On your left, look toward the very center of the Plaza for a tall, tan stone obelisk rising from a chunky square base, ringed by a low green fence and shaded by trees.
This is the Soldiers’ Monument… and it’s one of those landmarks that quietly asks you to hold two thoughts at once: remembrance and argument. It went up in the late 1860s, right after the Civil War, when New Mexico Territory wanted to make something permanent out of a messy, painful chapter. The design is a cenotaph, basically a memorial for the dead when the bodies aren’t here. And yes, it’s an obelisk-an Egyptian-style form that Victorian America loved for monuments, because nothing says “eternal memory” like borrowing architecture from 3,000 years ago. Subtle, the nineteenth century was not.
Back in 1867, builders and craftspeople-local stone cutters, local labor, and imported marble trim-put this together as a 33-foot tall marker: stone foundation, brick-and-lime core, decorative marble wreaths, and engraved panels. There was even a time capsule set into the cornerstone that October, filled with the everyday proof of a moment in time: coins, newspapers, legislative journals… the kind of stuff that would make a modern historian do a little happy dance.
The words on the base tell you what New Mexico’s leaders wanted you to remember. Three sides honor Union soldiers who died in Civil War battles fought right here in the territory-Valverde, Peralta, and what the monument calls Cañon del Apache and Pigeon’s Ranch… better known as the Battle of Glorieta Pass. If you lean in close, the inscriptions have a human touch: minor mistakes, including “February” misspelled without its first “r.” The legislature corrected “April” at one point, but “Febuary” stayed. Even stone has spellcheck limits.
The fourth panel is where the temperature changes. It commemorated soldiers killed in what it called battles with “savage Indians”-language that reflected the Army’s campaigns during the long, brutal American Indian Wars. In 1974, someone walked up and chiseled the word “savage” off. No one’s identity was confirmed; witnesses said the guy “looked official,” which is a reminder that confidence is sometimes the best disguise. A lot of Native community members had been calling that wording out for years. One Pueblo elder recalled reading it as a child and realizing, right there in the public square, that society had labelled him second-class.
The city and state tried a band-aid in 1973: an interpretive brass plaque explaining that monument language reflects the prejudices of its era, and that attitudes can change. It helped some, not enough for others. Debate kept simmering-about whether this was sacred history or public insult, about whether changing words “mutilates” the past or finally tells the truth about it.
Then 2020 hit. After protests and damage, the obelisk’s top was removed for safety, and on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, protestors used ropes to topple much of what remained above the base. For years after that, the city boxed the site in, partly to preserve it, partly to keep things from getting worse-and the monument became, in a very Santa Fe way, both present and not-present at the same time. Lawsuits followed, and in January 2025 the covering finally came down, the paint was stripped, and the argument returned to daylight… right where it started.
If you’re ready, La Fonda on the Plaza is next-just head south for about 2 minutes.
