Most drives around the Enchanted Circle are about the scenery, and the scenery earns it: an 84-mile loop around Wheeler Peak, at 13,161 feet the tallest mountain in New Mexico, linking Taos, Questa, Red River, Eagle Nest and Angel Fire. But on a hillside above Angel Fire, overlooking the Moreno Valley, the Circle holds something quieter than a ski slope or a mining camp. It holds the first major memorial built in the United States to honor Vietnam War veterans.
The memorial began in grief. On May 22, 1968, Marine First Lieutenant Victor David Westphall III was killed in an ambush near Con Thien, in South Vietnam, along with other men in his unit. Back home in New Mexico, his parents, Dr. Victor Westphall and his wife Jeanne, decided within days of burying their son that they would build an enduring symbol in his memory, and in memory of the men who died with him.
The Westphalls had bought land north of Angel Fire in the 1960s, the 800-acre Val Verde Ranch, with resort plans in mind. After David's death they sold most of it and kept only the few acres the memorial now occupies. Using money from the land sale and from David's life insurance policies, they began construction in September 1968, only months after his death, with Dr. Westphall doing much of the work himself. They called what they were building the Vietnam Veterans Peace and Brotherhood Chapel.
It was not a popular undertaking at the time. The war was still being fought, and the country was deeply divided over it; returning soldiers were often shunned rather than thanked. The Westphalls built anyway. The chapel they raised is unlike any church most visitors have seen: a soaring, curved white form, often described as sail-like, perched on the hillside with the Moreno Valley spread out below. It was meant for everyone, a place of peace and brotherhood rather than triumph, and it has traditionally stayed open around the clock.
The chapel was dedicated on May 22, 1971, exactly three years to the day after David Westphall was killed. At the time of its construction the site drew national media attention, and it is widely credited with helping inspire the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was not completed until 1982, more than a decade later. In 1987 the United States Congress recognized the Angel Fire memorial as a memorial of national significance.
The grounds grew over the following decades. A visitor center and Vietnam War museum were added, along with memorial gardens, an amphitheater, a veterans memorial walkway, and a UH-1 Huey helicopter that saw action in Vietnam. Dr. and Jeanne Westphall, who gave the rest of their lives to the place, are buried on its grounds. In 2005 the property became a New Mexico state park, the state's 33rd, and in 2017 management passed to the New Mexico Department of Veterans Services, which operates it today as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire.
Red River sits at the top of the Enchanted Circle, about an hour from Angel Fire by the road over Bobcat Pass, at 9,820 feet, and down through Eagle Nest. It is an easy, sobering addition to a Circle drive. The gold camps and ski hills tell the valley's louder stories. The little white chapel on the hill tells a different one: what two parents did with their grief, years before the rest of the country was ready to do the same.
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