Imagine this: You are a Catholic priest in the 1600s, traveling through the desert, and one day come across a small river. What would you do? If you said, “Build a church in the middle of nowhere,” your name must be Juan Barragán Cano! Barragán built the first temple in 1635 and consecrated it to John the Baptist because of its proximity to the river. The church that stands at this site today, though, was built around a hundred years later. According to inscriptions in the bricks that make up the…
