No Halls of Ivy: The Gritty Story of the College of Santa Fe 1947-2009

The story of the College of Santa Fe is a BIG story. Its ancestry traces to 17th-century France, and its history is totally intertwined with the history of the state of New Mexico. Its original founders arrived in 1859, after months of traveling the Atlantic Ocean in wooden ships, then the young land of America by railroad, ox cart, horseback, and on foot. In 1874 it became the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New Mexico Territorial Legislature, and when New Mexico became the 47th of the United States in 1912, more than one-fifth of the drafters of the state's first constitution were among its graduates. As a full four-year post-secondary college, it opened its doors in 1947, on the site of a former U.S. Army hospital abandoned at the end of World War II. All the structures it occupied were "temporary" military buildings, and the first new hall erected there did not come until 1961. All through its existence it struggled financially, but year after year it held on, bringing college degrees to thousands of students, many of whom had not dreamed that such success was in their reach. The college had a life-and then it had a death. It did not attain old age, succumbing after 62 years, due to unrelenting economic pressures. But before it died it achieved academic distinction, as one of the best liberal-arts schools in the West. It also gained professional acclaim, with its graduates triumphing as performers, as artists, as achievers at the highest levels in their several fields. Now the story of its entire existence is told in this book.