Event Details

Celebrate San Juan Day at Lincoln Historic Site. A special Catholic mass will take place at 10 a.m. in the San Juan Bautista Church. Guest speaker Scott Smith, a retired employee of New Mexico Historic Sites, will give a lecture at 11:30 a.m. about how La Iglesia de San Juan came to be built as well as its significance to the people of Lincoln County.

In the wake of one of the most violent episodes in the history of New Mexico, the people of the Rio Bonito valley came together to build a more peaceful community: a place where schools were more prevalent than saloons; where disputes were settled in courts of law instead of the streets; and where the sound of church bells ringing eventually prevailed over the reverberations of distant gunfire. This transformation took place in the 1880s, shortly after the end of the Lincoln County War. The survivors simply made up their minds that they didn’t want to live the rest of their lives on a battlefield. As best they could, they set aside old disputes and put away the guns. They made a conscious choice to live in peace with their neighbors.

Scott Smith was born at Cannon A.F.B. near Clovis in 1960 and is a life-long resident of New Mexico, who graduated from Eastern New Mexico University in Portales in 1983. He worked at Coronado Historic Site in Bernalillo for twelve years and at the Bosque Redondo Memorial in Fort Sumner for fourteen years during his 30-year career with the Department of Cultural Affairs. Scott has lived in Lincoln for the past six years.

San Juan Day is a Catholic, Spanish festival that celebrates the birth of St. John the Baptist and also signifies the start of summer. Mass and lecture are included with admission of $7/adult. Children 16 and younger are free.