Misión San Ildefonso

The San Ildefonso Mission, once operated as a Spanish colonial church near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its adobe structure was built with indigenous labor under the supervision of Francsican friars. The objective of this church complex was to convert the native communities to Catholicism and introduce them to Spanish ways of life. Throughout the colonial period, the Spanish Crown struggled to staff the governments it established in the Americas, given their immense size. To help stake out its claim over the territory that today makes up the US-Mexico border, the monarchs allowed missionaries to create and oversee settlements. This church was originally established in the early-seventeenth century, but it suffered from extensive military attacks and natural disasters. The structure that stands today is a replica of the eighteenth-century version, built in the mid-twentieth century.