A Brief History of Canyon Road

a brief history of Canyon Road the history of Canyon Road you have to take it back to indigenous life in New Mexico or in Santa Fe was not Santa Fe then pre-santa Fe Canyon Road was a a path to the Pecos a shortcut if you will from this area up the canyon to the Pecos River Valley so it was indigenous use prior just like the Camino Real was an Indian Trail an Indian trade route before the Spanish came where we're sitting right now is Santa Fe New Mexico but the first people here were the puebloans they inhabited this area before the Spanish ever arrived the Spanish established the Via de santafe the San Francisco de assis between 1608 and 1610 before they would found a via they would always Scout to make sure there was water access to Wood fishing hunting all these things human beings need to survive and thrive and they found that in this area by the 1750s you have Hispanic people building homes along this path this is the beginning of Canyon Road the colonial history of Canyon Road and it's there for centuries come in the opening Santa Fe Trail in 1821 the Americans start trickling in and that first wave of American artists were the cartographers the map makers so I think that's that's how the the third wave of artists got here were basically with the military a few people did trickle in with tuberculosis but by the time they got here they were real close to death but the railroad is when people can start coming in droves here that's when it's much easier to get here 1880 [Music] in the old days when when the train just come through here um they called it the Chili line that came down from Colorado and went on down south and the uh the scientists and whomever else were around um uh started taking pieces of art out of here the the traditional pottery so yeah it became well known for its Pottery People traveled into this area and took it out of here just uh one thing always kept leading to another thing until uh today that's one of the better known places for art in in the country I guess by the turn of the century New Mexico was slowly advancing towards statehood but American capitalism had fully arrived there was a thriving cottage industry in the treatment of tuberculosis and the state was attracting anglos from the East Coast meanwhile the developing business Community had figured out how to package the new Mexican culture and was promoting it nationally to a brand new generation of tourists had archaeologists anthropologists writers artists Etc who came here and then they fell in love with it and they wanted to find a way to stay um they were inspired by what they saw they wanted to be able to paint they all wanted to be able to have a new expression and they were also though thinking that they were going to be cutting edge in the bigger world of art so this was you know this a new form of modernism that was based on you know the real traditions of the U.S that is the way it was sold you know the modernists came here and said we've been looking for authentic life you know authenticity in the U.S this is it you have to go back to a place like New Mexico where tradition is is in the air it's not in the past it's not old world it is part of the everyday culture with that you start getting people interested in art because artists start to come here and they're fascinated by the Pueblo cultures by the other native cultures that are here the Apache Navajo Comanche and of course by the Spanish and Mexican culture that's here so by the 1920s you have people like will Schuster coming here and he and others start to settle in Canyon Road they're called Los Cinco bidores so you have this amazing region of artistic inspiration that takes place right here in Santa Fe and Canyon Road is the epicenter [Music] so in 1943 this became the headquarters Santa Fe for the Manhattan Project the dawn of the atomic age also in 1943 we got this kind of like uh this weird religion out here it's well enough it's just it was different it was called the I am religion by the Saint Germain foundation and it was so basically it was considered a cult right and so they came out here and they all were what wore purple it was like this weird time the other thing we had here in 1942 in in north of Santa Fe they opened up a Japanese internment camp here so I was thinking man my parents these Spanish people that grew up here all their lives it was still a you know was under 20 000 people then and all of a sudden there's all these people from around the world it was a military operation so the military was here big time the the Japanese internment campus all these Japanese are coming from all over the place to be imprisoned here and then there's this kind of like Oddball religion where people are walking around in Perth people what a trip when I was growing up mostly in the 50s Canyon Road it was residential the first first first artist that I ever knew was our neighbor and his name was Tommy messione and we knew him well because he painted my mother's flower garden all the time my childhood home is the Tea House The Stables that are now galleries were actual horse stables and that's where my grandfather had a Writing Academy and if you wanted to learn how to ride a horse that's where you went from this area so most of our experience growing up in the 50s had a lot to do with the church and the school when the art community came in you started seeing the conversion but it used to be residential and we used to play baseball on the street so that was much a part of my experience in the 50s and then of course in the 60s Kaboom it just created an identity of an artist row and everything was growing down south the population had more than doubled then [Music] if 64 and I was 26 I came down to Santa Fe I went I went to the plaza and then someone told me about Canyon Road there were artists who had little galleries that were just their own private they lived in them and I thought wow this is nice you know that's what I was trying to do and I met Hal West who's Jerry's father sitting in this gallery and he had a painting and a window of a hitchhiker you know outstanding in the wilderness so I said well this is it this is got to be right I went on up and I found clubs the bar yeah this was like a miracle I thought it was a kind of utopian little art period it was very positive I mean how lucky was it and this then in the 70s all these artists started coming to town I don't know why they had the same idea I did and they were all right out of Art School most of them foreign 70s when I was in high school here it was still basically just another block I mean kids were playing outside on the street I mean it was it was predominantly Spanish-speaking uh families that lived on that street my aunt and uncle had a Hallmark