Good news for Questa
There’s been good news for Questa, the village north of Taos, this month. Restoration of the local Catholic parish’s historic St. Anthony de Padua church is virtually complete — just exterior plaster and stucco work remained undone when the church was rededicated last Sunday.
The Archdiocese of Santa Fe wanted to tear the church down — and even got a demolition permit — after a wall fell down in 2008. But a community effort to save the 170-year-old edifice staved off the wrecking ball.
Somehow — the word “miracle” has been used — St. Anthony’s has been fixed up for only about $57,000, some it from bake sales and car washes. Mark Sideris, the project manager and an adobe restoration expert who lives next to the church, said the “blood and sweat” of volunteers pulled off a job that would have cost millions if it had been contracted out. Sideris’ logs show the volunteers put in 41,000 hours of work. Some came from places like Los Alamos and Durango, Colo., to help out.
Many of the finer details of the restoration were by local artisans who performed carpentry work on light fixtures, the altar and the communion rails. Retablo and bulto artists made pieces for the church. A local deacon led the production of new stained-glass windows.
The result is “a historic Spanish Colonial church, but with a modern sound system and a modern heating system,” said Bobby Ortega, president of the nonprofit that took over the church for the restoration period.
There’s hope in Questa that the renovated church, besides being a revered place of worship, will bring in visitors and help inspire other development efforts as the village recovers from the closing of the nearby, century-old Chevron molybdenum mine in 2014, which took away 300 jobs.
There are plans for a new visitors center that will describe the area’s history as Questa tries to cash in on its location on the Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway and as the gateway to the most spectacular part of the Rio Grande Gorge, the key feature of the new Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, as well as fishing on the Red River.
A few day’s before St. Anthony’s dedication, Chevron Mining agreed to a $143 million settlement with the state and federal governments to clean up the closed molybdenum mine, providing for the next phase of long-term cleanup at the Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site. Once the settlement is approved by a judge, the company will undertake a project to cover about 275 acres of mine waste, or “tailings,” operate a water treatment plant and install groundwater extraction systems.
That’s good for the Questa area as it tries to rebrand itself post-mining. Although a lot of the reclamation work so far has been handed to workers from elsewhere after many miners left the area, Taos-area officials says some of the new jobs are expected to go to locals. And there should be off-shoot benefits for local businesses from $143 million in spending.
“We’re in the process now of saying ‘We can dream,’” said Phillipe Chino, head of the Questa economic development group working on the visitors center project.
For now, congratulations are in order for the volunteers and leaders of the church project who saved a piece of northern New Mexico’s history. And let’s hope Questa has a lot more good news over the next few years.