Claims that Santa Fe is the oldest town in the United States, with its oldest house and the oldest church, are exaggerations. But those claims have been used to attract tourists here ever since the railroad arrived.

Of course, Taos Pueblo, the Hopi villages and hundreds of other Native American settlements thrived centuries before Santa Fe was founded by the Spanish — whether in 1610 as celebrated in this year's "Cuartocentenario," or 1607, as a document discovered in the 1990s seems to indicate.

Long before Europeans found the New World, people were born, lived and died along the banks of the Santa Fe River in what is believed to have been a Tewa village called Ogapoge. Doubts about a pre-Columbian village here were laid to rest early in the 21st century when burials, kivas and other ruins were discovered in archaeological excavations before beginning construction of the new Santa Fe Community Convention Center next to City Hall.

But even if Native American towns, houses and places of worship are omitted from the "oldest" contest, St. Augustine, Fla., founded by the Spanish in 1565, beats Santa Fe by more than four decades.

St. Augustine's oldest dwelling, the González-Alvarez House, believed to date from the 1600s, easily predates Santa Fe's oldest house at 215 E. De Vargas St., believed to date from the 1700s. But the official history of Santa Fe's oldest house claims it was built on the ruins of an 800-year-old Indian dwelling — switching from European to Native American culture to trump the Florida city.

St. Augustine's oldest church, the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, built in 1797, might predate Santa Fe's Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, begun in 1869 and consecrated, although still unfinished, in 1886. But the Florida church is 87 years younger than even the most recent incarnation of Santa Fe's oldest church,

Debate is an ongoing part of Santa Fe's history, culture and architecture. The discovery of Indian remains downtown meant major changes for the convention center. Even plans for downtown development by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe drew opposition. Now, the Santa Fe Indian School's plan to raze Paolo Soleri Amphitheater is generating a backlash.

Some say we're self-aggrandizing about our culture, heavy-handed with our architecture and downright myth-making about our history. But Santa Fe cares deeply about its heritage — especially during this 400th anniversary year.

Oldest church gets makeover

San Miguel Mission, sometimes called a chapel, at 401 Old Santa Fe Trail, just across East De Vargas Street from the oldest house, was first constructed in 1610, destroyed in 1640, rebuilt in 1645, destroyed again in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and rebuilt yet again in 1710.

Its most impressive view is from its wedge-shaped, buttressed backside and its north flank along one-lane East De Vargas Street, where some of the ancient adobe bricks are exposed. The south side of the church, with an entrance to a gift shop under a portal with several large trees on the adjacent state office complex, provides a shady, cool oasis on hot days. The entrance and bell tower, facing Old Santa Fe Trail, currently are obscured with scaffolding for the most ambitious preservation effort in San Miguel Mission's three centuries.

Cornerstones, a Santa Fe-based nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of earthen structures, is leading the effort — its first major project in town in its 24 years of preserving some 360 churches and other public buildings in four states and Mexico. Up to 15 volunteers per week work on the old church, including visitors from around the nation and other countries, and interested locals such as City Councilor Miguel Chavez.

"When we conceived this project, the idea was to focus on (volunteers from) the local community but not to restrict anybody," said Cornerstones Executive Director Jake Barrow. "If somebody wants to come help, great, let them in because this is a Santa Fe-type thing. ... People like to make these bricks. It's hard work, but it's fun. It's like one of the girls from Breadloaf (a group of English teachers getting master's degrees) said, 'Wow, you guys have a great job. You get to play in mud every day.' "

The main goal in the ongoing rehabilitation, expected to continue through 2012, is to replace the cement-containing stucco on the church's exterior walls with real mud plaster. Cementitious stucco prohibits the evaporation of moisture trapped inside the adobe walls, causing them to deteriorate, while real mud plaster releases moisture via transpiration.

Antonio Martinez, the project foreman for general contractor Paul Taylor of Las Cruces, learned about adobe work in his hometown of Rociada near the San Miguel/Mora County line and began working with Cornerstones on the rehabilitation of the Rociada church.

"People should be concerned about some of these old buildings. Look at all the moisture in that," Martinez said as he studied the water mark on the lower walls of the Lamy Building, built of adobe in 1878 as a dormitory for St. Michael's College and now owned by the state, next door to San Miguel Mission. "This building here is in better condition (than San Miguel Mission) because of the stone foundation. But it's still laid in the lime mortar. When it was covered up with cement, that mortar ... wicks up foundation moisture. ... It can't breathe. So at some point, you end up with what we call 'dead earth.' "

Adobe that has deteriorated to the point of dead earth simply flakes away into loose dirt, incapable of bearing weight and eventually causing the structure to collapse. In the case of San Miguel Mission, some of the internal adobe bricks will have to be replaced. Plans also call for installing a new drainage channel through the campo santo, or graveyard, in front of the mission.

City's oldest tourist attractions

Both Santa Fe's oldest house and its oldest church, as well as several other old buildings along East De Vargas Street including the one housing Upper Crust Pizza, are owned by St. Michael's High School, originally founded as St. Michael's College in 1859.

For years, the oldest house was rented to a jewelry and curio shop that kept one room as a roadside-attraction museum with a headless dummy — a soldier supposedly beheaded after he complained about a potion sold by a bruja (witch). The interior of the shop is being remodeled with plans to lease it out again.

Both the oldest house and the oldest church are in the Barrio Analco — a neighborhood just south of the river that is believed to have been founded by Mexican Indians who sided with the Spanish against the Aztec and accompanied the Spaniards north in their initial colonization of Santa Fe in the early 1600s.

The Barrio Analco, the "Yglesia de S. Miguel" and the oldest house — although not labeled that way — appeared on the first known map of Santa Fe by cartographer José de Urrutia in 1766. By the time the railroad line reached Lamy in 1879, both structures, as well as Santa Fe in general, began to get national publicity.

Harper's Weekly of Sept. 13, 1879, devoted a full page to what its unidentified writer called the "oldest town within the whole territory of the United States," with three hand-colored engravings by C. Graham — "from sketches by H. Worrall" — of the cityscape, "the oldest inhabited home in the U.S." and, instead of the Roman Catholic San Miguel Mission, First Presbyterian Church, labeled as "the only Protestant church in Santa Fe."

The article seems to imply that Santa Fe is older than St. Augustine because it was built on the "old pueblo of Cienyó" discovered by the Coronado expedition into the Southwest, 1540-42.

It also sounded an alarm for preservation of Santa Fe's oldest building, the Palace of the Governors, circa 1610: "This interesting old building, on account of repairs repeatedly made upon it nowadays, is fast losing its antique appearance and internal arrangements."

Harper's Weekly returned four years later to promote the city's Tertio-Millennial exposition by devoting several pages of its July 14, 1883, edition to Santa Fe's history. It published five Graham etchings of other scenes of the city, including "the ruins of the ancient pueblo church and college of San Miguel."

This time, the magazine predicted that in the near future, Santa Fe "will exchange its ancient and somewhat shabby picturesqueness for the crude glare which characterizes the buildings of our frontier."

"The Oldest House in Santa Fe" — looking not too different than it does today, with exposed river-rock buttresses, a second floor and tiny windows and doors — also was depicted in an unaccredited etching published in the Sept. 8, 1883, edition of Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, another prominent national publication of the late 19th century.

"Until recently Santa Fe has been almost a medieval town in its appearance," Leslie's reported, "but the spirit of enterprise has of late years begun to possess it, and the encroaching Tertio-Millennial promises to give impetus to the progressive movement."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.