Also see Specific Destinations, Travel and Location Humor.

Page Toppers

• Albuquerque Rainbow
• Land of Enchantment
• New Mexico Morning
• New Mexico Nights
• New Mexico Sky
• Santa Fe Souvenir
• Taos Moon

Quotes

• All calculations based on experience elsewhere, fail in New Mexico. (Lew Wallace)
• It took me five years to spell Chattanooga--and then we moved to Albuquerque. (Joe Morrison)
• My parents always took us places in New Mexico. We would go and have picnics in downtown San Pedro. (Sandra Sanchez)
• Ruidoso is a linear town, stretched out along miles of highway in creases of the mountains, its wide streets lined with flaky plastic. (John McPhee)
• Santa Fe is the artiest, sculpturest, weaviest and potteryest town on earth. (Jan Morris)

New Mexico Symbols

• Nicknames: Land of Enchantment; Land of the Cactus; The Sunshine State; The Land of Opportunity; The Land of Heart's Desire
• Slogan: Everybody is somebody in New Mexico
• Motto: It grows as it goes
• Colors: Red and Yellow of Old Spain
• Song: O, Fair New Mexico (words and music by Elizabeth Garrett)
• Ballad: Land of Enchantment
• Animal: Black Bear
• Bird: Chaparral Bird (Roadrunner)
• Fish: Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout
• Insect: Tarantula Hawk Wasp
• Tree: Nut Pine (Pinion Tree)
• Flower: Yucca Flower (the plant's leaves can be used to make rope, baskets and sandals)
• Grass: Blue Grama Grass
• Fossil: Coelophysis Dinosaur
• Gemstone: Turquoise
• Vegetables: Chiles and Frijoles (refried beans)
• Cookie: Bizcochito

Facts About New Mexico

• Capital: Santa Fe
• Residents: New Mexicans
• State Name Origin: from an Aztec word meaning "place of Mexitli" (an Aztec god)
• Admitted to Statehood: 6 Jan 1912
• Order of Admission: 47th state
• Length: 370 miles
• Width: 343 miles
• Area: 121,589 square miles
• Size Rank: 5
• Number of Counties: 33
• Streams and Rivers: 8,682 miles
• Lakes and Rivers make up only .002 percent of the state's total area (lowest water-to-land ratio of any states)
• Geographic Center: 12 miles SSW of Willard in Torrence Co.
• Mean Elevation: 5,700 feet
• Highest Point: Wheeler Peak, 13,161 feet
• Lowest Point: Red Bluff Lake, 2,817 feet
• Agricultural Products: livestock, cotton, pecans, hay, onions, chiles
• Commercial Products: energy (including nuclear, solar and geothermal research and development), uranium, potassium salts, oil, natural gas, potash, copper, coal, zinc, gold, silver, chemicals, transportation equipment, lumber, stone, clay, glass products, clothing, (25 percent of NM workers are employed by the Federal government)
• Average Annual Rainfall: 8.9 inches
• New Mexico's climate is so dry that 75 percent of roads are left unpaved because they don't wash away
• Average Winter High Temperature: 22 degrees
• Record Low Temperature: -50 degrees (1 Feb 1951 Gavilan)
• Average Summer High Temperature: 93 degrees
• Record High Temperature: 122 degrees (27 Jun 1994 Lakewood)
• More information about New Mexico

Items of Interest

• Santa Fe is the highest capital city in the United States at 7,000 feet above sea level.
• The Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe was built in 1610, making it the oldest government building in the U.S.
• Each October Albuquerque hosts the world's largest international hot air balloon fiesta.
• The world's first Atomic Bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945 on the White Sands Testing Range near Alamogordo.
• White Sands National Monument is a desert but instead of sand it has gleaming white gypsum crystals.
• New Mexico is one of the four corner states. Bordering at the same point with Colorado, Utah and Arizona.
• 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.
• 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.
• New Mexico has far more sheep and cattle than people. There are only about twelve people per square mile.
• Tens of thousands of bats live in the Carlsbad Caverns. The largest chamber of Carlsbad Caverns is more than ten football fields long and about twenty-two stories high.
• New Mexico's capital city Santa Fe is the ending point of the 800 mile Santa Fe Trail.
• 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.
• New Mexico's Constitution officially makes it a bilingual state--one out of three families speak Spanish at home.
• In some isolated villages, such as Truchas, Chimayo', and Coyote in north-central New Mexico, some descendants of Spanish conquistadors still speak a form of 16th century Spanish used no where else in the world today.
• 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.
• The Navajo, the Nation's largest Native American Group, have a reservation that covers fourteen million acres.
• The word "Pueblo" is used to describe a group of people, a town, or an architectural style. There are nineteen Pueblo groups that speak four distinct languages. The Pueblo people of the southwest have lived in the same location longer than any other culture in the Nation.
• Taos Pueblo is located two miles north of the city of Taos. It is one of the oldest continuously occupied communities in the United States. People still live in some of its 900 year old buildings.
• More than 25,000 Anasazi sites have been identified in New Mexico by archaeologists. The Anasazi, an amazing civilization who were the ancestors of the Pueblo, were around for 1300 years. Their great classical period lasted from 1100-1300 AD.
• The town of Gallup calls itself the "Indian Capital of the World" and serves as a trading center for more than twenty different Indian groups. Every August it is the site of the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial

Notable Natives

Some of these were born here, others just lived a while in the state.

