Santa Fe

The Tewa built a village around the site of today's Plaza some time after AD 900; the Tewa called the area Kháˀ Pʼoegeh, "white shell water place". Tanoan and other Pueblo peoples settled along the Santa Fe River from the mid-11th to the mid-12th century, but had left the site at least 200 years before the Spanish came. Juan de Oñate founded the colony of New Mexico in 1598, and New Mexico's second Spanish governor, Pedro de Peralta, founded La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and made it the capital in 1610 — which makes it the oldest state capital in the United States.

In the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 the Pueblo peoples drove the Spanish out and governed from the Palace of the Governors until Diego de Vargas returned in 1692. Under Mexico, from 1821, the Santa Fe Trail brought traders from Missouri, and the city became the hub of routes that later gave way to the railway, Route 66 and the interstate. General Kearny's army entered in 1846, and the United States took New Mexico in 1848; Confederate troops held the city for a few days in March 1862 before withdrawing after the Battle of Glorieta Pass. Jean Baptiste Lamy, who arrived in 1851 and became bishop, built the cathedral.

The main railway line bypassed the city, which declined. When New Mexico became a state in 1912, with about 5,000 people in its capital, civic leaders decided to impose a single Pueblo Revival style, later joined by the Territorial style, to draw visitors — a rule enforced by ordinance since 1957. Artists, writers and scientists followed; from 1943 the city was the gateway to Los Alamos. A wartime internment camp held Japanese American men here. Recent years have brought fast growth and sharply rising rents.

Santa Fe calls itself "the City Different", and it is often described as the cultural capital of the Southwest. In 2005 it became the first American city in UNESCO's Creative Cities Network, for crafts and folk art. More than 250 galleries cluster along Canyon Road, around the Plaza and in the Railyard, and about a tenth of all jobs are tied to the arts and culture. Writers from D. H. Lawrence to Cormac McCarthy have lived here, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum keeps the painter's legacy, and the immersive art collective Meow Wolf is the leading name in the contemporary scene.

Three annual markets anchor the year: the Spanish Market, the International Folk Art Market on Museum Hill and the Indian Market, the largest, which grew out of a Southwest Indian Fair begun in 1922. The Santa Fe Opera, the chamber music festival and the Desert Chorale fill summer evenings, and the city has a flamenco institute and a ballet company it shares with Aspen.

The Fiestas de Santa Fe, held since 1712, celebrate Vargas's return in 1692 — a reconquest called "bloodless" but criticised as violent even at the time. They open with the burning of Zozobra, the giant effigy of Old Man Gloom. Hispanic Catholic traditions run deep: many locals make the annual pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayó, and at Christmas the Plaza and Canyon Road are lined with farolitos.

About 87,500 people lived in the city at the 2020 census, and the Census Bureau estimated almost 90,000 in 2025; the metropolitan area has about 158,000. The population grew by nearly 29 per cent between 2010 and 2020, its fastest rate since 1950. About half of residents are Hispanic, and the city is older than average, with a median age of about 45.

Government is the biggest employer, with roughly 15,000 jobs, followed by education, health care, and tourism and hospitality, which bring visitors all year. Scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, about 45 minutes away, and the Santa Fe Institute, a research centre on complex systems founded in 1984, give the city a scientific community alongside the artists and writers.

Housing is the dominant local issue. Average rents rose by more than 40 per cent between 2016 and 2021, and in November 2025 the city became the first in the country to pass an ordinance linking its minimum wage to housing costs, with the new wage taking effect in 2027.

Santa Fe is a capital of New Mexican cooking, which grew from the food of the Spanish colonists of Nuevo México and the Pueblo peoples. Chile is at its heart: diners are asked "red or green?" — a sauce of dried red chile or roasted green — and "Christmas" means both. Enchiladas, chile rellenos, posole and sopaipillas, puffy fried bread eaten with honey, fill the menus of the city's long-established New Mexican restaurants, and the breakfast burrito, wrapped round eggs, potatoes, cheese and chile, is credited to Santa Fe.

Frito pie — corn chips topped with red chile and cheese, served in the bag — is said to have been first made at the Woolworth's lunch counter on the Plaza, whose site is now the Five and Dime. Cilantro, rare in traditional New Mexican cooking, became one of the defining tastes of the newer "Santa Fe style", and fine dining and old New Mexican restaurants now sit side by side.

The farmers' market at the Railyard sells northern New Mexico produce. Margaritas are a local institution, with a "Margarita Trail" of more than 50 versions across the city's bars and restaurants.