Mission San Gregorio de Abo, State Highway 513, Mountainair vicinity, Abo, Torrance County, NM

Significance: The Mission of San Gregorio de Abo, built in the late 1620's, is one of four missions built in the Salinas Province of early Spanish colonization in New Mexico which today comprise Salinas National Monument. The other three missions are La Purisma Conception de Cuarac, San Buenaventura, and San Isidro. The side of Abo was a thriving Pueblo community at the time Franciscans began to convert the resident Tompiro Indians in 1622, but was abandoned between 1672 and 1678. The Mission is notable for the construction method using buttresses to support relatively thin walls, a method used in European church architecture. San Gregorio de Abo is the only example of the use of this method for a seventeenth-century New Mexican church.
Major excavation and stabilization was undertaken at the site in 1938-39. The National Park Service acquired the Mission in 1980 and the site was made a unit of Salinas National Monument.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: FN-30
Survey number: HABS NM-146
Building/structure dates: ca. 1629 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1938- 1939 Subsequent Work
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 66000494