Amelia Elizabeth White and Mary Cabot Wheelwright

White's gift and Wheelwright's museum share one hilltop. White gave the land beside the Laboratory of Anthropology, and in 1936 Hastiin Klah, the Diné singer and weaver whose chants Wheelwright had recorded, blessed the site. He died before the building was finished; in November 1937 the singer Big Man held the house blessing with Klah's relatives, who came by bus from near Newcomb. In 1977 the museum returned medicine bundles and the paintings it had exhibited to Navajo Community College at Tsaile, the first such return by a North American museum, and took Wheelwright's name.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Amelia Elizabeth White (1878-1972) Amelia Elizabeth White worked tirelessly to promote Indian art and to preserve Santa Fe's heritage. A philanthropist and community activist, she donated land for the Laboratory of Anthropology and the Wheelwright Museum, gave the city its first animal shelter, and established the Garcia Street Club for neighborhood children. Her estate, once a gathering place for local artists, is now the home to the School for Advanced Research. Official Scenic Historic Marker Mary Cabot Wheelwright (1878-1958) Born in Boston, art heiress Mary Cabot Wheelwright came to New Mexico for an extended visit in the 1920s. She restored and lived in Los Luceros, a centuries old Rio Grande estate. Her understanding and advocacy of Navajo spirituality resulted from her association with ceremonial singer Hastiin Klah. Wheelwright created the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art, now the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palace of the Governors — 17 mi
  The long adobe on the north side of the Santa Fe plaza, called the oldest public building in continuous use in the country, though its own founding date is in dispute.
• Bandelier National Monument — 19 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.
• Fuller Lodge — 26 mi
  The upright-log dining hall of a boys' ranch school, which fed and housed the Manhattan Project after the Army bought the school in 1942.
• Valles Caldera National Preserve — 29 mi
  A crater thirteen miles across, floored with grass, left by an eruption 1.25 million years ago and owned privately for 140 years under a law that called it vacant land.

More markers nearby

• Bicentennial Celebration / La Bajada — steps away
• Laura Gilpin (1891-1979) — steps away
• Maria Gertrudis Barceló, Doña Tules — steps away
• Three Wise Women — steps away