Dennis Holloway, An Architect in Northern New Mexico

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Pecos Pueblo in Four Views
(Ancestral Jemez Pueblo Village, Pecos National Historic Park, Pecos, New Mexico)

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Please click on an image below to see a larger view.

The remains of this ancient Indian place lies atop a stoney ridge about 25 miles east of present-day Santa Fe. The Pecos river is an easy walk. Pecos was located strategically near Glorieta Pass in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains between the pre-historic Rio Grande Valley agricultural trade from the west and the Plains salt-buffalo trade from the east. The Pueblo was planned as a large quadrangle with a central plaza.  Begun in the 1300s, the Pueblo was, by the 16th Century Spanish arrival, four or five stories high. Covered porches on the upper levels were intricately interconnected in a "skyway" pedestrian network.  The plaza level cellar rooms were about 4.4 feet high with no doors directly onto the plaza level.   In the late 1500's a second roomblock was constructed south of the quadrangle. The ridgetop community architecture of the South and North Pueblos is surrounded by a 6 foot high stone wall. Outside of this wall to the south (seen in the foreground in the lower righthand view) is the first Franciscan Church and Convento completed in 1625. This great Native American place is layer upon layer prehistory and history.

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