Seton Village

South of Santa Fe, the ruins of a thirty-two-room castle mark where one of early America's most influential naturalists spent his final years. Ernest Thompson Seton co-founded the Boy Scouts of America in nineteen ten, but his deeper passion was Native American philosophy and the outdoor life he called the Woodcraft Way. In nineteen thirty he settled here and built a compound he called Seton Village, intended as a College of Indian Wisdom where camp directors and educators could study.

The property included a library, a small zoo, a print shop, and ultimately Seton Castle, his home until his death in nineteen forty-six. The village was declared a National Historic Landmark in nineteen sixty-five. Today the Academy for the Love of Learning preserves the castle ruins as a contemplative garden, and Seton's art gallery on the grounds opened in twenty eleven.