Santa Fe has always been a small town with a big reputation, attracting people from all walks of life. Many are drawn to the physical beauty of its high-mountain desert. The quaint adobe architecture and temperate weather are also enticing, but mostly it was the muddle of humanity that kept life interesting. Long before Santa Fe was dubbed the “City Different” during the middle of the last century, its small population was already a microcosm of a bigger reality.
Just Passing Through
President Teddy Roosevelt visited Santa Fe in 1903 with a special ceremony held in his on the Plaza. Prior to his presidency, Roosevelt established “the Rough Riders.” A diverse group of men comprised from the Southwest that helped fight against Spain and their dominance in Cuba. Queen Frederica of Greece visited Santa Fe in after WWII with her daughter, Princess Sophia. In 1962 the princess married her third cousin, Juan Carlos of Spain. In 1975 he became the king she became the Queen Sofía of Spain. The famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh visited Santa Fe in 1927, the same year that he made the first solo transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis. In 1929 he took aerial photographs of Chaco Canyon and other important archaeological sites of the Southwest.
The Ones Who Stayed
Ralph Emerson Twitchell was a member of the special counsel for the U.S. Department of the Interior working to secure Native American water rights. For 43 years he was a member of the legal department of the Santa Fe Railroad. During his lengthy career Twitchell was also a prosecuting attorney for Santa Fe County. The anthropologist Edgar L. Hewett came to Santa Fe from Greeley, Colorado. By 1906 he secured the support of the U.S. Congress in passing the Antiquities Act. In 1907 he founded the School of American Archaeology, now called the School of Advanced Research. Two years later, in 1909, he also founded the Museum of New Mexico, where his ashes are interred today.