1 of Santa Clara Pueblo’s places is on the National Register
Most of Santa Clara Pueblo was built recently: 5% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 1975. Below: 4 old photos and papers and maps from 1953 on.
Tewa people lived in the Pueblo area for millennia before they met Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate and his exploration party on July 11, 1598. Pueblo archaeology shows that Ancestral Puebloans lived in the general region as far back as 1200 BC.
First visited in 1541, a segment of Francisco Coronado's expeditionary force met with the residents of the nearby Caypa Pueblo. After annexation of the region into the Spanish Kingdom, and as part of the 1601 expansion of Oñate's colonial capital, a chapel was built there by 1617. Fray Alonso de Benavides established a mission in 1628. The mission was abandoned on the lead up to the Great Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Santa Clara Pueblo. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
1953Espanola sheet · 1:24,000
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Santa Clara Pueblo.
Then & now
Stand where they stood
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Retake this viewIn the village of Santa Clara, 1905
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Santa Clara Pueblo’s page.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From the Library of Congress (4), the National Register of Historic Places (1), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
1905
1907
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