For 400 years, Santa Fe life has been, well, lively — thanks to people like these colorful few who represented their neighbors' many interests and talents.

Miguel de la Vega y Coca

In 1693-94, the waves of colonists arriving in Santa Fe included 16-year-old Miguel de la Vega y Coca and his wife, Manuela. They left a vivid record of colonial village life. They joined settlers in building a village that, following Spanish custom, featured a palace, presidio and church ringing a plaza. Vega y Coca thrived in conditions that were ideal for farming and ranching — a river that ran full for irrigation, lush cottonwoods that shaded the banks, and fields that let sheep and crops flourish. Weavers, tinsmiths, carpenters and blacksmiths filled the homes with blankets, chandeliers, furniture and utensils. In time, the Vega y Cocas grew into an active family of eight daughters, and with each marriage Vega y Coca gained control of property that increased his holdings.

SOURCE: EL RANCHO DE LAS GOLONDRINAS BY CARMELLA PADILLA

Anne Cleland Howe

A descendant of English settlers who moved to post-Spanish colonial Florida, Anne Cleland Howe moved to Santa Fe in about 1850 with her husband, U.S. Cavalry Officer Marshall Howe. She was no quiet, secluded Army wife, and that also was true in her life after Santa Fe. She died in Florida in 1893, but not before she worked there to start a hospital, orphanage and library association. In Santa Fe, Howe involved her young son in village life, making sure he learned Spanish and the skills of a horseman. Her commitment to education did not end with her son. In 1852, she opened the first nonsectarian school available to students regardless of ability to pay, a classroom that would closely fit today's definition of a public school.

Amado Chaves

When he died at 79 in 1930, Amado Chaves' obituary described a "live wire" who never lost interest in the affairs of Santa Fe, New Mexico or the world beyond. Chaves, a lawyer whose activism covered a wide range of community interests, was a legislator and a mayor. A prolific writer, he was an advocate for education, serving as the first superintendent of public instruction for New Mexico. Chaves bridged old and new. He said, "While we look about us and see the remains of a very ancient civilization, the world of mighty ages past, let us hold out our hands to accept of the new, with all the good it brings."

SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE STATE HISTORIAN

Brian Boru Dunne

One of the most eccentric characters in Santa Fe from statehood to the 1950s was Brian Boru Dunne. No one in town could fail to notice him. Hummingbirdlike with a bony frame and sharp nose, Dunne wore a showy wide-brimmed hat with a silver band — famous locally for touching off a contest among people who claimed the hat after his death. He planted himself in the middle of the Santa Fe social scene, wrote a newspaper gossip column and hung out for years in the lobby doing ambush interviews of La Fonda guests. For years, Dunne, who died at 84 in 1962, wrote articles light in substance but heavy on sensation. Likewise, when he spoke, his dramatic delivery puffed up his empty rhetoric and made it seem profound. In 1913, Dunne famously testified before a legislative panel investigating corruption and ended up monopolizing the stage with his nonstop chatter that confounded and amused committee members and brought the meeting to an abrupt end.

SOURCE: MY CITY DIFFERENT BY BETTY BAUER AND THE NEW MEXICAN

Dr. Marion Hotopp

In 1946, Time magazine outed Santa Fe as having the country's worst infant death rate. Three years earlier, Dr. Marion Hotopp had arrived in Santa Fe as a public health officer. Irritated because she thought the story distorted the facts, the outspoken and unyielding Hotopp used her anger to invigorate her work. In more than 20 years in Santa Fe public health, she was instrumental in improving the mortality rate of infants in rural areas by emphasizing the health and nutritional benefits of breast-feeding. She retired in 1967 and died in 1976.

SOURCE: NEW MEXICO PEDIATRIC SOCIETY AND THE NEW MEXICAN

Amalia Sena Sánchez

The first Fiesta queen of 1927 was an obvious choice, even though she felt unsuited for the role. Amalia Sena Sánchez belonged to a distinguished Santa Fe family of soldiers and public servants, but she also was a wife and mother who thought the queen ought to be a single woman. To Sena Sánchez, Fiesta meant beautiful parties, round-the-clock action at the elegant La Fonda and tables filled with food and refreshments, and the Plaza. She and her children went all-out for Fiesta. Her husband, Manuel, used to say, "I think I'm going to go someplace for fiestas because you're never home." Sena Sánchez's family name was forever associated with Sena Plaza, the one-time home on East Palace Avenue featuring 30-some rooms, a ballroom and a central courtyard. She died at 109 in 2002.

SOURCE: TURN LEFT AT THE SLEEPING DOG BY PEN LA FARGE

Monte Chavez

In their heyday from the 1880s to 1950, Harvey hotels like La Fonda offered class and comfort to rail passengers. Harvey girls — wholesome, attractive young women between 18 and 30 who served restaurant guests — became known as the girls who civilized the West. Monte Chavez, who was born in 1911 and worked at La Fonda from 1929 to 1989, witnessed the Harvey-inspired boom in travel and tourism that hit Santa Fe. "We would all go out to dances and parties together," he said of the hotel staff, including the Harvey girls who were supposed to date only fellow employees. Some of the transplanted girls married lawyers, politicians and ranchers and became permanent Santa Fe residents. To Chavez, who died in 2004, La Fonda was a rowdy and informal place, memorable in no small part as the one Harvey hotel where the dignified "coat rule" couldn't survive.

SOURCE: THE HARVEY GIRLS BY LESLEY POLING-KEMPES

Pablita Velarde

From 1937 to 1943, Pablita Velarde documented traditional Pueblo life in 70 paintings done as a public-art project for Bandelier National Monument. Born in 1918 at Santa Clara Pueblo, Velarde was sent at 5 years old to live and study at an Indian boarding school. The experience deepened her appreciation for her native roots and led her to use art to depict her threatened culture. Old Father Story Teller, a book first published in 1960, created a lasting collection of her most prized paintings and her forefathers' most enduring stories. She died in 2006.