While the exact date of construction of the Pino Ranch House, located on the property of El Rancho de las Golondrinas living history museum is unknown, the property derives from the first decade of New Mexico’s Statehood (1912). Originally, the Pino Ranch House functioned as a home for Elfego Pino on his sheepherding ranch, Las Golondrinas, from 1919 to 1934, when the Curtin-Paloheimo family of Pasadena, California, and Santa Fe purchased Las Golondrinas as a summer retreat. In 1968, the Curtin-Paloheimo family turned the ranch into a living history museum, interpreting seventeenth and eighteenth-century rural Hispanic life. The family moved threatened New Mexican log cabins and other vernacular structures from their original sites to the open-air museum. Today the Pino Ranch House is used as a museum office. The Pino Ranch House represents an authentic connection to the agricultural and social traditions of La Cienega Valley.
From Old Santa Fe Today, 5th edition by Audra Bellmore with photographs by Simone Frances.
