Santa Fe (meaning the Holy Faith) is an ancient city nestled at an elevation of 7000 feet in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It was established in 1610 and is the oldest capital city in the United States. The culture of the Pueblo people of New Mexico predated the European settlement of Santa Fe by 12,000 years.
Today, the high desert of Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico are, of course, part of the American landscape but not always strictly North American. The Pueblo, Spanish, and Anglo cultures interweave the old with the new creating a rich, often mystifying effect.
What has caused the population of Santa Fe to triple over the past 50 years? Ironically, it is primarily the desire of new residents for a small town atmosphere! However, they seek this in combination with a centrally located, sophisticated urban setting with access to a wealth of cultural opportunities. For artists, it is additionally the indescribable beauty of the physical surroundings that draws and keeps them in love with this colorful city.
Santa Fe is known for its many world class museums, shops and boutiques, art galleries, and wide range of entertainment from opera and dance to theater to music which can keep visitors busy both day and night. Much of what Santa Fe has to offer is located within the historic downtown area, which has a definite European feel, and can be covered easily on foot. Strict construction guidelines mandate the territorial and Spanish colonial architecture that characterizes the Santa Fe style. City codes allow no high rises to block the mountain views.
For those with outdoor recreation in mind, Santa Fe is surrounded by more than 1.5 million acres of National Forest and public land which offer fishing, camping and hunting within easy reach. Hiking, biking, kayaking, backpacking, mountain climbing, cross-country or downhill skiing at the Santa Fe Ski Area, white water rafting and wind surfing are all available during the year. Golf, tennis and even bird watching are other ways to enjoy the typically sunny, temperate days.
Add to this world class shopping or investigating why the city is a major center for alternative healing and it is easy to understand how visitors to Santa Fe never seem to lack for an itinerary. The city also offers meeting and conference facilities and services for those wanting to mix business with pleasure. Part of every day is enjoyably spent exploring the local cuisine in all its forms and subtleties.
For inner journeying there is a broad ranging alternative healing and thought community in Santa Fe that provides a number of bookstores, physicians, lectures and workshops.
For those who seek a vacation of tranquility and rejuvenation surrounded by the magnificence of mountains, sky, sunrises and sunsets, there is no other place on earth quite as satisfying as this Land of Enchantment.
Archeological evidence suggests that nomadic tribes of hunters and gatherers camped in the area of what is now Santa Fe as long ago as 10,000 years. By about 5500 BC the hunters had established permanent annual camps. From the few clues available, it is known that they hunted deer and antelope with primitive spears and also ate seeds and nuts.
The next group of visitors built cave like pit homes that were partly underground. The native American settlers who lived along the Santa Fe River and its tributaries in these homes later built larger residences for community living called pueblos. Some of these had hundreds of rooms.
The "Kingdom of New Mexico" was first claimed for the Spanish Crown by the conquistador Don Francisco Vasques de Coronado in 1540, 67 years before the founding of Santa Fe. Coronado and his men also visited the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains on their New Mexico expedition.
While Santa Fe was inhabited on a very small scale in 1607, it was actually settled by the conquistador Don Pedro de Peralta in 1609-1610. Santa Fe is the site of the oldest public building in America, the Palace of the Governors:, and also the nation's oldest community celebration, the Santa Fe Fiesta, established in 1712 to commemorate the Spanish reconquest of New Mexico in the summer of 1692. Peralta and his men laid out the plan for Santa Fe at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the site of the ancient Pueblo Indian ruin of Kaupoge, or "place of shell beads near the water."
Santa Fe grew and prospered as a city. Spanish authorities and missionaries - under pressure from constant raids by nomadic Indians and often bloody wars with the Comanches, Apaches and Navajos, formed an alliance with Pueblo Indians and maintained a successful religious and civil policy of peaceful coexistence. The Spanish governing method of closed empire also heavily influenced the lives of most Santa Feans during these years as trade was restricted to the Americans, British and French.
For a period of 70 years beginning early in the 17th century, Spanish soldiers and officials, as well as Franciscan missionaries, sought to subjugate and convert the Pueblo Indians of the region. The indigenous population at the time was close to 100,000 people, who spoke nine basic languages and lived in an estimated 70 multi-storied adobe towns (pueblos), many of which exist today. In 1680, Pueblo Indians revolted against the estimated 2,500 Spanish colonists in New Mexico, killing 400 of them and driving the rest back into Mexico. The conquering Pueblos sacked Santa Fe and burned most of the buildings, except the Palace of the Governors. Pueblo Indians occupied Santa Fe until 1692, when Don Diego de Vargas conquered the region and entered the capital city after a bloodless siege.
When Mexico gained its independence from Spain, Santa Fe became the capital of the province of New Mexico. The Spanish policy of closed empire ended, and American trappers and traders moved into the region. William Becknell opened the l,000-mile-long Santa Fe Trail, traveling west from Arrow Rock, Missouri, with 21 men and a pack train of supplies.
For a brief period in 1837, northern New Mexico farmers rebelled against Mexican rule, killed the provincial governor in what has been called the Chimayó Rebellion and occupied the capital. The insurrectionists were soon defeated, however.
On August 18, 1846, in the early period of the Mexican American War, an American army general, Stephen Watts Kearny, took Santa Fe and raised the American flag over the Plaza. Two years later, Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ceding New Mexico and California to the United States.
For a few days in March 1863, the Confederate flag of General Henry Sibley flew over Santa Fe, until he was defeated by Union troops. With the arrival of the telegraph in 1868 and the coming of the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1880, Santa Fe and New Mexico underwent an economic revolution. Corruption in government, however, accompanied the growth, and President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Lew Wallace as a territorial governor to "clean up New Mexico."
With the arrival of the telegraph in 1868 and the coming of the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1880, Santa Fe and New Mexico underwent an economic revolution. Corruption in government, however, accompanied the growth, and President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Lew Wallace as territorial governor to "clean up New Mexico."
Passed over 15 times for statehood, New Mexico finally was admitted to the Union in 1912 as the 47th state. After New Mexico gained statehood, many people were drawn to Santa Fe's dry climate as a cure for tuberculosis. The Museum of New Mexico had opened in 1909, and by 1917, its Museum of Fine Arts was built. The state museum's emphasis on local history and native culture did much to reinforce Santa Fe's image as an "exotic" city.
Thirty years after statehood, in 1942, the most eminent physicists in the world gathered in the Jemez mountains, sacred lands of the Pueblo people, at a top secret facility called Los Alamos (The Cottonwoods), to develop the atomic bomb and, ultimately, to change the world forever.
Today, Santa Fe is recognized as one of the most intriguing urban environments
in the nation, due largely to the city's preservation of historic buildings
and a modern zoning code, passed in 1958, that mandates the city's distinctive
Spanish-Pueblo style of architecture, based on the adobe (mud and straw)
and wood construction of the past. Also preserved are the traditions of
the city's rich cultural heritage which helps make Santa Fe one of the
country's most diverse and fascinating places to visit.