History, Part 1

Early years

This page is under construction.

OUR CONDOMINIUM SITS ON LAND that was undeveloped until the 20th century. In fact the whole area northwest of Arroyo de las Mascaras was a sort of hinterland with few buildings and roads. This 1847 map gives a pretty good idea of what things were like.

The red house shows the location of our condominium, and the red arrow points to Arroyo de las Mascaras. (I added those symbols. You can hide them by clicking or tapping “toggle” in the caption under the map.)

As you can see, the arroyo forms a boundary between the developed and undeveloped parts of Santa Fe. Northwest of the arroyo there are almost no buildings or streets.

The little black mark to the left of the condominium represents Rosario Chapel. The geometric figure near the chapel is not the cemetery, which didn’t exist yet, but probably a garden (this is clearer on the map-maker’s drafts▼). The road that went to the garden and chapel was called Camino de Nuestra Señora del Rosario;▼ this road, or the eastern part of it, is the precursor to Griffin Street. Although the map doesn’t identify the crops in the fields, the map maker’s drafts say that they are corn.

In a moment I’ll show photos that confirm that this map gives an accurate impression.

The reason almost nobody lived on the far side of Arroyo de las Mascaras, although it’s just a few minutes walk from the plaza, is population. Even though Santa Fe was the capital of a kingdom, province, and state, it was a small town. As late as 1910 it had only 5,000 residents.▼ There weren’t enough people to populate our neighborhood.

The absence of houses and fields made our area suitable for projects that required large parcels of land, and by the end of the 1800s five had been built:

• Rosario Chapel was constructed between 1806 and 1818.▼

• Rosario Cemetery opened around 1868.▼

• Santa Fe National Cemetery was created in 1870 on land donated by the Catholic Church.▼

• Saint Catherine’s Industrial Indian School laid its first cornerstone in 1886.▼

• The railroad from Santa Fe to Colorado, nicknamed the Chili Line, opened in 1887 and ran along the middle of what would later become Rio Grande Avenue, right in front of where our condo is today. It shut down in 1941 and was dismantled.▼

Despite these large projects, as late as 1912 our neighborhood was still mostly undeveloped land, as shown by this photo taken in that year.

The photographer is looking northwest from the east side of Galisteo Street south of the Santa Fe River. He’s probably standing on the roof or a balcony of the third capitol (today’s Bataan Memorial Building; see location).▼ In the distance, beyond Arroyo de las Mascaras, he can see our neighborhood. I’ve marked some points of interest with red arrows. In a moment I’ll show a blowup of that area so you can see it in more detail, but first let’s look at in context. As always on this website, you can hide the arrows by clicking or tapping “toggle”.

The first arrow on the left points to Rosario Chapel; the second to St. Catherine’s; the third to the trestle that carried trains across Arroyo del Rosario (located very close to the culverts that pass under Griffin Street today), and the fourth arrow points to the head of a train. The train is on the right of way that will become Rio Grande Avenue, at about the spot where the avenue will meet Rio Grande Place.

Here’s a blowup of part of that photo:

Arrows from left to right: Rosario Chapel with graves in front of it; St. Catherine’s; trestle across Arroyo del Rosario (located very close to the three culverts that pass under Griffin Street today); site of the condominium. Behind Rosario Chapel, unmarked by an arrow, you can see the Manderfield Mausoleum. The white building in the center foreground, unmarked by an arrow, is St. John’s Methodist Episcopal Church on San Francisco Street, which is no longer there.

The next photo was taken in 1891. The photographer is standing on a building at St. Catherine’s, very close to where the condo is today, looking southeast.

The middle arrow points to Arroyo de las Mascaras. We are north of it. Not a single building exists between the arroyo and us.

The wide band of sand that crosses the picture from left to upper right is Arroyo del Rosario; in the distance, on the right, it joins Arroyo de las Mascaras near where Lotaburger is today. The black ribbon that cuts across Arroyo del Rosario is the railroad. On the left side of Arroyo del Rosario, the tracks follow the path of today’s Rio Grande Avenue. The first arrow, on the left, marks the location of our condominium on the far (south) side of the track and east (left) side of the arroyo.

The curving dirt path or road that goes under the trestle on the east side of the arroyo follows the path of today’s Griffin Street.

We know for a fact that this photo was taken between 1886 and 1892 because New Mexico’s second capitol building, the one that replaced Palace of the Governors, appears in it. That building burned down soon after it was built and existed only during those years.▼ I've marked it with the third arrow.

Here’s an enlargement of part of the previous photo. We can see that the land north of Arroyo de las Mascaras is planted with a crop and that the crop is protected by a fence. It makes sense that crops could be grown on flat land next to a large arroyo; there may have been acequias (irrigation ditches) there that we can’t see. The building closest to us in the center of the picture is the original Chili Line depot which was used until 1903.

