The question of whether Francisco Vázquez de Coronado had ever been at Kuaua motivated the original New Deal Era excavations of the pueblo. Dr. Edgar Lee Hewett, the lead archaeologist, believed Kuaua was the place where Coronado's entrada encamped during the winter of 1541. The discovery of the kiva murals ultimately shifted the work's focus toward preserving and maintaining those paintings. The site was named Coronado State Monument, now Coronado Historic Site, and opened in 1940 for the four hundredth anniversary of Coronado's expedition. Although the original excavations in the 1930s found no evidence of the Spanish, the site was named for the conquistador to interpret relations between Europeans and Puebloans.