What Wood Is the Loretto Staircase Made Of? (Spruce, “Loretto Spruce,” and the Contested Origin)
What wood is the Loretto Chapel staircase made of? You’ll find half a dozen confident, contradictory answers online — spruce, ash, fir, walnut, even “an extinct species.”
Here is the short answer, then the full truth-table that sorts out which claim is right, which is a misreading, and which is an outright error.
The short answer: spruce (genus Picea)
Microscopic analysis identifies the wood to family Pinaceae, genus Picea — the spruces.
It is a non-porous softwood with no vessels, consistent with spruce. That much is settled. The interesting argument is at the next level down: which spruce.
The “Loretto Spruce” study
Forrest N. Easley, a retired U.S. Forest Service forester and wood technologist, studied a sample under magnification (a hand lens and a compound microscope at 50×–450×) over roughly 15 months in the late 1990s.
He concluded that the sample matched no known spruce — citing microscopic features atypical of ordinary Picea, such as the tangential split-surface pattern and the resin-canal structure — and proposed naming it “Loretto Spruce,” with the suggested scientific name Picea josefii.
Crucially, his finding was a claim about a new species within the spruce genus, not a claim that the wood is something other than spruce.
What the sources actually say
This is where the page earns its keep. Below, every claim about the wood, who makes it, what it really means, and its status.
| Claim | Source | What it actually means | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| It’s spruce (Picea) | Wikipedia; Easley’s analysis | The genus-level identification from microscopic structure. The baseline fact everyone’s other claims build on. | Correct (genus level) |
| It’s an “apparently extinct” / unique species | Loretto Chapel marketing; Easley | Easley’s species-level proposal (“Loretto Spruce,” Picea josefii) — it matches no catalogued spruce. A claim about the species, still within Picea. | Contested (species-level) |
| It’s ash | Some travel blogs (e.g. recycled summaries) | Ash is a hardwood (genus Fraxinus) — structurally inconsistent with the non-porous softwood that was analyzed. Appears to be an error propagated by copying. | Likely error |
| It’s fir or walnut | Scattered Q&A / forum answers | Guesses that conflate “softwood that looks like fir” or confuse it with darker trim wood. Not supported by the microscopic analysis. | Unsupported |
The adjudication: the technical answer is spruce-genus. “Extinct / unique” is Easley’s species-level claim — legitimate but contested. “Ash” is an error: ash is a porous hardwood, and the analyzed sample is a non-porous softwood. That contradiction alone settles it.
Where did the wood come from?
The wood is not native to the Santa Fe area, which is part of what makes it intriguing. The provenance is genuinely unsettled, so here are the live theories rather than a false pick:
Contested — provenance theories:
- Alaska / far north — a climate match for a spruce with unusual growth characteristics.
- France — per Mary Jean Straw Cook’s theory that the builder, Frenchy Rochas, may have shipped it (see who built it).
- Simply unrecorded — no shipping or purchase record pins down the origin.
None of these is proven. The honest status is: non-local spruce, origin unknown.
The skeptic’s rebuttal vs the believer’s reply
The wood is also where the miracle debate gets technical. Snopes cautioned that the sample was too small to pin down a precise origin or to firmly establish a brand-new species.
The National Catholic Register (John Clark) countered that Easley held small samples to be sufficient under magnification — and noted the striking fact that Easley himself concluded the staircase was miraculous. That last point is the spine of the broader debate, which we lay out fully on the debunked-or-miracle page.
Keep exploring
- ‘Loretto Spruce’ (Picea josefii): the proposed species
- Back to the Loretto Chapel staircase overview
- How the staircase works (how the wood is worked)
- Who built it? Did Rochas ship the wood?
- Debunked or miracle? The sample-size fight
Researched & fact-checked by the Loretto Volunteers Editorial Team
Loretto Volunteers is an independent research project documenting the history, architecture, and enduring mystery of the Loretto Chapel staircase. We work from primary and archival sources and show our evidence. Last reviewed: June 2026.