The road that left town
Welcome back to The Santa Fe Weekender — five handpicked things worth your weekend, no scrolling required. The summer festivals have packed up and Wine & Chile is still a few days out, which makes this one of those in-between weekends the city quietly does best. It’s also the weekend a hundred-year-old highway comes back through town.
The main thing
Route 66 turns 100, and Sunday, September 20 is the party. Free, all day, and the best kind of Santa Fe event: several neighborhoods, no ticket, a lot of chrome.
Start downtown. From 10 to noon, classic cars line Old Santa Fe Trail across from the Roundhouse (490 Old Santa Fe Trail), and Tesuque Pueblo Governor Mark Mitchell blesses them — a very New Mexican way to open a car show. At noon the whole procession crawls up to Museum Hill, where the Milner Plaza program runs 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (710 Camino Lejo): the Diné ‘Tah Navajo Dancers, the Jacob Shije Trio out of Santa Clara Pueblo, the Latin ska-punk of Los Domingueros, food trucks, story time, face painting, and car-detailing demos. Four state museums put it on together — Folk Art, Indian Arts and Culture, the History Museum, and the Museum of Art — and a free Santa Fe Trails shuttle runs from the PERA Building, 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. If you want both ends of the day, leave the car at PERA and ride — downtown parking on a Sunday car show is its own event.
Here’s the part worth knowing while you’re standing there. Route 66 was commissioned in 1926, and the first version of it came straight through here: up from Santa Rosa along the old Santa Fe Trail, north on what’s now Old Pecos Trail, a loop around the Plaza, then out Cerrillos Road and Agua Fría and down the old Camino Real past Santo Domingo Pueblo toward Albuquerque. Eleven years later the state straightened the route — the Santa Fe Cut-Off, championed by former governor Arthur Hannett — shaving a hundred miles off the drive and, with them, Santa Fe. From 1937 on, the Mother Road went around us. So the centennial the city is celebrating on Sunday is partly a celebration of a road that left, which is a very Santa Fe thing to throw a party about.
Eat
The Pantry, 1820 Cerrillos Road. Since 1948, on the stretch of pavement that used to be the highway — vinyl booths, chile on everything, and a room that has fed Santa Fe’s plumbers, legislators and hungover tourists in roughly equal measure for three-quarters of a century. Breakfast is the move. Open 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., every day, which on a weekend like this one counts for a lot.
La Reina, 1862 Cerrillos Road — a short walk up the same stretch of road, and the other half of the same story. It’s the bar inside El Rey Court, a 1936 adobe motor court built for exactly the travelers this weekend is about, now a mezcal-and-tequila bar with two patios and a fireplace worth claiming as the evenings turn. Open 5 to 11 p.m. daily, walk-ins only, and there’s free live music on Sundays and Wednesdays — a good landing after a day of Route 66.
See
The New Mexico Jazz Festival takes the Lensic three nights running. Downtown, 211 West San Francisco, curtain at 7:30 each night, and the bill is unusually strong for one weekend:
- Friday — esperanza spalding. The Grammy-winning bassist and singer, still the most restless mind in contemporary jazz.
- Saturday — René Marie & Experiment in Truth. A southern-raised singer who moves between jazz, folk, R&B and country without ever sounding like she’s visiting.
- Sunday — the Chucho Valdés Royal Quartet. The Cuban pianist who has been shaping Afro-Cuban jazz for sixty years. If you pick one, pick this one.
Tickets at lensic.org or through the Community Box Office at 505-988-1234.
Do
Assassins, Spies and the Manhattan Project — Saturday morning. A two-hour, docent-led walk from the New Mexico History Museum through a version of downtown most people never notice: 10:45 to 12:45, meeting at 113 Lincoln Avenue, $20 to $30. You’ll stand outside the back-room office where Manhattan Project gate passes to Los Alamos were issued, near the bridge where the physicist Klaus Fuchs met the courier Harry Gold in 1945 to hand over atomic secrets, and along the route Edward Lee Howard used to slip his FBI tail in 1985, on his way to defecting to Moscow — plus the actual tradecraft that made those meetings work. Book through friendsofhistorynm.org. Wear real shoes; it’s all on foot.
Also on
Lamy Beer Fest, Saturday. Seven breweries, live music, and the old depot at 152 Old Lamy Trail, 11:30 to 5 — $25 in advance, $30 at the door, which gets you six samples, a souvenir pint glass and a full beer of your choosing. Better idea: don’t drive. Sky Railway runs a train down from the Santa Fe Depot (430 West Manhattan, check-in 11:40) — $125 round trip with entertainment on board and festival entry included. Details at skyrailway.com.
Two studio tours, two very different drives. The 34th Eldorado Studio Tour is the state’s largest — more than 100 artists across 60-odd studios, free, 10 to 5 both days, fifteen minutes southeast of town (eldoradoarts.org). The 29th High Road Art Tour is the scenic one: 40-plus stops strung between Nambé, Chimayó, Truchas, Peñasco and Sipapu, this weekend and next, with the first hints of fall color up high (highroadnewmexico.com).
Santa Fe Bike Fest, Sunday, 4 to 7 at 1611 Alcaldesa Street in the Railyard. Free with a canned-food donation. Categories include best vintage and best weird bicycle, there is no podium and there are no speeches, and that is the entire appeal.
And at the Opera, two nights we can only tell you about. Mavis Staples and Nathaniel Rateliff share the Crosby stage Saturday, and TajMo — Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ — play Sunday. Both are sold out. Worth knowing for next time: the Opera’s fall concert season goes on sale in the spring, long before anyone is thinking about September.
Looking ahead: the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta runs September 22 to 27 — its 35th, and a few days earlier than we said last week. The Grand Tasting is Saturday the 26th, noon to 3, at Magers Field, with more than 80 wineries and 60-odd Santa Fe restaurants. General admission is already gone; the Gold Pass ($295, with 11:30 early entry) and the Vista Tent ($450) are what’s left. We warned you it would go fast.
That’s the weekend. If a friend would love it, forward it their way — they can subscribe at thesantafeweekender.com.
See you next Friday, The Santa Fe Weekender
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