having a surface area of 121,598 square miles. Of the
total surface area, only about 234 square miles are
open water (lakes, reservoirs, rivers, and streams).
The highest point in New Mexico is Wheeler Peak in
Taos County. It is 13,161 feet (4014 meters) above
sea level. The lowest point is Red Bluff Reservoir
on the New Mexico-Texas border in Eddy County.
It is 2,817 feet (859 meters) above sea level.
New Mexico joined the Union on January 6, 1912 as
the 47th State. The Capital is in Santa Fe.
The flag consists of the Zia Sun Symbol on a field
of yellow.
New Mexico is a popular location for Television,
Film and Music Video producers because of the
unique landscape and state-of-the-art production
facilities. The history of moviemaking in New Mexico
is older than the state itself. Thomas Alva Edison
toured the Land of Enchantment, camera in tow in
1898, 14 years before statehood.
CAPITAL: Santa Fe
Even though Santa Fe is the capital of
New Mexico the third largest city in the
state with a population of 60,000 and
has been around longer than all but one
other city in America it is still relatively
unknown to many U.S. travelers.
The city's history spans almost 400 years
yet much of Santa Fe is unexpected including
its Rocky Mountain climate and geography and
the cultural diversity created by a mix of
Native American, Hispanic and European traditions.
THE STATE FLOWER
Yucca (Yucca glauca)
Many states had adopted state flowers before
New Mexico even became a state in 1912. Another
fifteen years passed before New Mexico elected
a state flower. School children spent months
considering the state’s flowers. In the end, they
favored the yucca.
Yucca leaves grow to lengths up to about two
feet. They look like giant pincushions sitting
on the ground. From the center of the tuft of
leaves grows a tall stalk. Ten to fifteen greenish
-white flowers grow on this stalk.
ALBUQUERQUE
Albuquerque is a magnificently unique combination of
the very old and the highly contemporary, the natural
world and the manmade environment, the frontier town
and the cosmopolitan city. It is a harmonious but
spectacular blend of extremely diverse cultures, cuisines,
people, styles, stories, pursuits, and panoramas.
How Albuquerque Got Its Name
In 1706, the ambitious provisional governor of the
territory, Don Francisco Cuervo y Valdez, petitioned
the Spanish government for permission to establish a
bosque as a formal villa. The man responsible for
preliminary approval of his application was Viceroy
Francisco Fernandez de la Cueva, the Duke of Alburquerque.
In his application, Cuervo declared that he wanted to
establish the villa in the name of the Duke, and call it
Alburquerque.
Driving west at night, visitors come down from a range
of mountains and there below are the beautiful city
lights....brilliant in the desert land...below is a song
written for them during a recent war...(I do not know the
name of the composer or the singer) It is written from
the viewpoint of a dying soldier.
THE LIGHTS OF ALBUQUERQUE
The lights of Albuquergue
Jewels in the desert night
They watch over all I love
So while they burn, my world's all right
The Chaplain's prayer comes back
To soothe the pain I feel
And through my tortured mind
Peace begins to steal
Is the drugs they poured in me
Or can dying be this real
If I die, don't cry
Just light for me
The lights of Albuquerque
ROSWELL & "THE INCIDENT"
Roswell is a small town in Chaves County, located in
the southeast quadrant of New Mexico. It's a rather
remote spot, and its chief claim to fame prior to 1945
was as the site chosen by Dr. Robert H. Goddard to test
his liquid-fuel rocket designs. Goddard was run out of
Massachusetts after one of his machines crashed in a
field, starting a small fire. In 1930 Goddard moved to
Mescalero Ranch, near Roswell. Fifteen years later the
U.S. Army brought captured German V-2 rockets to White
Sands Missile Range, 100 miles west of Roswell.
On June 24, 1947, a fire extinguisher salesman and private
pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted a formation of nine
objects traveling at apparent supersonic speed while flying
near Mt. Ranier, Washington. Arnold described the objects'
skipping motion as being like saucers skipping across the
surface of water. News accounts of subsequent sightings of
similar objects in the Northwest led to a new term, "flying
saucers," being applied to any unknown aerial objects
regardless of shape.
On July 2, 1947, an unidentified device crashed near
Corona, N.M., during a violent thunderstorm. The next
day rancher William M. "Mac" Brazel found a large deposit
of unknown wreckage in one of his pastures. The junk did
not resemble the remains of a conventional airplane or
rocket, since it consisted of small metallic fragments,
odd plastic beams, snarls of string, foil, and some sort
of fabric. Two days later Brazel visited his uncle Hollis
Wilson in Corona and heard about flying saucers for the
first time from him. Brazel decided to report what he'd
found on his property to Chaves County sheriff George A.
Wilcox. Wilcox called Roswell Army Air Field because he
could not identify the debris Brazel brought in to validate
his report.
