New Mexico

Header image from National Park Service.gov, Santa Fe National Historic Trail, New Mexico

New Mexico was the 47th state admitted to the Union. It happened on Jan 6, 1912.

Bird: Roadrunner – Roadrunners leave behind very distinct “X” track marks appearing as if they are traveling in both directions. The can run up to 20 miles per hour. Because of its quickness, the roadrunner is one of the few animals that preys upon rattlesnakes; it is also the only real predator of tarantula hawk wasps. Breeding pairs are monogamous and mate for life. Both sexes incubate the nest (with males incubating the nest at night) and feed the hatchlings.

Flower: Yucca Flower – The leaves of the Yucca, New Mexico’s state flower, can be used to make rope, baskets and sandals. Seeing these lovely flowers in abundance on the plains and deserts of New Mexico, early settlers called them “our Lord’s candles.” The roots of yucca glauca (or soapweed yucca) were also found to be an excellent substitute for soap and shampoo, as was yucca elata (commonly called “soaptree yucca”).

Yuccas have a unique, specialized pollination system. They are pollinated by the yucca moth, which carefully and deliberately transfers the pollen from the stamens of one plant to the stigma of another, and at the same time lays an egg in the flower. The moth larvae then consumes a small amount of the developing seeds.

Many yuccas have edible parts, including fruits, seeds, flowers, stems, and sometimes the roots. Dried yucca wood has the lowest ignition temperature of any wood, which makes it desirable for starting fires.

Tree: Pinon – The pinyon or piñon pine group grows in the southwestern United States, especially in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. The trees yield edible nuts, (pine nuts) which are a staple of the Native Americans, and still widely eaten as a snack and as an ingredient in New Mexican cuisine. It takes three years for the piñon to form cones with nuts inside…but the cycle is moisture dependent.

State Quarter

From theus50.com
New Mexico, nicknamed the “Land of Enchantment,” was admitted into the Union on January 6, 1912, becoming our Nation’s 47th state. The reverse of New Mexico’s quarter features a Zia sun symbol over a topographical outline of the State with the inscription “Land of Enchantment.” The coin also bears the inscriptions “New Mexico” and “1912.”

The great influence of Native American cultures can be found throughout New Mexico. The Zia Pueblo believe the sun symbol represents the giver of all good, who gave gifts in groups of four. From the circle representing life and love without beginning or end, the four groups of four rays that emanate represent the four directions, the four seasons, the four phases of a day (sunrise, noon, evening, and night), and the four divisions of life (childhood, youth, middle years, and old age).

Capital: Santa Fe

Nickname: Land of Enchantment

Motto: It grows as it goes

In 1950 the little cub that was to become the National Fire Safety symbol Smokey the Bear was found trapped in a tree when his home in Lincoln National Forest was destroyed by fire. In 1963, in Smokey’s honor, the New Mexican legislature chose the black bear to be the official state animal.

New Mexico Facts and Trivia

New Mexico and the country it used to be part of, Mexico, both take their name from Nahuatl Mexihco. The meaning of the word is unclear, but there are several hypotheses. It might reference Mextli or M?xihtli, an alternate name for Huitzilopochtli, the god of war and patron of the Aztecs, and mean “place where M?xihtli lives”. It’s also been suggested that the word is a combination of m?tztli (“moon”), xictli (“center”) and the suffix -co (“place”) and means “place at the center of the moon” (in reference to Lake Texcoco).

New Mexico was named by 16th century Spanish explorers who hoped to find gold and wealth equal to Mexico’s Aztec treasures.

Santa Fe is the highest capital city in the United States at 7,000 feet above sea level. The Palace of Governors in Santa Fe, built in 1610, is one of the oldest public buildings in America. Santa Fe was founded 10 years prior to the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth.

New Mexico’s capital city, Santa Fe, is the ending point of the 800 mile Santa Fe Trail.

Each October Albuquerque hosts the world’s largest international hot air balloon fiesta. New Mexico’s largest city, Albuquerque, was founded in 1706 as a Spanish farming community. It was named after a province in Spain.

The Original American Territory of New Mexico that congress created in 1850 included all of New Mexico and Arizona plus parts of Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. The boundaries of present day New Mexico were drawn by congress in 1863 but New Mexico didn’t become a state until 1912.

