In the centuries following the ""discovery"" of the Americas in 1492, representatives of the great Spanish Empire attempted to establish the thumbprint of European colonialism in the New World. Their exploits would destroy vast Indian civilizations, but with each fall, stories of other native kingdoms of greater wealth and power were told. One story pointed to the lands north of Mexico, a wasteland of scrubby deserts; sandstone mesas; forbidding, snow-capped mountains; and tens of thousands of Indians living in adobe apartments the Spanish would call pueblos. The Spanish search for the mythical cities of gold would, in time, lead to the establishment of a colony known as New Mexico. This book is the story of Santa Fe, New Mexico's colonial capital and the oldest capital city in the U.S., a territory whose enthralling physical and cultural landscapes were shaped by its Indian heritage and subsequent Spanish influence.