous Pueblo trade centers, located along major trade routes. Perhaps 10,000 people inhabited the area by the 1600's. They traded salt from the Las Salinas Valley; and maize, pinon nuts, beans, squash and cotton goods from the Rio Grande Villages, for buffalo meat, hides, flints & shells from the plains to the east.

Quarai was the smallest of the three monuments and dates back to about 1300 AD. The village consisted of compact apartments built around kivas and were built from the native red sandstone. Between 1626 and 1628, Fray Juan Gutierrez arrived and began the conversion of this pueblo's 600 inhabitants. The church of La Purisima Conception de Cuarar (now Quarai), was built by the pueblo's women and children around 1630, taking about five years to complete. The walls were five feet thick and forty feet high, and are considered the most beautiful in the monument.