Canyon Road so that even in the 1970s there was like a restaurant it was now called Geronimo but it was called three cities of Spain back then it was a like a coffee shop and there'd be like a gallery interest you know next door to an actual home and things I guess trouble with art we had a lot of fun when in the beginning when we were young and everything but then it all became a grind to to find the right rich people to to sponsor it and promote it and buy it and you end up feeling like you're doing something a little bit wrong you know gentrification can be really ugly during the 1970s the plaza changed dramatically it went from being the heartbeat of a local community to a popular tourist destination in a very short amount of time and by 1982 Santa Fe had taken off like a rocket in 1981 Esquire magazine proclaimed Santa Fe was the right place to live you're too late for Aspen they said and Key West is too crowded but they encouraged a new generation of wealthy Americans and not to give up because there was still a chance they could make it to Santa Fe Santa fe's gone through so many stages of people coming here and going this is it we have found it we've discovered it we've you know and and what is it I don't know it's it's something that clearly has always been here that draws people who who have a sensibility and a feeling they get when when they come here so you get the good and the bad it's not a bad thing that people love Santa Fe and love it often times for The Best of reasons but what it tips the balance of the community that is really really rooted here Generations you know and I'm not saying just Hispanic or indigenous communities I'm talking about Anglo communities and and Greek communities and Lebanese communities and and black communities that all have lived here um when it tips the balance so that it makes it really hard for the for the generations that have been here to live and to afford to live that's when it gets to be challenging my name is Anna Rosa Padilla I'm born and raised in 1520 Canyon Road growing up there was a blast I grew up with the mountains as my backyard the Santa Fe River as my front yard my grandpa Rivera was quite the farmer and he did a lot a lot of plowing and growing and so on they had way back when pigs and goats and cows and you know they had the outdoor toilet the Outhouse and things which was just taken down about 10 years ago yeah our next door neighbor was Glenna goodacre I got to meet Harry Connick Jr and met lots of movie stars up in that area we owned the property until 2016 and then we sold it we couldn't afford the property taxes anymore nobody else everybody has left and that's pretty much what Santa Fe is now you know it's just being taken over we're losing so much so much of our history here in 2005 Santa Fe was named a UNESCO City a United Nations educational and cultural City we were the first city in this country to receive that designation that is huge Santa Fe is um is considered either the second or third largest Art Market in the country in terms of sales salts New York Los Angeles Santa Fe Little Old Santa Fe right [Music] I've for many decades you know worried as we've continued to get more popular and more expensive that eventually we're going to price ourselves out and we're going to become an aspen or a veil I think it could happen here I think what saves us is that there are a lot of people here who are have a lot of at stake here in terms of just the community sensibility and the love for this place no matter where they came from that I think it would be a huge fight to see it go that way but there were so many factors that went on you see as as things begin to develop and people begin to come into this stuff cities will always go along with that because it means more taxes tax money all of that everybody's taxes went up as Richard and more affluent human beings came to this town the Hispanics got so displaced in this town that it's just pathetic there was no way that these people could survive in those areas because the taxes they were taxed out of their own old homes and the the place you and I were talking about Canyon Road is almost unless you just happen to be a Hispanic online to it through hell or high water and paid the taxes uh there's no longer too many Hispanics in that area which was really the Old Santa Fe you know and that's what happened all over the city it's never Pleasant to be on the receiving end of Conquest it's painful to have people come from the outside and tell you you're going to change now the Spanish did it to the puebloan people native peoples did it to each other Americans came and did it to all of us who were already here perhaps the conquest of Santa Fe is still going on we look at how Conquest happened 600 years ago it was violent but the way things happen now tend to have more to do with economics and culture so you still have those stresses here there's so many different perspectives and like a lot of historical events they're painful and they sometimes make us uncomfortable as history should [Music] I think it's very hard to look at anything Black and White in Santa Fe and or in New Mexico as a whole it created an economy that that we depend upon today that you know is is partly my livelihood your livelihood and so it's it's so complex and it's so nuanced and it's it's it's very big it's a much bigger story than people people give credit for what many people don't think about is that there's still a huge local community here you know I get asked all the time when I'm in certain circles gosh you know you must be one of the only native Santa fans left and I say no there's a lot of us we're all over this city you know pay attention you know Santa Fe is a very strong self-identified place and I don't think it's going to let go of its identity that easily [Music] Kenyon Road has been home to many people and many cultures over the centuries and it continues to change to this day it has witnessed a number of the most interesting stories in the history of American art while the city because of its proximity to Los Alamos has been entangled with several pivotal moments in the development of our nation as a superpower today this old neighborhood has one of the nation's highest concentrations of artists and Galleries and because of this it attracts art lovers from around the world but hiding behind every corner there is a secret and its Mysteries are truly ancient it is a street that will take you back in time and nowhere else will you find anything quite like it Canyon Road Santa Fe New Mexico [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Canyon Road History

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Length: 19min 1sec (1141 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023