First glances can be deceiving at the Coronado State Monument in Bernalillo. Adobe brick replicas of Pueblo rooms probably grab most visitors’ attention. But, Ranger John Cutler advises visitors to stop and look around when they first get outside.

Little dirt mounds immediately outside the back door of the visitor center that seem inconsequential are actually the remains of Kuaua Pueblo buildings inhabited by early Native Americans and abandoned before 1590. When the Pueblo was first excavated and the monument built — about 50 years ago — the walls stood 6 feet high. Now, due to wind, rain and snow all that is left can be easily measured in inches.

Cutler said visitors can tell the difference between the new walls built to help them understand how life used to be, and the original walls by the style of brick used.

“Pueblo people did not use adobe brick,” Cutler said as he pointed to the square shaped bricks made out of mud. They used mud balls called turtle back or mud puddle and plastered them together with mortar, he said.

Then, he instructed my 10-year-old son Joshua to look beyond the walls and see what else was there. “Sometimes the smallest thing could be the most historical thing,” Cutler said as he pointed out 500- to 600-year-old shards of broken pottery dispersed among the old walls.

“Now he’s looking,” Cutler said of Joshua. “Now he’s an explorer.”

And he was. Josh excitedly roamed from one exhibit to another exploring every picture, every display and every corner of every building. He climbed down a tall, wooden ladder into a kiva and discovered the ventilation hole used to push the smoke from the fire pit upwards. He stopped to examine all of the buildings and walls to determine which were old and which were new. He walked through a mock Pueblo-style room and thought about how short the Native Americans of that time must have been.

Josh tried on heavy, metal Conquistador armor that almost knocked him down because of the weight. He looked at the corn grinding stone and remembered that his teacher had told him how little pebbles would get mixed into the corn and break the teeth of early Pueblo people.

Josh found his surname on a list of family names of the first Europeans in New Mexico. He walked around the mural room and tried to unravel the story behind hand-painted murals that had been extracted from the kiva.

There must have been a drought when the murals were painted more than 500 years ago, Cutler said. All of the murals have rain dripping out of the animals. He pointed to the first mural that depicted a bald eagle with rain.

“The eagles are in the sky,” Cutler said. “If you want rain, you would pray to something in the sky.” A rabbit with a spear through it on another mural also was dripping rain. “Not only are they praying for rain,” Cutler said, “but maybe they were giving thanks for a nice rabbit hunt.”

After about an hour of exploring the ruins, Cutler stopped Josh on the path, pointed to a hawk flying off in the distance in the northern sky over the Rio Grande River.

“That was perfect,” Cutler said. “You have the hawk there, the ruins here, the river there… that’s how a boy your age would have seen it. I think sometimes people forget that. History does not have to be an object or a fact. It could be a view.”

“Learning can be such fun when you actually get to see it,” Josh said at the end of the day.

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Hours: 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. Closed Tuesdays
Admission: Adults-$3, children under 16-free, Joint ticket with Jemez State Monument-$5. Free to all NM residents on Sundays, seniors on Wednesdays, and to all school groups.
Location: I-25, exit 242, 1.7 miles west on NM 44 to 485 Kuaua Rd. Bernalillo, NM 87004 Contact: Phone: (505) 867-5351; 800-419-3738.