La Manga, New Mexico Stone Houses

Stone and Adobe Homes just outside property of Santo Nino de Atocha Chapel - La Manga, New Mexico

The part stone and adobe buildings in this photo are located in San Miguel County, New Mexico, United States. The place is catalogued as Cemetery by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and its elevation above sea level is equal to 6,571ft. (2003mt.)
The buildings in this photo have stone walls and foundations at least three feet thick. The steep roofs are covered with metal to shed rain in summer and in winter snow-ice. The inside walls were first made smooth with adobe mud. The area has abundant lime rock which was burned in a pit and then ground into a fine powder using a large metate of malpais rock. The fine powder was then mixed with water to make a plaster like solution which was applied to the walls by dipping a zalellita, a piece of sheepskin about six inches in diameter, into the mixture and rubbing it on the walls. This gave the walls an off-white color. By using different colors of dirt, which was found in different part of the territory, they varied the colors of the walls (encale de jaspe). The bottom 8 inches of the wall was covered with yellow dirt mixed with talc. This border served a very practical purpose. The floors were of caked adobe mud, which would be sprinkled with water often, so that they could be kept clean with a small broom called escobita dep popote. The yellow border, called faneja, dust board, protected from becoming discolored from the dust of repeated sweepings.
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