Ruidosa is a small farming community on the Rio Grande. The town was founded in 1872 by William Russle, a pioneer who built irrigation ditches in the area. The building of the church was begun in 1914 and completed in 1916, using adobe brick construction and local labor. By 1930 the town had reached a peak population of 300 residents. Elephant Butte dam in southern New Mexico, also constructed in 1916, depleted the water flow in the Rio Grande and began to strain the sustainability of farming in the area. A long drought in the 1950s wiped out the remaining farms, and by the 1960s Ruidosa was all but a ghost town. The Ruidosa Church is a lone adobe structure in the vast landscape of West Texas. Its scale and weather-worn earthen construction are a quintessential ruin, an object discovered at the end of a long dirt road. Because the church sits empty and open to the public (no doors remain), it belongs not only to the greater history of the West, but to the public that visits it.

SILLA has been involved with the restoration since 2019, when Friends of the Ruidosa Church took control of the property. Numerous conversations about structural integrity, site visits with earthen engineers, and workshops testing materials and sourcing, led to a plan to save the only still-standing original bell tower. Silla designed and built an interior steel frame modular system that would act as the structural integrity to support the building while work was being done, and a scaffolding to improve access to the damaged areas. Work began on the bell tower in the fall of 2023.

 The building had endured considerable damage due to rain and wind erosion. Events of the last 100 years had damaged the basal courses with both erosion and an influx of naturally occurring soluble salts. The exterior was worn so thin that light was visible through the mortar joints. One corner was essentially non-existent from a structural point of view. Repairs included replacing all basal courses, including subterranean courses that were laid directly on the soil and acted as a foundation. Veneer and full brick repairs throughout the wall were made as needed, bringing the wall back into plane with its original geometry. Dry packed mortar connections were used to connect new material to existing materials. During this first three-week campaign significant structural repairs to the bell tower were made. There is still plenty of work to be done to bring the church back to its original condition, but the large structural concerns of losing the building have been addressed.