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One of the world’s most striking landscapes is home to a rich and varied cultural history. Here, 7,000 feet above sea level, between the Jemez (pronounced Hay-mus) and Sangre de Cristo mountains in northern New Mexico, Native American, European and American traditions have intertwined for centuries, creating a city like no other. It can be seen in the city’s galleries, tasted in the distinctive regional cuisine, heard in the drumbeats from the pueblos. Santa Fe is alive.
Founded by the Spanish circa 1610, Santa Fe has long been a crossroads for history and culture and a trailhead of the imagination. The artistic impulse has flourished here since ancestral Puebloans wove baskets, etched petroglyphs and created their distinctive pottery 1,500 years ago.
Links to the past are glimpsed in courtyards, rail yards and landmarks such as the Sangre de Cristo, or Blood of Christ, Mountains, which sunset bathes in soft reddish light. History is illuminated at every turn.
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JOURNEY THROUGH SANTA FE HISTORY
10,000 B.C.
Ancient Paleo-Indians roam a forested landscape hunting mammoths, bison and mastodons.
Circa A.D. 1- 1300
Ancient Puebloans settle the Four Corners area of northwest New Mexico and northeast Arizona, growing corn, beans and squash, domesticating the turkey, building remarkable cliff dwellings and creating beautiful pottery.
A.D. 1000-1300
“Modern” Pueblo Indians—descendants of the Ancient Puebloans—establish villages along the Rio Grande and in the place that would become Santa Fe. They create pottery and build pueblos of stone and clay, craft jewelry, weave clothing and grow corn, beans and squash.
1521-22
Hernán Cortés conquers Mexico, and spreads stories of the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola.
1540
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado searches for the Seven Cities of Cibola and claims the “Kingdom of New Mexico.”
1598
Spanish colonists establish the first European colony in New Mexico at San Juan Pueblo, under the leadership of Juan de Oñate, the first Governor and Captain-General of New Mexico.
1609 - 1610
Governor Don Pedro de Peralta names La Villa de Santa Fé (the City of the Holy Faith) as the capital city. Construction begins on the Palace of Governors, the oldest public building in the country. The San Miguel Mission, the oldest church in the US, is built for Indian slaves the Spanish brought with them from Mexico. Construction of Santa Fe’s plaza begins.
1610
Spanish soldiers, government officials and Franciscan missionaries try to subjugate and convert some 100,000 Pueblo peoples living in 70 pueblos (many still exist today) and speaking nine languages.
1680
In the nine-day Pueblo Rebellion lead by Popé against forced labor and efforts to abolish their religion, the Pueblo people kill 400 of 2,500 colonists, burn many buildings and take control of Santa Fe. It is the first time that the Spanish have suffered a defeat of this magnitude at the hands of its colonized peoples.
1692
Don Diego de Vargas says a prayer to a statue of the Virgin and then goes on to peacefully re-gain Spanish control in Santa Fe.
1792
Pedro Vial blazes a trail from St. Louis to Santa Fe.
1821
New Mexico declares independence from Spain and becomes a province. A year later, William Becknell—the first of a new breed of pioneers called Anglos—brings the first wagonload of northeastern goods along the 1,000-mile-long Santa Fe Trail—one of America’s first great pathways. Santa Fe breaks free of Spanish isolationism, and becomes a major and exotic trading center, with peppers being sold alongside turquoise, hides, cotton, textiles, pottery and crafts. The rowdy city is known for saloons, gambling and brothels, especially on Burro Alley. A “fonda,” or inn, a predecessor of Santa Fe’s landmark hotel, welcomes travelers.
1846
In this early period of the Mexican American War, American Army General Stephen Watts Kearny takes Santa Fe and raises the American flag over the plaza.
1848
Mexico signs the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceding New Mexico and California to the United States.
1851
Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy directs building of the Saint Francis Cathedral on the site of an adobe parish (La Parroquia) destroyed in the Pueblo revolt. Portions of the old church remain in the form of the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary, which houses a willow statue of the Virgin known as La Conquistadora, Our Lady of the Conquest.
1853
Artist Joseph Henry Sharp first visits New Mexico.
1853
Apache Chief Geronimo surrenders in Mexico.
1880
The railroad reaches Santa Fe, and the trail fades into history. New Mexico’s notorious outlaw, Billy the Kid, spends a night in a Santa Fe jail. A year later, at the age of 21, he is shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett.
1892
The Santa Fe Railway begins promoting tourism and the arts, offering artists free passage to spectacular destinations and commissioning artwork for train stations, affiliated hotels and restaurants and to use in advertising.
1912
New Mexico becomes the 47th State, and begins to develop a reputation as a healthy haven for sufferers of tuberculosis and other maladies. Around this time, Fred Harvey partners with the Santa Fe Railway and works with architect Mary Jane Colter to create a series of landmark hotels designed to bring visitors to the Southwest and, through “Indian Detours,” to the pueblos and their people.
1917
The Museum of Fine Arts—part of a plan to develop tourism and promote Santa Fe as a center of art and culture—is built in the form of six of the mission churches found on the pueblos of Acoma, San Felipe, Cochiti, Santa Ana, Laguna and Pecos. The museum opens with a nonexclusionary philosophy and adds to the city’s attraction for artists, intellectuals, writers and philanthropists. A year later, Mabel Dodge Luhan moves to Taos, and her home becomes a hive of intellectual activity.
1920s and 1930s
The core of Santa Fe’s bohemian art colony, “Los Cinco Pintores”—Fremont Ellis, Will Shuster, Walter Mruk, Willard Nash and Josef Bakos—exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1921. Throughout the decade, wild parties, intellectual and aesthetic arguments and enduring friendships characterize the artist’s lifestyle. Some visit every year from New York and points east; others come and stay.
1942-1945
Acclaimed scientists gather in secrecy to develop the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos. J. Robert Oppenheimer, a Berkeley physics professor, suggests the out-of-the-way site amid the pines of the Pajarito Plateau in the Jemez Mountains.
1957
The Santa Fe Opera performs its first production, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and begins a tradition with Martin David Levy’s comedy The Tower. The Santa Fe Opera has presented more than 50 world or American premieres in 50 years.
1991
His Holiness the Dalai Lama visits New Mexico and meets with governors and Pueblo Nation representatives. The Dalai Lama spends several summers in the area.
1992
Sales begin at Las Campanas, the first and only resort-like master-planned community in Santa Fe and New Mexico.
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