Walking the Talk Retooled History Tours Dive Deeper into Santa Fe’s Past After pandemic closures turned the Santa Fe Plaza into a temporary ghost
I’ve Been Working On The Railroad A Museum Activity Kit Test your eyes—and refresh your railroad lingo with an online word search offered by the New Mexico History Museum. This activity kit was created in conjunction with the History Museum exhibition Working on the Railroad, on view to October 18, 2021.
town in 2020, the Friends of History optimistically focused on what wasn’t there: groups of people. While New Mexicans stayed home, the steering committee for this membership support group of the New Mexico History Museum turned its attention to revamping its public tours of downtown Santa Fe. The Historic Downtown Walking Tours, offered daily by Friends of History guides, has long been a steady source of revenue for the History Museum. Successful tours often led participants to purchase an additional museum ticket. But the tours needed streamlining. The goal, according to Friends of History Chair Michael Ettema, was to produce a “uniformly high-quality tour” despite any differences in indi-
Find directions and other online activities at:
vidual docent guides’ styles and delivery of information.
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certain historical touchstones in the city’s downtown and re-evaluating what
Activity kits for all Museum of New Mexico divisions are generously sponsored by $10,000 in private gifts through the Museum of New Mexico Foundation. The funds help create specialized activities for thousands of schoolchildren across New Mexico.
The group literally rewrote its training manual. Now, after reconsidering visitors want from a tour experience, Ettema says, “We think we have a really good new tour put together. It’s general in nature, but also goes a little more deeply into topics that are critical to the history of Santa Fe.”
Spiegelberg Building, East San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico, ca. 1890s. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, negative number 035869.
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