Blue Heron Restaurant at Sunrise Springs – La Cienega, New Mexico
Fewer than ten miles separate the historic Spanish village of La Ciénega from Santa Fe, and though both have largely retained vestiges of their storied and proud histories, the differences that set them apart are as vast as El Camino Real, the Royal Road that has connected them for centuries. While Santa Fe has entered the 21st century as a burgeoning cosmopolitan city, La >Ciénega remains a rural enclave, parts of which have remained unchanged for generations–that despite becoming somewhat of a bedroom community for Santa Feans. Once a rural Indian pueblo outpost, La Ciénega was abandoned in the seventeenth century only to be resettled by the Spanish after Don Diego de Vargas’ celebrated reconquest of New Mexico. During the…