The next photo was taken between 1886 and 1892. The photographer is standing on the south edge of St. Catherine’s looking at Rosario Cemetery to his southeast. He’s about 750 feet west of our condominium.

A goat herder has brought his goats to browse on wild vegetation. Unlike the land in the previous photo, this land is not planted. The reason for the difference is easy to see. The planted land is next to a large arroyo, and it’s not elevated very much above that arroyo. Those two factors make it practical to irrigate that land. But the land in this photo lacks those characteristics.

We know this photo was taken between 1886 and 1892 because the second capitol appears in it. The building with the arched roof in the near-middle distance is the Manderfield Mausoleum. You can see it today at the north end of Rosario Cemetery. Manderfield was the man who built the Santa Fe New Mexican into a major regional newspaper.

The main point I’ve tried to make on this page is that until the 20th century, Arroyo de las Mascaras was a boundary. People built houses and lived on the south side of it but not so much on the north side. To make that point, I’ve showed an old map and three old photos. I’ll try now to make that same point in a different way, with a modern map.

This map is published by the Santa Fe city government. The red house, which I added, indicates the location of the condominium. The colored areas are today’s historical districts. Within those districts, there are lots of old buildings. North of them, in the white area, there are very few old buildings. As you can see by looking at a map of arroyos, the boundary between the white and colored areas is closely aligned with Arroyo de las Mascaras.

Summary and tentative conclusion

Before the twentieth century, five large projects were built in our neighborhood: Rosario Chapel, Rosario Cemetery, the national cemetery, St. Catherine’s, and the railway. Nothing else was constructed here: no houses, no stores, no paved roads. Land that could be irrigated was farmed; the rest was used by goat herders.

▲Plan of Santa Fe by J.F. Gilmer: I don’t know where the original of this map is kept but two drafts are in the National Archives (see next note). My scanned image comes from Historic Santa Fe Foundation. Gilmer was a first lieutenant in the US Army Corps of Engineers when he made this map as part of his official duties during the US takeover of Santa Fe. He had an impressive career, rising eventually to major general in the Confederate army. See Gilmer’s Wikipedia page and this nice article that discusses Gilmer’s map.

▲the map-maker’s drafts: Viewable online at the National Archives website in ‘Reconnaisance of Santa Fe and Its Environs’.

▲Camino de Nuestra Señora del Rosario: I learned this fact not from old maps, which often omit names of streets, but from one of the condominium’s legal documents, the 1941 protective covenant, which describes our land as:

...lying south of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad right of way and north of El Camino de Nuestra Senora del Rosario (now known as Griffin Street).

When I started this website I never imagined that I would be doing historical research from primary documents!

▲Population 5000 in 1910: US Census Bureau Decennial Population Volume for New Mexico, 1940.

▲Rosario Chapel built 1806–1818: ‘Rosario Chapel’ by Mark Treib from Sanctuaries of Spanish New Mexico.

▲Rosario Cemetery established: Catholic Cemetery Association.

▲Santa Fe National Cemetery created: the cemetery’s official website.

▲St. Catherine’s first cornerstone: Bulletin of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, summer 2003.

▲Railroad operated from 1887 to 1941: Gjevre, John A., Chili Line: the narrow trail line to Santa Fe, 2nd ed., Rio Grande Sun Press. pp. 8 and 94.

▲Photo by Jesse L. Nusbaum, 1912: Scan courtesy of Friends of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad, number RD089-025. Negative owned by Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, negative 061534. Nusbaum was a colleague of Sylvanus Morley, the main author of Santa Fe’s famous 1912 city plan. For more about Nusbaum, see his Wikipedia page.

▲...south of the Santa Fe River on Galisteo Street: I was able to figure out his location with the help of old Sanborn Fire Insurance maps at the Library of Congress. This perspective map also helped. Then I switched to modern technology, Google Earth, and figured out that he was standing 4,000 feet from our condo.

▲Second capitol building burned: ‘Incendiary’, The Daily New Mexican, May 14, 1892.

▲Photo by Thomas J. Curran, 1891: Scan courtesy of Friends of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad, number RD089-024. Image scanned from print owned by Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, catalog number 030590. For more info about Curran, see this page.

▲Photo by Dana B. Chase, c. 1890. Scan courtesy of Friends of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad, number RD089-027.

▲Photo by Thomas J. Curran, 1891 (enlargement): can courtesy of Friends of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad, number RD089-098. Image scanned from print owned by Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, catalog number 030590. For more info about Curran, see this page.

▲ Map of historical districts: Santa Fe City map gallery.

▲probably between 1806 and 1818: Rosario Chapel by Mark Treib, reprinted from Sactuaries of Spanish New Mexico.

This page was first published on March 16, 2022 and last republished on December 13, 2024.