Canyon Road

World Famous Canyon Road is a Mecca for art lovers. Since 1915 artists have lived and worked here, starting with Gerald Cassidy, a painter of southwestern landscapes and Native portraits. He was soon joined by Sheldon Parsons, a New York portrait painter, and William and Alice Henderson, a successful painter and poet, respectively. Many artists at first chose Santa Fe because of it’s salubrious effects on respiratory diseases, and some were treated at the Sunmount Sanitorium, which was located above Canyon Road.

In the early 1920’s, the young “independent” Cinco Pintores came from Taos to Canyon Road. Financially struggling, they built their houses with their own hands, although they had no experience, and soon were known as the “five little nuts in five mud huts”.

In 1962, the City of Santa Fe officially made Canyon Road a Residential Arts and Crafts zone. Artists could live, work, and show their work, and by 1964, three-fourths of Santa Fe’s 12 Galleries were on Canyon Road.

Today property values are so high that few, if any, artists actually live on Canyon Road. There are over 100 Galleries, and art from all over the world can be seen here.