NEW MEXICO HISTORY MUSEUM

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.

Find directions and other online activities at:

museumfoundation.org/education 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.

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 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 individual docent guides’ styles and delivery of information.

The group literally rewrote its training manual. Now, after reconsidering certain historical touchstones in the city’s downtown and re-evaluating what 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.

On the new two-hour tour, a building is not just an edifice— it’s a portal to historical figures, trends and events. “Buildings are time capsules, an embodiment of personal dreams, available technology and cultural norms,” says New Mexico History Museum Executive Director Billy Garrett. “Each is connected to a specific location and date, while also shaping the character of its surroundings over time.”

On one of the tour’s first stops, Ettema points out the Spiegelberg Building across the Plaza from the Palace of the Governors, using it to describe the scale of historical trade networks that supported 19th-century Jewish merchants. A quick jaunt over to 109 East Palace opens up the story of the mid-20th-century Manhattan Project and the instrumental role Dorothy McKibbin played in gatekeeping one of the biggest secrets of all time.

A few more steps down Palace Avenue, Sena Plaza opens visitors’ eyes to old Santa Fe from a sociological and architectural point of view rooted in the Spanish Colonial period. Finally, a stop in Cathedral Park offers a chance to discuss the many modern institutions bolstered by 19th-century Catholic Bishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy’s work in New Mexico.

The tour addresses issues of class, inequity and historical myths. Winding its way down Old Santa Fe Trail to San Miguel Mission and the “Oldest” House, it debunks certain claims about both, and covers the erasure of the Barrio de Analco by the encroachment of state government buildings.

“Unfortunately, Santa Fe is not laid out in chronological order,” says Ettema, “so we have to go back and forth a little bit. Then we haul them back to the History Museum to buy a ticket for admission.”

While public in-person tours were on hold during the pandemic, virtual Zoom tours took up some of the slack, underscoring the appeal of technology for some history buffs. The Friends are also introducing a new self-guided tour app for those visitors who prefer to fly solo.

In-person tours are scheduled through October. For times and prices, visit friendsofhistorynm.org/walking-tours/.

For his part, Garrett does not underestimate the power of the retooled tour.

“The Downtown Walking Tours offer an opportunity to see beyond the present to better understand other New Mexicans, the forces that have shaped our state and the ties we have with the rest of the world,” he says.

To join Friends of History, call 505.982.6366 ext. 100 or email membership@museumfoundation.org. To support the New Mexico History Museum, contact Yvonne Montoya at Yvonne@museumfoundation.org or 505.216.1592.

Dorothy McKibbin, 109 East Palace, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1940-1960. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, negative number 030187.