The Fantasy - La Posada

In January 1929, Santa Fe railroad announced that Mary Jane Colter would design and build a new Winslow Harvey House. Much as she had done at Hopi House, Colter conjured up a story to help her imagine the structure. Her tale is that of a Spanish Don.

This is "The Fantasy" written by Allan Affeldt, La Posada's current owner/operator, and inspired by Mary Jane Colter.

Don Alphonso de los Pajaros walked one last time among the peacocks. With the market crash of 1929 he was wiped out. La Posada, family home for 120 years, had been sold to the Santa Fe. The childless Don Alphonso whispered goodbye to the birds and old trees, to the art and the furniture, the to memories collected by four generations of his fabled forebears watching quietly from every corner of the hacienda. “Keep watch for me.”

The estancia had been wrested from the wilderness before there were cattle, before the steam trains shattered the stillness of the high desert, but the stubborn will of Don Pajaro’s great, great grandparents. The first Dona and Dona, Spanish Basques by way of Mexico, arrived in the early 1800’s with a collection of books and exotic birds in elaborate wrought iron follies and set about building La Posada as an oasis to this strange land of dancing katsina spirits and Navajo on Spanish horses courtesy of Don’s Tovar and Onate generations before.

The oldest past of the the home – the central two floors – rose like a dream, adrift in a sea of wild sage. The second Don Pajaro grew the herd to 20,000 head watering fat and greedily from the headwaters of the Little Colorado all the way to Grand Falls, and added the east wing (now the dining room and railway offices) as the ranch quarters. Here the empire prospered: furniture was made, ranchhands bunked down and huge ranch kitchens made everything from tallow candles to hides for the market at Santa Fe and for trade to the Indians.

Photo credit Kansas State Historical Society Library and Archives Division

To relieve the isolation the family traveled and collected. The third Don fell from his horse at the age of 43 leaving the Dona to reign, queen of the painted desert, for thirty years. It was she, finally too old to travel, who sold land to the Atlantic and Pacific on condition that their shiny trains pass the front door of La Posada and bring the world to her, a parade of steel and steam, passengers marveling at the grand hacienda on their way to fortune in California.


The fourth Don Pajaro was a man of great culture born to fabulous wealth and a million acre ranch. He added the west wing – 33 guest rooms for his friends – and built gardens the envy of the Arizona Territory. By 1920 the hacienda looked as it does today – 72,000 square feet of wonders from around the world. By 1930 it was all over; everything was sold – and it was not enough.

The Harveys promised to maintain La Posada like a proud estate. The guest rooms would be rented, Travelers would dine beneath the Pajaro’s magnificent chandeliers, seated beside the Pajaro’s patron Saints – planting, cooking and building in their fragile and forgotten innocence.

The last Don bade quiet goodbye to is staff and beloved La Posada in the early dawn, walked out the door with nothing but the ebany cane of the first Don and two parrots perched happily on his shoulders, and was never seen again.

Every spring a flock of turkey vultures arrives, Spanish grandees in black satin, and watchfully circles until winter. Guests still claim to see the Don at twilight, quietly strolling the gardens in the magnificent Arizona sunset.