Seton Village

Seton built more here than a house. The village was headquarters of his Woodcraft League and home to a College of Indian Wisdom, which trained youth leaders in the Native lore he taught, a borrowing many now call appropriation; the village is a National Historic Landmark. The castle burned on November 15, 2005, in under two hours, while being renovated as headquarters for the Academy for the Love of Learning. Its collections survived because they were stored elsewhere for the work, and the walls now stand as a garden ruin. An earlier state panel here went missing.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Seton Village Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) was a naturalist, artist, and writer, who was born in England and grew up in Canada. He studied art in Ontario, London, and Paris. In 1882, he moved to Manitoba, Canada, and began his writing career, producing important books and drawings of the natural world. As a naturalist, Seton founded the Woodcraft movement for educating youth about nature and stories of Indigenous people. He later served as the Chief Scout of the Boys Scouts of America from 1910 to 1915. See other side Official Scenic Historic Marker Continued Seton moved to Santa Fe in 1930 and was part of Santa Fe's literary and artistic community. He designed and built his "castle," a 32-room, 6,900-square-foot stone house and museum for his extensive collections, drawings, and writings. During the 1930s, he created Seton Village, which encompassed 2,500 acres with numerous adobe houses, a print shop, a craft shop, and a barn, all situated around a plaza. Seton died in 1946. His heirs sold the property to a nonprofit educational organization in 2003. In 2005, during renovations, Seton's Castle was destroyed by fire, leaving only the original walls.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palace of the Governors — 5.8 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.
• Pecos National Historical Park — 13 mi
  The red walls of a 1717 mission church inside the foundations of a far larger one, beside the kiva Pecos people dug in front of the old church during the revolt of 1680.
• Bandelier National Monument — 23 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 — 29 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.

More markers nearby

• Route 66 — 3.6 mi
• Santa Fe — 5.4 mi
• Inez Bushner Gill (1918-1982) and Maralyn Budke (1936-2010) — 5.6 mi
• Mother Magdalen and the Sisters of Loretto (1852-1968) — 5.6 mi