St. Cate's

Not unlike El Paso, Santa Fe presents more questions than answers. This morning I spent an hour trying to find information on Saint Catherine's Indian School. Somewhat difficult to find, if we were only a few months late to see the old buildings at the Santa Fe Indian School, we are ten years late for St. Catherine's -- it closed in 1998. I am guessing they are having a hard time selling it.
Next stop: call to Sister Patrick Marie -- and continuing the search for the needle in the haystack.
I called and left a message for Sr. Patrick Marie -- and decided that on my way to drop off my parents in the plaza so I could go to the archives and do some research that we should stop by the site of St. Catherine's Indian School to take some pictures. JUST IN CASE they decide to sell the site and raze all the buildings before we get confirmation one way or another. It is another long shot, but like everything else on this trip, shooting in the dark is what we do.

Both schools, SFIS and St. Cate's, had been built on the edge of Santa Fe back in the 1890's, but now they were both within miles of the historic plaza.

St. Cate's is right next to two cemeteries -- the veteran's cemetery and a city cemetery. I drive down the road that was given as the address winding through what looked like brand new homes and expensive condos and suddenly there is no more road, just dirt -- and not too stable looking either. Then all we could see was cemetery on one side and chain link fence on the other.
There was one very large building -- at least two stories -- rising out of the middle of the property with a bell tower on top. My father kept insisting that it was the original building, but I couldn't imagine a two story adobe building being built by these missionary nuns who barely made it across the country. Later as I quizzed him about it, he said he had seen the building in a picture with his mother in it. Um, what picture??
We wandered around outside snapping photos. I walked into the cemetery to get a better look at the tall building -- even climbing a crypt to get a shot.

Then we walked down to the entrance -- the signs read: no parking and private property. My father countered with "it doesn't say no trespassing." There was a combination lock on the gate, but it was open. Taken all together, my father decided that it meant we should go in.
Seeing it was our only chance to see this place and trying to avoid the it was just torn down problem... we went in. We walked only down the main road.
We could see a house looking structure at the end of the road.
Somewhere down the road a sound like a really loud phone ring (just one) in the back of my mind I imagined it was an alarm, but we continued on.
My mom and dad started collecting things from the road. My mom collected rocks and shiny piece of pottery. My dad found some spent shells. I found a piece of what looked like an old fashioned bulb from the electric wiring. We didn't get off the main road and somehow imagined that it meant that we weren't really trespassing -- we were looking but not esculcando. As we got closer to the house looking structure, dogs from nearby houses started barking. We headed back to the entrance -- the phone rang again.

We made it almost back to the car when someone came out of the cemetery and got into a work truck. My dad decided that this man would have all the information he needed about the property and started chatting. We were headed down the road when a car with two nuns (in full dress) passed us -- clearly on their way to check on the alarm we set off. No doubt. My dad wanted me to stop and ask them questions -- "here's your chance to get all the information you need," he insisted. Um... no way... not going to start our conversation letting them know we had just been trespassing. I will wait for Sr. Patrick Marie to call me back instead.

My mom and I pocketed our finds. My dad decided to leave his at the front gate.