What a great city to park your vehicle and walk around. The downtown area is very quaint and not like a lot of other capital cities with skyscrapers. Artist galleries are everywhere!! A lot of little shops to stroll through and outdoor patio style restaurants. Come along on our walk of downtown.
According to the version of events passed down by the Sisters of Loretto, multiple builders were consulted but were not able to find a workable solution due to the confined quarters. In response, the nuns prayed for nine straight days to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the last day of the novena, a mysterious stranger appeared and offered to build the staircase. He worked alone using only a few simple hand tools and disappeared afterwards without collecting his pay or the Sisters learning his identity. More fantastical versions of the story have the work taking place overnight, while according to others it took six to eight months. In any event, the finished staircase was an impressive work of carpentry, seeming to defy physics as it ascended 20 feet (6.1 m) without any obvious means of support. The Sisters of Loretto viewed its construction as a miracleand believed that the mysterious builder must have been St. Joseph himself. As the story spread, the staircase became one of Santa Fe’s most famous tourist attractions. The staircase as originally built lacked handrails and was reportedly so frightening to descend that some of the nuns and students did so on their hands and knees. Eventually, railings were added in 1887 by another craftsman, Phillip August Hesch. The stairs have been mostly closed to the public since the chapel became a privately-run museum in the 1960s.
Established in 1610, Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the third oldest city founded by European colonists in the United States. Only St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565, and Jamestown, Virginia, are older. It is also the oldest capital city in the U.S., serving under five different governments; Spain, Tewa Puebloans, Mexico, the Confederate States of America, and the United States. Built upon the ruins of an abandoned Tanoan Indianvillage, Santa Fe was the capital of the “Kingdom of New Mexico,” which was claimed for Spain by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1540. Its first governor, Don Pedro de Peralta, gave the city its full name, “La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís,” or “The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi.”