Santa Fe (Navajo: Yootó ) is the capital of the state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of Santa Fe County . Santa Fe (literally 'holy faith' in Spanish) had a population of 62,203 at the April 1, 2000 census; the estimate for July 1, 2006, is 72,056. It is the principal city of the Santa Fe, New Mexico Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Santa Fe County and is part of the larger Santa Fe-Española Combined Statistical Area.
History
See also: History of New MexicoSpain and Mexico
The City of Santa Fe was originally occupied by a number of Pueblo Indian villages with founding dates between 1050 to 1150. The Santa Fe River provided water to people living there.
Santa Fe was the capital of Nuevo México, a province of New Spain explored by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and established in 1515. The "Kingdom of New Mexico" was first claimed for the Spanish Crown in 1540, almost 70 years before the founding of Santa Fe. Coronado and his men also traveled to the Grand Canyon and through the Great Plains on their New Mexico expedition.
Spanish colonists first settled in northern New Mexico in 1598. Don Juan de Oñate became the first Governor and Captain-General of New Mexico and established his capital in 1598 near Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo (formerly known as San Juan Pueblo), 25 miles (40 km) north of Santa Fe. The city of Santa Fe was founded by Don Pedro de Peralta, New Mexico's third governor. Peralta gave the city its full name, "La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís", or "The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi."
The town was formally founded in 1608 and made a capital in 1610, making it the oldest capital city in what is today the United States. Jamestown, Virginia (1607) is of similar vintage but not as a capital. Santa Fe is at least the third oldest surviving American city founded by European colonists, behind the oldest St. Augustine, Florida (1565). (A few settlements were founded prior to St. Augustine but all failed, including the original Pensacola colony in West Florida, founded by Tristán de Luna y Arellano in 1559, with the area abandoned in 1561 due to hurricanes, famine and warring tribes. Fort Caroline, founded by the French in 1564 in what is today Jacksonville, Florida only lasted a year before being obliterated by the Spanish in 1565.)
Except for the years 1680-1692, when, as a result of the Pueblo Revolt, the native Pueblo people drove the Spaniards out of the area known as New Mexico, later to be reconquered by Don Diego de Vargas, Santa Fe remained Spain's provincial seat until the outbreak of the Mexican War of Independence in 1810. In 1824 the city's status as the capital of the Mexican territory of Santa Fé de Nuevo México was formalized in the 1824 Constitution.
United States
In 1841, a small military and trading expedition set out from Austin, Texas, with the aim of gaining control over the Santa Fe Trail. Known as the Santa Fe Expedition the force was poorly prepared and was easily repelled by the Mexican army. In 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico, and Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny led the main body of his Army of the West of some 1,700 soldiers into the city to claim it and the whole New Mexico Territory for the United States. By 1848 the U.S. officially gained New Mexico through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Colonel Alexander William Doniphan under the command of Kearny recovered ammunition from Santa Fe labeled "Spain 1776" showing both the quality of communication and military support New Mexico received under Mexican rule, or that it was a peaceful city until Anglo-Americans arrived.
In 1851, Jean Baptiste Lamy arrived in Santa Fe and began construction of Saint Francis Cathedral. For a few days in March 1862, the Confederate flag of General Henry Sibley flew over Santa Fe, until he was defeated by Union troops.
Santa Fe was originally envisioned as an important stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. But as the tracks progressed into New Mexico, the civil engineers decided that it was more practical to go through Lamy, a town in Santa Fe County to the south of Santa Fe. The result was a gradual economic decline. This was reversed in part through the creation of a number of resources for the arts and archaeology, notably the School of American Research, created in 1907 under the leadership of the prominent archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett. The first airplane to fly over Santa Fe was piloted by Rose Dugan, carrying Vera von Blumenthal as passenger. Together they started the development of the Pueblo Indian pottery industry, a major contribution to the founding of the annual Santa Fe Indian Market.
In 1912, New Mexico became the United States of America's 47th state, with Santa Fe as its capital.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 37.4 square miles (96.9 km 2 ), of which, 37.3 square miles (96.7 km 2 ) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.2 km 2 ) of it (0.21%) is water.
Santa Fe is located at 7,000 feet (2134 m) above sea level, making it the highest state capital in the United States. The highest state capitals are:
- Santa Fe, New Mexico – 7,199 ft (2134 m) right through the center of the Capitol building
- Cheyenne, Wyoming – 6,062 ft (1,848 m)
- Denver, Colorado – 5,280 ft (1,609.3 m)
- Carson City, Nevada – 4,802 ft (1,463 m)
- Salt Lake City, Utah – 4,226 ft (1,288 m)
- Helena, Montana – 4,058 ft (1,237 m)
Climate
Santa Fe is characterized by cool winters and warm summers. The average temperature in Santa Fe ranges from a low of 14°F (-10°C) to a high of 40°F (4°C) in winter, low of 55°F (13°C) to a high of 86°F (30°C) in summer. Santa Fe receives 2-3 inches (50-75 mm) of rain per month in summer and about 5 inches (13 cm) of snow per month in winter.
At 7,000 feet above sea level, Santa Fe's has warm days and cool evenings during Spring, Summer and Fall, and a jacket or sweater is advisable, even during the summer. Day temperatures reach an average low of 40 °F (4 °C) during the winter months, and an average high of Template:Convert/˚F during the summer.
Nights are cool year-round in this high desert city. Santa Fe usually receives 6 to 8 snowfalls a year between November and April. Heaviest rainfall occurs in July and August. Santa Fe has 300+ days of sunshine a year an average relative humidity of 50%.
Santa Fe style and “The City Different”
The Spanish laid out the city according to the “Laws of the Indies”, town planning rules and ordinances which had been established in 1573 by King Philip II. The fundamental principle was that the town be laid out around a central plaza. On its north side was the Palace of the Governors, while on the East was the church that later became the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi.
An important style implemented in planning the city was the radiating grid of streets centering from the central Plaza. Many were narrow and included small alley-ways, but each gradually merged into the more casual byways of the agricultural perimeter areas. As the city grew throughout the 19th century, the building styles evolved too, so that by Statehood in 1912, the eclectic nature of the buildings caused it to look like “Anywhere USA”. The city government realized that the economic decline, which had started more than twenty years before with the railway moving west and the Federal government closing down Fort Marcy, might be reversed by the promotion of tourism.
To achieve that goal, the city created the idea of imposing a unified building style – the Spanish Pueblo Revival look, which was based on work done restoring the Palace of the Governors. The sources for this style came from the many defining features of local architecture: vigas and canales from many old adobe homes, churches built many years before and found in the Pueblos, and the earth-toned, adobe-colored look of the exteriors.
After 1912 this style became official: all buildings were to be built using these elements. By 1930 there was a broadening to include the “Territorial”, a style of the pre-statehood period which included the addition of portals and white-painted window and door pediments. The City had become “Different”. However, “in the rush to pueblofy” Santa Fe, the city lost a great deal of its architectural history and eclecticism”. Among the architects most closely associated with this “new” style is John Gaw Meem.
By an ordinance passed in 1958, new and rebuilt buildings, especially those in designated historic districts, must exhibit a Spanish Territorial or Pueblo style of architecture, with flat roofs and other features suggestive of the area's traditional adobe construction. However, many contemporary houses in the city are built from lumber, concrete blocks, and other common building materials, but with stucco surfaces (sometimes referred to as "faux-dobe", pronounced as one word: "foe-dough-bee") reflecting the historic style.
In 2005/2006, a consultant group from Portland, Oregon, prep
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