Travel to Chimayo, the Heart of the Land of Enchantment

Travel to Chimayo, the Heart of the Land of Enchantment

If you are planning a vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, take a break from shopping for Indian jewelry and southwest art in the exclusive Plaza shops, eating in four star restaurants and touring Museum Hill, the Georgia O'Keefe Museum and Santa Fe's historic buildings. Just for a day, rent a car and take a trip back in time on the High Road through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In the village of Chimayo, three cultures, prehistoric Indians, Spanish colonists and white newcomers, have blended together in the past and the present to create the true heart of the Land of Enchantment. 

El Santuario de Chimayo

In the tiny hamlet of Chimayo, there is a quaint adobe church that is visited by 300,000 people a year. They come for physical and spiritual healing. The Santuario de Chimayo, the most visited  religious shrine in the US, is a place of living history, hope, mystery and miracles. 

As you approach the church, its antiquity is apparent. The chapel, attached to the north side of the church, was built first in 1810. The church was added in 1816. Constructed by local residents as a labor of love and devotion, the church is not quite square and symmetrical, but, it features two beautiful, tall bell towers and three foot thick adobe walls. The churchyard is surrounded by a formidable adobe wall with an arched, gated entrance. The weathered wooden orignal gates at the entrance, tenuously hang from their hinges. A short walk through the European style churchyard brings you to hand-carved double doors.

Go inside. There is no tour. This is a working, country church. All pilgrims are welcome here. The interior is small, cool and dark. It is adorned like many older Catholic churches. The statues of the Saints, Stations of the Cross and religious art are in distinctly Spanish and New Mexican styles. A bank of candles flickers to the right of the altar. Visitors approach the altar quietly and reverently but you can feel an air of anticipation from them. Everyone pays respect to the lovely altar which displays a miraculous crucifix. The finding of the crucifix inspired the building of the church, however, the cross is not the reason the people come. The reason is off to the left in the small chapel. 

The Lourdes of America

Enter the chapel. Once your eyes adjust to the gloom, you find that the tiny chapel is packed with medical equipment old and new. There are wheelchairs, walkers and crutches, and more crutches. They hang from the walls and the ceiling.  You will also see framed newspaper clippings, hand written letters of gratitude and testimonials of life changing experiences that people have had in the chapel. All of them proclaim that amazing miracles happened for them when they came to Chimayo. It is why Chimayo is called the Lourdes of America.

The crowd migrates to the back. Follow them. When it is your turn, you enter a tiny, candlelit room. Surprisingly, all there is to see here is a small hole in the dirt floor. Called El Pocito (little well), it is filled with loose, sandy soil. People help themselves to a small amount of tierra bendita (sacred earth) and apply it to parts of their bodies. Some people actually eat a little bit of the sacred earth and pray for a milagro (miracle) to happen for them. This is why they come. The miracle is in the dirt!

The History of the Healing Earth

The legend of the miracle dirt began long before Spanish settlers came to Chimayo Valley. Native people regarded the area as a sacred shrine from their creation stories. They, too, believed the earth held the ability to heal. Prehistoric people made pilgrimages there to gather the dirt that they used as medicine. In the early 1700s, a handful of Spanish families settled in the valley. Living in virtual isolation, they developed a devout religious tradition of their own called The Brotherhood of the Penitentes. They believed that doing penance in life would bring them closer to an afterlife in heaven. The Brotherhood exists today and still practices a special ritual in secret every year on Good Friday. They literally reenact the Crucifixion of Christ with one worthy member of the Brotherhood nailed to the cross.

During the Brotherhood's Good Friday rituals in 1810, a local friar, Don Bernardo Abeyta, saw a bright light shining from a hillside. He followed the light and found it was coming from the ground. He dug in the dirt with his hands and discovered a crucifix. From then on, sick and injured people came to the site and claimed they were cured by ingesting the soil. The townspeople built the small chapel over the hole to protect and venerate it and, later, built the church after receiving permission from the Church.

Pilgrimage to Chimayo

Massive pilgrimages to Chimayo began after World War II. A large number of soldiers who were forced to walk the Bataan Death March came from New Mexico. The men vowed that if they lived through Bataan, they would reunite on Good Friday and march to the little Santuario de Chimayo to give thanks for the miracle of surviving the horrors of the Death March. On Good Friday in 1945, the survivors made their first march, some coming from as far as Albuquerque, 100 miles away. Many walked in bare feet carrying heavy, homemade crosses. Thousands of people make the march themselves every year on Good Friday, continuing the tradition that the Bataan survivors began. 

If You Go

Chimayo is 24 miles northeast of Santa Fe off Hwy 76. You can shop for handmade folk art. The restaurants in town serve wonderful, homemade New Mexican food. For an upscale meal, El Rancho de Chimayo is one of northern New Mexico's favorite restaurants.