2. El Rancho de las Golondrinas

New Mexico's only living history museum
El Rancho de las Golondrinas is New Mexico's only living history museum. Unlike other living history museums that focus on a narrow period of history, Las Golondrinas covers New Mexico history of the Colonial Spanish (1500s-1821), Mexican (1821-1846), and U.S. Territorial (1846-1921) periods. Volunteer guides in authentic costumes from all three periods are often throughout the ranch not just to interpret its 34 historic buildings on more than 200 acres of fields and streams and ponds, but also to show visitors first-hand and "close-up" how people lived, worked, and played. Buildings include an 18th century Colonial Spanish defensive square, with one of the few remaining torrejons (watch towers) that once were common along the old road connecting Santa Fe and Mexico City. A 19th century water-powered grist mill, houses, mountain village, schoolhouse, tannery, weaving looms, herb garden, a small flour mill, store, and blacksmith and carpenter shops are also featured. The museum can be visited during "quiet times," or on festival weekends with events such as an historic Mexican rodeo, harvest festival, dances, food preparation and cooking, plays, religious processions, Civil War battles, the "Wild West," use of animals in ranch history, Mountain Men rendezvous, and old-fashioned games and crafts for children. Each year, in September, the ranch hosts thousands of visitors for the world's only Spanish Renaissance Fair, highlighting the influence of Spain in New Mexico culture. Because of its scenery and history, the ranch has also been the site for numerous major motion pictures with some of the best Hollywood stars, and has one of the few enclosed movie set houses built on location by a major motion picture studio. The ranch's terrain is hilly, its paths of dirt, and its buildings because of historic accuracy are not equipped for the handicapped. Modern rest rooms are near the entrance; portable toilets are found elsewhere on the site. Carrying bottled water is recommended. A snack bar is at the entrance, as is a small but superb gift shop that carries merchandise collectively found nowhere else. The ranch is just south of Santa Fe along Interstate 25, towards Albuquerque. It's best to look at the ranch's website, www.golondrinas.org, for a current event schedule and detailed directions. El Rancho de las Golondrinas ('Ranch of the Swallows") began around 1700 and its earliest buildings date from that era. The ranch has been a nonprofit living history museum since 1972.