The air base sent the 509th Bomb Group's intelligence
officer, Major Jesse Marcel, to survey the crash site.
Colonel Blanchard, base commander at Roswell, okayed a
press release saying the military had recovered a "flying
disk." The sensation this news caused led to some back-
tracking by the authorities. The thing that crashed on
Mac Brazel's land was dismissed as a weather balloon.
The Roswell Incident was closed, as far as the military
was concerned.
unlikely place for the Anasazi culture to take
root and flourish. This is desert country, with
long winters, short growing seasons, and marginal
rainfall. Yet a thousand years ago, this valley was
a center of Anasazi life. This people farmed the
lowlands and built great masonry towns that connected
with other towns over a far reaching network of roads.
During earlier times, Chaco was the center of a
far-flung trading network. Goods were exchanged
internally within the Chacoan system and externally
with groups as far south as Mexico.
What Chaco lacked in pottery it more than made up
for in turquoise ornaments. Raw turquoise was imported
from distant mines and transformed with exquisite
craftsmanship into necklaces, bracelets, and pendants.
Great quantities of such jewelry have been found here,
more than at any other southwestern site.
CARLSBAD CAVERNS
This major National Park represents New Mexico's largest
single visitor attraction. In addition to the extensive
and spectacular fossil reef cave system, the park offers
special programs including bat flight talks each evening
in summer, interpretive programs, a 9-mile scenic loop
drive, a self-guided nature trail, and museum exhibits.
SMOKEY THE BEAR
The Visitor Center at Smokey Bear Historical Park
(the burial site of Smokey Bear) includes photographs,
posters, and other memorabilia pertaining to the Smokey
Bear fire prevention program. Park grounds are planted
to represent vegetative life zones that are found in
New Mexico.
Located at 118 Smokey Bear Blvd. Capitan, NM
Features Educational programs for school groups
about wildland fire and ecology. Has an Easter Egg
Hunt, a Halloween Open House and Christmas at the
Park each year.
THE KIT CARSON HOME
The Kit Carson Home and Museum is a complex of buildings
which includes a portion of the original four room home
of Kit Carson and his wife Josefa, an 1855, three-room
structure known as the Romero House,plus 2 1952 structures
that house the museum's retail shop and additional exhibition
space. Carson arrived in Taos in 1826, at the age of fifteen,
Taos was to be his base of operation and home until just
before he died in 1868. Carson became a trapper and mountain
man and traveled extensively through out the West.
THE SPACE CENTER
Alamagordo, New Mexico
The Space Center features manned and unmanned spacecraft,
including support equipment and instruments; personal
equipment, including spacesuits and space food; models
of actual hardware, from small replicas to full-sized
copies; rockets and missiles, including engines, hardware,
components, motors, and payloads; and ground-support
equipment, including launchers, tracking instruments,
and other ground-based equipment.
WHITE SANDS
White Sands National Monument is a spectacular expanse
of white sands and dunes, located near the site of the
explosion of the first atomic bomb. The Visitor Center
is an excellent example of Spanish Pueblo Revival archi-
tecture constructed during the Great Depression by
various government agencies, including the Works
Progress Administration (WPA).
It is really a ground-dwelling cuckoo, though it
neither looks nor behaves like a cuckoo. This long-
legged, long-tailed bird is very agile and fast on
its feet; one was clocked at fifteen miles an hour.
It is famous for both out-witting that wily coyote
and feeding on snakes-poisionous or otherwise-and
lizards. It also eats spiders, grasshoppers, crickets,
and bird's eggs. It is not a quiet bird..it crows and
chuckles..and mostly it coos like a dove...a most unusual
cuckoo altogether.
This is other wildlife that is found in New Mexico,
although not exclusive to it:
Black-tailed Jackrabbit
Coyote
Mule Deer
Desert Tortoise
Western Diamondback Rattlesnake
Cactus Wren
Sage and other thrashers
Leopard, collared and other lizards
BOOKS THAT FEATURE NEW MEXICO
The Wolf Path by Judith Van Gieson
Included here because it is also about the lobo wolf!
The book tells the sad history of the lobo...a widespread
and efficient predator in the Southwest for many many years
then wiped out in only decades by the Federal Government.
Once New Mexico became a ranching state, the lobos were shot,
dynamited or poisoned into oblivion. The last known New
Mexican was trapped and killed in 1965. Then the 1973
Endangered Species Act was passed and it required the
government to undo the wrong it had done.
In this excellent mystery, Neil Hamel leaves her small
Albuquerque law practice for the Soledad border country
to help a friend who has come to campaign for the reintro-
duction of wolves.
1. Name the highest peak in New Mexico?
2. What's the city famous for the "UFO" sighting? Have you ever
been there?
3. What is the state bird of New Mexico?
