San Miguel Mission [Oldest Church in the U.S.], Santa Fe (must see)

Around 1610, Franciscan friars established what is often described as the oldest church in the continental United States. Santa Fe’s first church was built across the river from the Plaza, near the Indigenous settlement that the Spanish missionaries hoped to serve and convert. They constructed this modest mission even before completing their own principal church closer to the center of the new colonial town.

The building has undergone numerous repairs and alterations, making it difficult to determine precisely how much of the original structure survives. Its adobe walls are approximately five feet thick, while stone buttresses were added in 1887 to reinforce them. The first church was probably smaller than the present building. Although it was burned during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, it was later rebuilt on its original foundations and has continued to occupy the same site.

The snug, whitewashed interior contains a restored late-18th-century altar screen with a complicated history of its own. Created by an unidentified Mexican artist, it was concealed beneath layers of household paint for many years. The screen frames a collection of oil paintings and painted wooden statues of saints. Sections of the church’s original foundations are also visible beneath glass panels in the floor, offering visitors a glimpse of the building’s earliest remains.

At the rear of the church hangs the celebrated San Miguel bell, traditionally said to have been cast in Spain in 1356, as its inscription appears to indicate. Historians, however, generally doubt this date and suggest that a casting flaw may have caused an 8 to resemble a 3. The bell probably arrived in Santa Fe during the early 19th century. Despite its age, it still produces a rich, resonant tone when gently struck.