4-27-2023 9:06am

Legends & Ghost of New Mexico Loretto Stairs KALHRadio.org Podcast

Chris Edwards Editor

Anthony Lucero of AlamogordoTownNews.com’s radio edition on Krazy KALHRadio.org hosts a series on Ghosts and Legends of New Mexico. This week’s edition he interviewed staff from the Loretto Chapel on the mystery of its legendary stairs. The interview and podcast can be heard at:

Click Link to Legends On KALHRadio.org Loretto Stairs

Loretto Chapel is best known for its miraculous spiral staircase, which rises 20 feet (6.1 m) to the choir loft while making two full turns, all without the support of a newel or central pole. The staircase is built mostly out of wood and is held together by wooden pegs, with no glue, nails or other hardware used. The inner stringer consists of seven wooden segments joined together with pegs, while the longer outer stringer has nine segments. The exact wood used to build the staircase has been confirmed to be a type of spruce which is not native to New Mexico and scientifically not identified anywhere else in the world.

The handrails were added later in 1887, and an iron bracket was later attached to a column to add additional support. The staircase is supported by an inner wood stringer.

Apart from any claims of its miraculous nature, the staircase has been described as a remarkable feat of woodworking.

The staircase of Loretto church is about 6 m high, has only 33 steps but twists to 2 complete 360-degree turns. Stairs are hammered and stand there without any nails or glue, and without the need for a central axis or horizontal beam as a support. The carpenter only used wooden pegs to secure the steps together. So far, no one has been able to explain why this structure can stand for hundreds of years without any support.

It can be said that the existence of the stairs goes against all the rules of physics, and almost anyone who sees it will think that the stairs will quickly collapse. When it was first built, the original stairs did not have handrails, and some of the nuns were so scared at first that they did not dare to walk upright, but crawled on both legs and arms. Ten years later, the nuns added a handrail, and the outer helix was supported by a nearby pillar.

Even the staircase material is an unsolved mystery. Although the steps are believed to be made of spruce, no one has been able to determine exactly which species of spruce the tree belongs to, or how the wood appeared inside the church.

Years later, the church’s curator took a piece of wood from the stairs and sent it off for analysis to find out what kind of wood it was. Results showed it to be spruce, but an unspecified subspecies. This particular wood is very sturdy with dense and square particles – a very slow growing tree in very cold places like Alaska.

However, such wood is not found in the area and the surrounding area. The closest place one can find this wood is in Alaska, nearly 6000 km from the church site, but back then the traffic was not as developed as it is now and certainly the wood could not be transported over such long distances.

The nuns of Loretto’s church attributed the stairs to a miracle, a sacred concept that seemed to transcend the laws of nature, and they believed that the man who came to create the stairs was a man sent from heaven. Although that miracle seems to be a myth, the spiral staircase, with its unsolved mysteries, has persisted for more than 150 years, despite the calamity of speculation about its origin and magic.

Despite conflicting information, the staircase has still become a “treasure” in the world, receiving the attention and love of millions of people and becoming the subject of countless novels. There was even a 1998 movie The Staircase. Thus another of New Mexico’s legends and mysteries.

To hear more Click Link to Legends On KALHRadio.org Loretto Stairs