The Main Visitor Center for the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument is located in Mountainair, New Mexico, at the junction of Highways 55 and 60. Three outlying sites nearby contain the ruins of four seventeenth century Franciscan churches and three Ancestral Puebloan villages. Abo, Gran Quivira (Las Humanas), and Quarai are all well worth a visit and the National Park Service staff members are particularly friendly and helpful. Although the museums at each location are small they contain some interesting artifacts that are rarely seen outside of major collections. The mountain lion effigy below is one example and the stone used to straighten arrow shafts in the Gran Quivira collection is another. The flat sided water vessels are also unusual and beautifully decorated. The church in Abo is particularly interesting in that there is a kiva within the walls of the church grounds. The Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument is a bit off the beaten track, but if one is interested in sixteenth and seventeenth century America it should definitely be on your must visit list. If you are lucky the owls will still be in the bell tower at Quarai.
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