FLAGSTAFF — As Route 66 was paved through Flagstaff a century ago, the city’s Mexican-American community was building something of its own a block away, KNAU reported.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel on Flagstaff’s south side was the city’s first and only primarily Mexican-American church. Parishioners told KNAU it was founded because Mexican-American families were made to feel unwelcome at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Flagstaff’s first Catholic church.
In 1925, the community raised money and built the chapel themselves. Unable to buy professional materials, they gathered usable material from construction sites and hauled volcanic basalt by horse and wagon from as far as Lake Mary.
“Every one of those rocks was touched by human hands,” longtime parishioner Jesse Dominguez, a choirboy there in the 1950s, told KNAU.
The chapel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. Regular Masses ended in 2003 when Flagstaff’s Catholic churches were consolidated, and it now serves mainly as a community center.
Father Daniel Connealy of San Francisco de Asís told KNAU that the divisions of the past “deeply sadden us” and that English and Spanish speakers now worship under the same roof. Parishioners are preparing photo displays for the centennial celebrations.
Sources: KNAU. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Deborah Lee Soltesz / CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
