Restoration of mid-18th century San José de Gracia church completed

A handful of devoted village elders, aided by other volunteers who would pitch in when they could, would plaster the towering Spanish mission church with mud and shore it up with handmade adobe bricks in spots that needed it most on a regular basis.

But the work to preserve the historic building was piecemeal — too big and expensive of a project to do all at once.

Mayordomo Emilio Martinez recalls a group stopping to look at the church, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and remarking they had seen four old men working on the church.

“That’s the truth,” Martinez said. “There were four old men that were doing the work in their 70s and 80s, so we just can’t do it. That’s the bottom line.”

While researching a book about historic churches in New Mexico, author Frank Graziano realized some sanctuaries in the state were in a “precarious situation” as a result of shrinking populations.

“There’s not enough people for a congregation to have Masses at the churches and so they’ve kind of gone into disuse and disrepair,” he said. “After I finished the book, I started thinking about, ‘Are there ways that I could give something back by doing something to try and help or save at least some of these churches?’ ”

The question evolved into Nuevo Mexico Profundo, a nonprofit group that seeks to restore culturally and historically significant sites in New Mexico.

The group recently celebrated the completion of an all-encompassing $200,000 restoration and preservation project at the church, the largest the group has ever funded, that included a complete overhaul outside and conservation of religious artifacts and devotional art from 18th and 19th century santeros inside.

Sandra Sandoval, a mayordoma and Martinez’s sister-in-law, expressed gratitude to the donors who made the project possible.

“It is a lot of work, and as a community, we get to do only do one portion at a time,” she said while taking a break from sweeping. “By the time we had finished the south side, for instance, we’re starting all over again with the east side. And it’s just going around and around this beautiful structure. But it’s wonderful to see it completed.”

Graziano said the project started with the restoration of altar screens and other religious art inside the church in 2022.

“We started talking about, ‘Well, we’ve gone this far. Maybe we could raise enough money to restore the building, too.’ And so over a period of time, that all came together and now we just finished it,” he said.

The work was labor intensive.

All of the windows were removed and restored with UV protection.

“The steeples were shingled. All of the canales in the church were replaced. There was some seepage into the north wall, and they fixed that. They stabilized the parapets and then they remudded the entire church and all of the churchyard walls,” Graziano said.

The conservation work inside was “incredible,” he said.

“First of all, they do it inch by inch with Q-tips, which is completely insane,” Graziano said.

Martinez said the religious artwork, including several altar screens and Stations of the Cross, retained its authenticity.

“The community wanted that,” he said. “They didn’t want it painted over.”

The art conservation was done by master santeros Victor Goler and Felix Lopez, santero Nicolas Otero and Las Trampas resident Clarence Vigil.

Before and after photos of the artwork show dramatic differences.

“There’s also a bunch of bultos and statues, and they conserved all of those as well,” Graziano said. “It’s really interesting to see the before and after, like how they pop when they’re done with the conservation.”

A wooden statue of Saint Joseph at the front of the church, for example, was missing a hand, forcing parishioners to lay the baby Jesus who was supposed to be in his arms next to the statue. After one of the santeros sculpted a new hand, Baby Jesus is back in the arms of the statue of Saint Joseph.

A historic marker outside the church indicates it was built between 1760 and 1776.

“Parishioners periodically re-mud the adobe walls, which are as much as six feet thick,” the marker states. “It is considered one of the best preserved examples of Spanish Colonial architecture in New Mexico.”

When Las Trampas was founded in 1751, “the nearest church was almost ten miles away at Picuris,” according to the National Park Service.

“The church still retains most of its original 18th century features with its wide-plank wooden floors, decorative interior, and the strong adobe walls that have been preserved and continually re-plastered,” according to the park service’s website. “The unique and original transverse clerestory window in the nave casts light on the sanctuary and altar, which is otherwise still lit by candles.”

Graziano, a self-described outsider, said seeing the finished product was been incredibly rewarding.

“There’s a lot of distrust of outsider good intentions and for good reason, I could tell you that,” he said. “At the beginning, it was hard to, let’s say, develop a rapport. Then once people see what you’re doing and that it worked out, now there’s all kinds of warm feelings, and that is so rewarding, you know, just to have the project done and the community love it because it could’ve gone sideways, too.”

Graziano said he made friends and acquaintances all over the state when he wrote Historic Churches of New Mexico Today.

“At the same time, I had a lot of wealthy friends in Santa Fe. Those two worlds had no connection, and I felt like I could be a bridge,” he said.

Martinez said the church restoration was bittersweet.

“First of all, it’s been done by the community for [nearly] 250 years,” he said. “We can no longer say the community has been doing it for that many years.”

Losing that tradition has caused Martinez heartache, but he said he’s a realist.

“You wish you could do it, but the reality is we can’t,” he said.

Martinez, who grew up in the neighboring community of Vadito and “married into the community,” said he feels a tremendous amount of responsibility for the upkeep of the church.

“There’s folks buried in here [under] the floor, and the thing that always hits me is, as you walk in, you’re greeted by that spirit of commitment that was in the church,” he said.

“They kept it up, and you kind of hear these words, ‘Look what we built. Look what we did. Keep it up,’ ” he said. “It’s kind of a charge that the people that are in the church are telling you, ‘We did this. Now it’s up to you to keep it up.’ ”

Mass used to be celebrated at the church the first and third Sunday of each month, but most services ceased after the coronavirus pandemic and never returned.

The community last celebrated Las Posadas, a religious celebration before Christmas, in December.

“It’s still a living church … but right now it’s mainly a museum in the sense that people just come to see it,” Martinez said.

Sandoval, a descendant of the 12 Spanish families who founded Las Trampas, said the church is the heart of the community.

“As you drive by, the first thing you see is the church right in the middle of the plaza,” she said. “You drive through, and you say, ‘Oh my, what a blessing.’ ”