Santa Fe, the City Different
by John Pen La Farge, author of the immensely popular oral history of Santa Fe, “Turn Left at the Sleeping Dog”

As the nickname for our town indicates, Santa Fe is not the usual thing. To begin with, the city was founded by the Spaniards, not the British or the French. Further, it is the oldest capital city in the United States, with the first record of La Villa de Santa Fe (City of the Holy Faith) being from 1607. Going even further back, the city is located in the midst of country containing ancient Indian pueblos (towns), where, in fact, the Indians yet live. It is here that we come to one of the most crucial elements of New Mexico's character: There are more Indians living on their ancestral lands in New Mexico than in all of the United States east of the Mississippi.

So, one takes the Pueblo Indians, has them live side-by-side for centuries with nomadic Indian tribes (the Apache, the Navajo, the Comanche) and the Spanish. Then one adds Anglos in the 1820's, after Mexican independence and the creation of the Santa Fe Trail, and more Anglos after the Mexican-American War, territorial status, the immigration of the Jewish and Lebanese mercantile-store builders, and the arrival of the Santa Fe Railroad in 1879, and here one has a unique tri-cultural civilization in the midst of mountainous desert accompanied by a hard-scrabble and dangerous life.

Then, in this century, one comes upon Santa Fe, the Famous. How did a poverty-stricken backwater capital become one of the hottest destinations in the world?

In the Nineteenth Century, the first anthropologists came to study the Pueblo cultures. They were fascinated by ancient, intact cultures that were relatively unchanged since time immemorial. This gave New Mexico a name for exoticism.

At the turn of the century, the first painters arrived, fell in love with the clear, sharp light and the extraordinarily dramatic landscape and sky, and they told their fellows. Then, in 1912, New Mexico at last overcame anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish prejudice to become the forty-seventh state. However, the First World War intervened before the town gained measurable fame. After the war, artists, writers, poets, Indian-rights activists, seekers of the exotic, intellectuals seeking an unstructured society, remittance men, and all others who did not fit in elsewhere arrived in increasing numbers. For the ordinary traveler, however, Santa Fe remained all but impossible to reach, except by train, which the Harvey House did their best to make attractive.

It was the pre-War period that many believe Santa Fe achieved its golden age of eccentricity, liveliness, imagination, coziness and warmth.

With the Second World War, two things happened. First, New Mexicans were introduced to the outside world, and the outside world came to New Mexico with the building of the Interstate system. Second, the best scientists of the world arrived with the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, just north of Santa Fe. These last also added greatly to Santa Fe's intellectual ferment and to its fame.

Other events that brought Santa Fe's name to the wider world were founding of the Santa Fe Opera in 1957, the founding of Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in 1972 and the arrival of hippies, alternative-life seekers, and New Agers from the 1960's on until today. Then, at some indistinct time in the early 'Eighties, Santa Fe hit upon just the right combination of factors to become incandescently popular. Real-estate prices skyrocketed, "Santa Fe Style" was invented, the rich and the famous arrived in number and in great visibility, and the art market became one of the largest in the United States. The exploitation of Santa Fe had begun in earnest. Thankfully, we have cooled off somewhat in the 'Nineties to become merely famous.

So it is this old, history-filled, tri-cultural, multifaceted, sometimes-enchanting, highly-cultured, and exploited town set in a magnificent landscape that you will see when you come.

We will do our best to make you happy.