Tesuque Valley Home

Santa Fe Country Estate

This house and guesthouse hit all the architectural high points Santa Fe is known for. Although more pastoral river valley retreat than downtown desert adobe, this earth-plastered estate contains colorful Mexican tiling, Pueblo- and Southwestern styled art and accents, a curvy kiva fireplace, classic brick floors, sturdy vigas, and a hot tub and fire pit under quaking aspens.

This vacation home rental in New Mexico is a spacious, open-plan home and guesthouse in the surprisingly green, horse-property-dotted valley of Tesuque. It's about 10 minutes’ drive from downtown Santa Fe’s photogenic plaza and brims with classic Southwestern décor references. Rustic wood, chile ristras, and wrought iron set the tone outdoors, accenting the rose-colored adobe walls. Interior styling tends more toward the eclectic modern Santa Fe style, featuring a colorful mix of Pueblo pottery, Spanish colonial art, and Navajo-inspired textiles paired with textural kilims and Oriental rugs, rustic chic furniture, and local photography and art. Guests get Ski Santa Fe passes or complimentary massages, and homebound luxuries include the chef’s kitchen, media room, and outdoor hot tub, shower, and fire pit.

AROUND

Set about 10 minutes’ drive from downtown Santa Fe, this vacation home rental in New Mexico is located in the village of Tesuque, a community on the outskirts of Tesuque Pueblo, one of the state's smallest tribal communities. The name “Tesuque” is a Spanish variation of the Tewa word for the settlement, meaning literally “village of the narrow place of the cottonwood trees.” Tall elms, aspens and cottonwoods indeed set this area of Santa Fe apart from the city center’s dustier, high-desert streets where earthen adobe structures create a subtle color wheel ranging from sand to rose to mocha. The Tesuque Pueblo extends northward near the home, one of New Mexico’s 19 Pueblos, each a sovereign nation. The small, mostly residential community of Tesuque, separate from the pueblo of the same name, is home to a few small restaurants, one a well-known roadhouse and market where you might bump into film stars, producers, authors and artists among the unassuming crowd. Tesuque is also home to multiple trail heads, a handful of outdoor sculpture galleries, stunning mountain estates, hippie retreat centers and private, by-appointment artists’ studios. The Santa Fe Opera complex rises dramatically from a hillside and welcomes well-heeled international arts patrons to town each summer season. 

Outdoorsy types flock to Santa Fe for its piñon-covered peaks and rose-toned desert sands that offer a wide range of terrain types for exploring. Hiking, mountain biking, and rock climbing are favorite warm weather pursuits, and wintertime transforms the high-desert city (an often-unanticipated, high-altitude rarity in the US, at over 7,000 feet) into a snowy, Rocky Mountain playground. Ski Santa Fe is New Mexico’s highest ski mountain, some 10,000 feet at its base and 12,000 at its summit, and nearby Taos Ski Valley is known as a “four letter word for steep.” A creative arts hotbed, the city is famed as the former home of artist Georgia O’Keefe, and along with her namesake museum, the city offers hundreds of galleries in its downtown maze of streets and along the original artist avenue, Canyon Road. 

LOCATION

Santa Fe, New Mexico, US. Nearest airport: Santa Fe (approximately 15 miles); Albuquerque (approximately 1 hour 15 minutes)

BEST TIME TO VISIT: Year round