Life Is Beautiful in Mesilla

On November 8, 2025, the Taylor-Mesilla Historic Site opened to a stream of 700 people. Beds had been fully made. A centerpiece graced the dining table. The house’s one and only boxy and bulky television commanded a nostalgic chunk of space.

“The family was really happy with what we saw,” Michael Romero Taylor, one of Mary and Paul’s seven children, said after the opening. “Our parents would have been happy with what the state did.”

The only downside? “You can’t sit in the chairs,” he said with a laugh. “We had to get used to that.”

ALTHOUGH IT NUZZLES UP TO LAS CRUCES’S western edge, Mesilla, population 1,800, retains its small-town charm. The Río Grande nurtures miles of shady pecan groves. Barefoot children play on ditch banks. The majestic Basilica of San Albino anchors a classically New Mexican plaza.

The bucolic vibe belies a rollicking past. At one time, Mesilla dominated southern New Mexico and, during the Civil War, served as the capital for the Confederate Territory of Arizona. Its border shifted from Mexico to America several times over. Elders once told their grandchildren tales of encountering Billy the Kid and Pancho Villa, though not, mercifully, at the same time.

“In a place like this, the border is a fluid term,” says Alexandra McKinney, the historic site’s instructional coordinator. “It’s a political line, not a lived existence. This community prides itself on its Mexican heritage. When you hop the border, it’s the same cultural heritage.”

The Taylors reveled in that blended sense of being through the art they collected, the friendships they built, and the local builders they hired to enlarge their home as the family grew.

Their now 6,000-square-foot property began in the 1850s as a mercantile on the plaza, with living quarters behind it. The Barela store was purchased by Charles Reynolds in 1900, along with a second, adjoining storefront. San Albino’s Father Juan Grange took over the combined properties in 1913 and willed them to his housekeeper, a refugee from the Mexican Revolution, in 1936. 

She reached out to Mary and Paul in the early 1950s about purchasing it. Paul cast a skeptical eye on its sorry condition, but Mary fell in love with the property’s potential. Renovations became their shared vocation, with Paul often salvaging vigas and fixtures from abandoned homes and designing new spaces to fit their oddball specs. 

As McKinney and regional site manager Emily Wilson walk me through the house, they note how door sizes and window frames vary, how wooden floors don’t match up, and how the mix of art—walls and flat surfaces coated with everything from Mexican Baroque oil paintings to whimsical contemporary sculptures, Spanish Colonial bultos, and Native pottery—conjures a kaleidoscopic effect.

“Every time you walk through a room, you see something new,” Wilson says. As I linger behind to study a framed work of Victorian hair art, Wilson and McKinney prove that point. Through the doorway, I overhear one of them in the next room exclaim, “I never noticed that before!”

Visitors enter the site through the former Reynolds store, now reconfigured as a visitor center with a changing exhibit, a sound booth dubbed Mesilla-pedia to record local memories, and listening stations to hear them. The site offers twice-daily guided tours and self-guided tours, along with occasional talks by local experts. Some rooms can’t be entered, including the in-house oratorio, which includes an altar that holds the ashes of Paul, Mary, and their son John. “That’s an accessibility issue,” McKinney says. “You can’t turn a wheelchair around in that space.”

The family’s extensive collection of nacimientos, or nativity scenes, which were displayed by the Taylors each Christmas for their longtime popular open house, returned this past season. Sets from countries around the world adorned every nicho, tabletop, and windowsill. Statues of Joseph and Mary continue to be loaned to San Albino parishioners for processions around the plaza.

Paul was raised in nearby Chamberino, but the maternal side of his family held roots in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and the couple collected works from Santa Fe’s annual Traditional Spanish Market. That gives McKinney opportunities to teach visitors about not only southern New Mexico but the breadth of the state’s history. 

In a bedroom once shared by teenage daughters, Native pottery tops a wall-length cupboard while a painting on the wall features La Conquistadora—a combo that inspires McKinney to talk about the 1680 Pueblo Revolt and 1692 Reconquest.

McKinney then points to pieces of Spanish Colonial furniture in the sala grande, which she uses to discuss the make-do needs of colonists, along with the WPA-era revival of that craftsmanship throughout the state.

“We’re able to flip the usual narrative and highlight the story of southern New Mexico in the broader story of New Mexico,” she says.

Visitors often ask Wilson what the house looked like when the family lived there. In response, she holds her arms wide, as if to say, Just like this. “It’s not a stuffy house museum,” she says. “You’re entering an art museum that happens to be in a house.”

IN YEARS PAST, I GOT TO EXPERIENCE IT AS not just a house but a home. Paul and I met when he served in the state legislature and I covered politics for the Albuquerque Tribune. 

He was a slight man, with an even slighter voice. But he used it to fight hard for children, low-income people, immigrants, artists, and even the creation of the Department of Cultural Affairs. Often called the “Conscience of the Legislature,” he built a legacy that lives on. The J. Paul Taylor Academy, a charter school in Las Cruces, focuses on conversational Spanish, project-based learning, and healthy living. The annual J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium at New Mexico State University gathers deep thinkers on subjects such as empathy, human rights, and border politics. 

In his final years, Taylor opened his door to frequent visitors, including me. Whether we relaxed in the sala grande or enjoyed lunch in the dining room, he always enthralled me with his tales.

As Wilson and McKinney locked up following our visit, I stood on the plaza and felt a pang of melancholy as I imagined the house, and Paul’s tales, suspended in silence behind me. But later, when I ask Michael Romero Taylor what he hears when he thinks about his old home, a cacophony arose.

“I hear lots of voices,” he says. “My mother’s voice, which was a wonderful voice to hear. On Sundays, we’d have huge dinners after 11 o’clock Mass—15 to 20 people. We’d spill out of the dining room into the hallway. Dad always brought somebody from church, the priest or a parishioner. And us kids would bring people, too.

“And then came grandkid noises, kids screaming around. There was a lot of noise, a lot of good noise.”  

Kate Nelson says any visit to Mesilla should include some quiet time inside the Basilica of San Albino—although you should definitely ask questions of any docent there.