About San Juan Nepomuceno Mission · Llano Largo, New Mexico
San Juan Nepomuceno Mission is a small Catholic mission chapel serving the hamlet of Llano Largo in northern Taos County, New Mexico, on the High Road to Taos corridor. It is one of seven mission communities served by the parish of San Antonio de Padua in neighboring Peñasco, with which it shares clergy and a common website (dixonpenascocc.org). Like the other outlying missions in the cluster, Mass is celebrated only on the saint's feast day rather than weekly, reflecting the rural, sparsely populated nature of the Llano communities settled by Spanish colonists in the 1790s.
- Established
- 1796
- Patron
- San Juan Nepomuceno (St. John of Nepomuk)
- Diocese
- Metropolitan Archdiocese of Santa Fe
Why belong here
San Juan Nepomuceno Mission keeps alive the centuries-old Catholic faith of the Llano Largo community, whose acequia and chapel both trace back to the founding Spanish families of 1796. It is part of a tight-knit parish family of ten small mission churches served together by the priests of San Antonio de Padua in Peñasco and St. Anthony of Padua in Dixon. For visitors and parishioners, the mission offers an authentic, rural New Mexico liturgical experience — a once-a-month-or-feastday Mass in a tiny settlement along the historic High Road to Taos, surrounded by the same irrigated hay fields and family homesteads that have shaped life here for more than 225 years.
Mass times at San Juan Nepomuceno Mission
Weekly Mass schedule
Identity and Patron
The mission chapel takes its name from San Juan Nepomuceno, the 14th-century Bohemian priest whose cult was widely venerated in Spanish New Mexico as a protector against floods and a patron of bridges, waters, and the integrity of the confessional. His feast day is May 16. The same saint is honored at sister chapels in Llano San Juan (1832), El Rito (1832), and Canjilón (1878) in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
Llano Largo and the High Road to Taos
Llano Largo is a small, irrigated agricultural valley off State Road 73, a side branch of the High Road to Taos. The High Road guidebook describes the broader area as 'lush, green valleys flanked by steep mesas,' first settled by Spanish colonists in 1796 in the same wave as Taos. The neighboring hamlet of Llano San Juan is served by the related San Juan Nepomuceno Catholic Church.
Acequia Heritage
The community's acequia, the Acequia Madre de San Juan Nepomuceno del Llano, draws water from the Río Santa Barbara and irrigates the Llano Largo hay fields. Its formal water-rights appropriation was recorded in June 1907 (Taos County Land Records, Book M-17, pp. 296–297), citing continuous use since approximately 1796 by the founders and their assignees.
- Continuous acequia rights from c. 1796
- Filed with Taos County in 1907
- Water used for agriculture and domestic purposes on the Llano de San Juan
Parent Parish and Cluster of Missions
San Juan Nepomuceno Mission is a mission of San Antonio de Padua Catholic Church in Peñasco, NM. Peñasco and the sister parish of St. Anthony of Padua in Dixon together share clergy and a single website, www.dixonpenascocc.org, while each maintains its own parish office. The two parishes jointly care for ten small mission chapels scattered along the High Road and surrounding valleys.
- Parent parish: San Antonio de Padua, 14079 N. Highway 75, Peñasco, NM 87553
- Sister parish: St. Anthony of Padua, Dixon, NM
- Phone (parish office): (575) 587-0399
Cemetery
The Llano Largo Cemetery, also known as the San Acacio Cemetery, is the historic Catholic burial ground for the hamlet, with documented burials going back to the 19th century. Across the broader Llano de San Juan valley, the Llano San Juan Nepomuceno Presbyterian Cemetery serves the non-Catholic Hispano families of the same community.