The Gadsden Purchase took effect June 8, 1854. The purchase included lands south of the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande which the U.S. needed to build a transcontinental railroad along a deep southern route, which the Southern Pacific Railroad later completed in 1881–1883. The purchase also aimed to resolve border issues. The land today includes all of southern Arizona and much of southern New Mexico.

Roswell the states 4th largest city was founded in 1869 when a professional gambler established a lone store on the cattle trail.

Las Vegas, New Mexico was home to Doc Holliday, a dentist. The Atlanta native came west in 1879 on doctor’s recommendation. The soon-to-be gunslinger was dying of tuberculosis and was told that the high, dry air of New Mexico would help his condition. The former dentist morphed into a saloon owner and a hard-drinking, smartly dressed womanizer who quickly found himself at odds with a former army scout by the name of Michael Gordon. After an altercation over a dancer at the saloon, Gordon stepped outside, pulled his gun, and proceeded to shoot up Holliday’s saloon. Doc dropped him with a single bullet. The next year, Holliday sold the saloon and moved to Arizona with his friend Wyatt Earp.

The world’s first Atomic Bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945 on the White Sands Testing Range near Alamogordo. North of the impact point a small placard marks the area known as Trinity Site. The bomb was designed and manufactured in Los Alamos.

The City of Truth or Consequences was once called Hot Springs. In 1950 the town changed its name to the title of a popular radio quiz program.

White Sands National Monument is a desert, not of sand, but of gleaming white gypsum crystals. To test the latest rockets White Sands Missile Range was created on the same land where the first atom bomb had been exploded.

Lakes and Rivers make up only .002% of the state’s total surface area. The lowest water-to-land ratio of all 50 states.

New Mexico has far more sheep and cattle than people. There are only about 12 people per square mile. New Mexico has the largest Hispanic population of all the states. About 48% of the state’s population are Hispanics.

New Mexico’s State Constitution officially states that New Mexico is a bilingual State, and 1 out of 3 families in New Mexico speak Spanish at home.

Hatch is known as the “Green Chile capital of the world“.

Grants was at one time known as the “Carrot capital of the country” until the process of cellophane wrapping began and California took over title. More recently Grants has been known as the “Uranium capital of the world” and produced the bulk of the nation’s uranium supply during the post-World War II and Cold War era.

Cimarron was once known as the “Cowboy capital of the world”. Some of the old west’s most famous names, such as Kit Carson and “Buffalo Bill” Cody lived there. A quote from the Las Vegas Gazette illustrates how lawless Cimarron was. “Everything is quiet in Cimarron. Nobody has been killed in 3 days.”

Tens of thousands of bats live in the Carlsbad Caverns. The largest chamber of Carlsbad Caverns is more than 10 football fields long and about 22 stories high.

The town of Gallup calls itself the “Indian Capital of the World” and serves as a trading center for more than 20 different Indian groups. Every August it is the site of the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial

At Lake Valley, miners discovered silver in veins so pure that the metal could be sawn off in blocks, instead of having to be dug out by traditional methods.

Native Americans:

Native Americans have been living in New Mexico for some twenty thousand years. The Pueblo, Apache, Comanche, Navajo, and Ute peoples were in the New Mexico region when Spanish settlers arrived in the 1600s.

More than 25,000 Anasazi sites have been identified in New Mexico by archeologists. The Anasazi, an amazing civilization who were the ancestors of the Pueblo, where around for 1300 years. Their great classical period lasted from 1100-1300 AD.

The word “Pueblo” is used to describe a group of people, a town, or an architectural style. There are 19 Pueblo groups that speak 4 distinct languages. The Pueblo people of the southwest have lived in the same location longer than any other culture in the Nation.

The Navajo, the Nation’s largest Native American Group, have a reservation that covers 14 million Acres.

To a certain degree New Mexico’s Indian Reservations function as states within a state where tribal law may supersede state law.

Strange Laws of New Mexico:

Men can be naked in public as long as their genitals are covered.
Women can go topless in public as long as their nipples are covered.
In Carlsbad it is permitted for people to have sex in a parked vehicle provided the windows are covered.
It is against the law for women to pump their own gas or change a flat tire.
Hunting is prohibited in Mountain View Cemetery.
It is legal to gamble on bicycle races but not ostrich or camel races.
It is illegal for cab drivers to reach out and pull potential customers into their cabs.
Dancing while wearing your sombrero is illegal in New Mexico.

People: