Out West Setting: Santa Fe
Santa Fe and the United States (from Wikipedia)
In 1841 a small military and trading expedition set out from Austin, Texas, with the aim of gaining control over the Santa Fe Trail. Known as the Santa Fe Expedition the force was poorly prepared and was easily repelled by the Mexican army. In 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico, and General Kearny led a troop of US Cavalry into the city to claim it and the whole New Mexico Territory for the United States. By 1848 it officially gained New Mexico through The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Colonel Alexander William Doniphan under the command of Kearny recovered ammunition from Santa Fe labeled “Spain 1776″ showing both the quality of communication and military support New Mexico received under Mexican rule. (Garrard, Lewis H., Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman Oklahoma, 1955, originally published in 1850)
In 1851, Jean Baptiste Lamy, arrived in Santa Fe and began construction of Saint Francis Cathedral. For a few days in March 1863, the Confederate flag of General Henry Sibley flew over Santa Fe, until he was defeated by Union troops.
Santa Fe was originally envisioned as an important stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. But as the tracks progressed into New Mexico, the civil engineers decided that it was more practical to go through Lamy, a town in Santa Fe County to the south of Santa Fe. The result was a gradual economic decline. This was reversed in part through the creation of a number of resources for the arts and archaeology, notably the School of American Research, created in 1907 under the leadership of the prominent archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett. The first aeroplane to fly over Santa Fe was piloted by Rose Dugan, carrying Vera von Blumenthal as passenger. Together they started the development of the Pueblo Indian pottery industry, a major contribution to the founding of the annual Santa Fe Indian Market.
In 1912 New Mexico became the country’s 47th state, with Santa Fe as its capital.