Chimayó is a census-designated place (CDP) in Rio Arriba and Santa Fe counties in the U.S. state of New Mexico. The publish is derived from a Tewa make known for a local landmark, the hill of Tsi Mayoh. The town is unincorporated and includes many neighborhoods, called plazas or placitas, each like its own name, including El Potrero de Chimayó (the plaza close Chimayó’s communal pasture) and the Plaza del Cerro (plaza by the hill). The cluster of plazas called Chimayó lies close Santa Cruz, approximately 25 miles north of Santa Fe. The population was 3,177 at the 2010 census.

The Potrero plaza of Chimayó is known internationally for a Catholic chapel, the Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas, commonly known as El Santuario de Chimayó. A private individual built it by 1816 hence that local people could adulation Jesus as depicted at Esquipulas; preservationists bought it and handed it exceeding to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in 1929. The chapel is now managed by the Archdiocese as a Catholic church. For its reputation as a healing site (believers affirmation that dirt from a urge on room of the church can heal living thing and spiritual ills), it has become known as the “Lourdes of America,” and attracts near to 300,000 visitors a year, including happening to 30,000 during Holy Week (the week prior to Easter). It has been called “no doubt the most important Catholic pilgrimage center in the United States.” The sanctuary was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

Chimayó has long been an important site for the Hispanic weaving traditions of northern New Mexico, and an important style of weaving which developed amid 1920 and 1940 is named after the town. The Chimayó style is characterized by well-developed transverse bands and a prominent central motif. The central motif is usually diamond or hourglass shaped and agreed elaborate. Because of how Anglo-Americans were curious in original American designs, products from Chimayó were marketed as Indian goods happening until the forward 1940s. Chimayó is particularly known for the weaving traditions of the Ortega and Trujillo families, who have been weaving in the Spanish Colonial tradition for many generations and now play weaving businesses close the Plaza del Cerro and in the placita of Centinela. Their established craft is but one of several nevertheless practiced in the region, including tin smithing, wood carving, and making religious paintings. These activities, along taking into account the local architecture and the landscape of irrigated fields, create a historic ambiance that attracts much tourism.

Chimayó figures prominently in Now Eleanor’s Idea, an opera by Robert Ashley. Ashley describes Chimayó in his foreword to the libretto as “the spiritual center of the lowrider world…Now Eleanor conceives of a television documentary program to investigation the exotic lowrider community…in the car shops” of Chimayó. Act II, Scene 2 is a recorded interview taking into account Chimayó residents LowLow and Joan Medina.