Clockwise: Art found alongside Santa Fe streets. Interior of St. Francis Cathedral, Santa Fe. A variety of paintings and sculptures are found in Santa Fe art galleries.
tures at the Allan Houser Studio and Sculpture Garden. Houser was a legend- ary twentieth-century Native American artist whose parents belonged to the Chiricahua Apache tribe at the time of Chief Geronimo’s surrender to U.S. Government forces in 1886. The artworks include Native American themes and figures, where replica cast- ings now fill the halls of museums around the country. One prominent work, Sacred Rain Arrow, portrays an Indian warrior about to shoot an arrow straight up. The story is in times of drought, they’d choose a young man from the tribe based on purity of heart, says guide Santanna Ortiz. They’d have a huge ceremony and he’d go the highest point on the moun- tain and shoot it off in hopes of rain. I drive south along State Highway 14,
popularly known as the Turquoise Trail, a National Scenic Byway, into the old mining town of Madrid (pronounced MAD-drid). “I haven’t quite found the right words to describe Madrid,” says Melinda Bon’ewell, owner of the Mine Shaft Tavern. “It’s something you’ll find nowhere else—kind of like a blending of the Wild West. People are proud to be different.” Once known for gutting 2,500 foot- deep mineshafts to fill truckloads with hard and soft coal, Madrid today is a unique artist community. Hippies and artistic types moving here in the 1970s helped revive what had become a ghost town 20 years earlier. Nestled within the surrounding barren and rocky hills, a string of shops and boutiques line this colorful stretch of Highway 14— Madrid’s Main Street.
Flower pots hang along the storefronts of maybe 40 businesses: art galleries, trading posts, cafes and clothing shops selling classic Wild West boots and antique jewelry. Others have old miner and ghost town references. Freshly paint- ed and rusted mailboxes stand along curbs near old cars. “I call this the heart of the Turquoise Trail,” says Bon’ewell.
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