City of Santa Fe

Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday remarked that the American West “is a place that has to be seen to be believed, and it may have to be believed in order to be seen.”

The City of Santa Fe was originally occupied by a number of Pueblo Indian villages with founding dates between 1050 to 1150.

The “Kingdom of New Mexico” was first claimed for the Spanish Crown by the conquistador don Francisco Vasques de Coronado in 1540, 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.