It was 1873 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A group of nuns, the Sisters of Loretto, were in need of a chapel for their girls’ school. This chapel, which took five years to build, was a small but lovely building, quite suitable for their needs - except for one thing…There was no staircase to climb to the choir loft.

Sadly, the original architect had met with a sudden death. The nuns reached out to various builders. These craftsman came to look at their situation but, unfortunately, the chapel was so small that a staircase to the above loft would not work. They explained that, while technically they could fit a staircase in the little church, the size and angle was such that the staircase would encroach too much into the room. A staircase could easily take up a quarter of the small chapel.

With no solution in sight, the good sisters had recourse to prayer. They made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron of carpenters.

On the last day of this novena, a man came to their door with a box of simple tools. He was a carpenter who had heard of their dilemma and wanted to help. He was eagerly invited inside, and looked over their little chapel. Unlike the other professionals, he was certain he could construct a staircase that wouldn’t take up too much space.

Thus, when the nuns and their students were not using the chapel for prayer, it was left empty for the carpenter to do his work alone. From time to time he requested tubs of hot water, which were used to soak the wood.

When the staircase was eventually complete, the grateful sisters were ready to give the carpenter his well-earned pay. But he was nowhere to be found. He had simply left without a word, not waiting for thanks or payment.

When the nuns went to ask around town, they realized that in all the time he spent with them, they’d never learned the man’s name. No one of his description had been seen by anyone they asked. They even had an ad printed in the local newspaper. And when the nuns contacted the local lumber stores, there were no records of wood purchased for constructing their stairs.

Despite all their best efforts, the carpenter was never found.

The staircase itself turned out to be a more incredible answer to prayer than the sisters first realized.

It was a spiral staircase that fit well in a corner of the chapel. The nuns were quick to notice the striking feature that, despite the fact that this approximately 20-foot tall staircase makes two full circular turns, there is no center beam for support. There are also no nails to keep the stairs together, only well-placed wooden pegs. And yet the staircase has remained standing strong after close to a century of daily use by the nuns and students. (When the school closed in 1968, it was decided the chapel become a privately owned museum, preserving the incredible staircase to this day.)

Over the years, professional carpenters have examined this staircase with deep admiration. All admit that the mysterious carpenter must have been a master in woodworking to build such a structure.

An article in the Washington Post, written by Tim Carter, reads as follows:

"It's a magnificent work of art that humbles me as a master carpenter. To create a staircase like this using modern tools would be a feat. It's mind-boggling to think about constructing such a marvel with crude hand tools, no electricity and minimal resources."

Ben Radford, author of the 2014 book "Mysterious New Mexico", included in this book an interview with another professional:

"The execution [of the staircase] is just incredible. The theory of how to do it, to bend it around in a two-turn spiral, that's some difficult arithmetic there."

Not only was the construction itself a marvel - but even the wood used has baffled the experts who studied it. They all agree it is some type of spruce wood, but certainly not native to New Mexico.

In 1996, an intensive study, lasting over 15 months, was carried out by Forrest N. Easley. This man had previously worked in the U.S. Navy Research and Development Laboratory. He was also a retired forest and wood technologist, having worked for the U.S. Forest Service. With all his considerable expertise, Easley came to the conclusion that there was no exact match for the spruce anywhere on the planet. He even suggested giving this unique wood the name of "Loretto Spruce".

This staircase, with all its incredible aspects, is known as "The Miraculous Stair" or "St. Joseph’s Staircase." A touching detail that highlights the saint’s intercession is the number of steps. There are exactly 33 stairs - the same number of years that Christ lived on Earth.

To this day, "The Miraculous Stair " is admired by about 250,000 visitors every year.