Santa Fe
- Karl Hinterbichler
Extract
City in New Mexico (pop. 73,720; 2010 US Census). Located at 7199 feet above sea level, it is the highest and oldest state capital in the United States. The site was originally occupied by a number of Pueblo Indian villages founded between 1050 and 1150. The Spanish governor Pedro de Peralta established Santa Fé as the capital of the province of Nuevo México in 1610, as part of the viceroyalty of Nueva España. After the end of the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, the city became the capital of the Mexican territory of Nuevo México. As a result of the Mexican–American War, in 1848 the United States annexed New Mexico; it became the 47th state in 1912, with Santa Fe as its capital.
Santa Fe was for more than two centuries the economic, political, and cultural center of the northernmost expansion of Spanish influence in America. Although much of the indigenous music of the Native Americans in the region ruled from Santa Fe by the Spanish conquistadors was extirpated by religious conversion, some persisted and has been revived (...
