I love it when my preconceived notions about a destination are smashed. On a recent visit to Santa Fe, I learned eight things that surprised me:
- Santa Fe is the U.S. capital with the highest elevation: It’s 7,000 feet above sea level (Denver is 5,280).
Santa Fe is in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. People often think of it as being in a desert but in reality, at an elevation of 7,000 feet, it’s the highest U.S. capital. Photo by Anastasia Mills Healy. - You can ski here. The city gets an average of 32 inches of snow per year while its ski areas average 300.
Georgia O’Keeffe lived in Manhattan from the 1920s to the 1940s and painted this decades later. She suffered from macular degeneration and lost much of her sight in 1971. Georgia O’Keeffe, Untitled (City of Night), 1970s, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico. - Georgia O’Keeffe, the artist most associated with New Mexico, was born in Wisconsin and lived in NYC for 20 years before moving to New Mexico.
- You can walk into a refrigerator and dive into a clothes dryer at the city’s most popular attraction, created by an art collective called Meow Wolf.
At Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, unconventional passageways between rooms include a refrigerator. Photo by Anastasia Mills Healy - Since 1924, during the annual Fiesta de Santa Fe, a 50-foot marionette called Zozobra is burned to rid the city of “gloom.”
- New Mexico was the 47thS. state (1912); only Arizona (1912), Alaska and Hawaii (both 1959) followed.
- Some of the city’s adobe architecture is original and hundreds of years old; and there are restrictions on some newer buildings to ensure the city’s character remains intact.
Just off the Plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico is the New Mexico Museum of Art. Photo by Anastasia Mills Healy. - Santa Fe gets 325 days of sunshine (the U.S. average is 205).
For travel tips, read my full story on Santa Fe.
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