• Robert O. Anderson (1917- ) - founder of ARCO Oil and Gas (lives in Roswell)
• William Bonney aka "Billy the Kid" (1859-1881) - New Mexico's most infamous outlaw.
• Ralph Bunche (1903-1971) - Nobel Peace Prize winner (live in (Albuquerque)
• Bruce Cabot - actor (Carlsbad)
• Dennis Chavez - senator (Los Chavez)
• Mangus Coloradas - Apache leader
• Edward Condon - physicist (Alamogordo)
• Robert Crichton - author (Albuquerque)
• John Denver (1943- ) - singer (Roswell)
• Pete Domenici - senator (Albuquerque)
• Harvey Fergusson - author (Albuquerque)
• Robert Goddard - scientist, "father of modern rocketry" (moved to NM in 1930 to test rocket models)
• Sid Gutierrez - astronaut (Albuquerque)
• William Hanna (1910-2001) - animator (Melrose)
• Neil Patrick Harris (1973- ) - actor (Albuquerque)
• Conrad Hilton (1887-1979) - hotel executive (San Antonio)
• Peter Hurd - artist (Roswell)
• Val Kilmer (1959- ) - actor
• Ralph Kiner - baseball player, sportscaster (Santa Rita)
• Oliver LaFarge - Pulitzer Prize-winning author
• John Madden - sportscaster (Austin)
• William Henry "Bill" Mauldin - political cartoonist (Mountain Park)
• Demi Moore (1962- ) - actress (Roswell)
• Michael Martin Murphey (1945- ) - country singer (lives on a ranch in Taos)
• Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1984) - artist (live in Abiquiu)
• Harrison Schmitt - politician (Santa Rosa)
• Kim Stanley - actress (Tularosa)
• Slim Summerville - comedian (Albuquerque)
• Al Unser - race car driver (Albuquerque)
• Bobby Unser - race car driver (Albuquerque)
• Victorio - Apache leader
• Lew Wallace - territorial Governor, author, wrote Ben-Hur in 1880
• Thomas Weaver - anthropologist, author (Greenville)
• Linda Wertheimer - correspondent (Carlsbad)

The New Mexico State Flag
The yellow background and red symbols are the colors of Queen Isabella of Spain. The "Zia" is an ancient Native American depiction of the sun. The four groups of four rays represent gifts from the creator. The gifts are: four directions--north, east, south and west; four seasons--spring, summer, fall and winter; four parts of a day--sunrise, noon, evening and night; and four parts of life--childhood, youth, middle years and old age. They are bound by a circle representing life.

You know you are from New Mexico if...

• You can correctly pronounce Tesuque, Cerrillos, and Pojoaque.
• You have been told by at least one out-of-state vendor that they are going to charge you extra for "international" shipping.
• You expect to pay more if your house is made of mud.
• You can order your Big Mac with green chile.
• You buy salsa by the half-gallon.
• You are still using the paper license tag that came with your car five years ago.
• Your Christmas decorations include "a yard of sand and 200 paper bags".
• Most restaurants you go to begin with "El" or "Los".
• You hated Texans until the Californians moved in.
• The tires on your roof have more tread than the ones on your car.
• You price shop for tortillas.
• You have an extra freezer just for green Chile.
• You think a red light is merely a suggestion.
• You believe that using a turn signal is a sign of weakness.
• You think six tons of crushed rock makes a beautiful front lawn.
• You ran for state legislature so you can speed legally.
• You pass on the right because that's the fast-lane.
• You have read a book while driving from Albuquerque to Santa Fe.
• You know they don't skate at the Ice House and the Newsstand doesn't sell newspapers.
• You think Sadies (a restaurant) was better when it was in the bowling alley.
• There is a piece of a UFO displayed in your home.
• You just got your fifth DWI and got elected to the state legislature in the same week.
• Your swamp cooler got knocked off your roof by a dust devil.
• You have been on TV more than three times telling about your alien abduction.
• You can actually hear the Taos hum.
• All your out-of-state friends and relatives visit in October.
• You think LasVegas is a town in the northeastern part of the state.
• You iron your jeans to "dress up".
• You don't see anything wrong with drive-up window liquor sales (this has now been outlawed).
• Your other vehicle is also a pick-up truck.
• Two of your cousins are in Santa Fe, one in the legislature the other in the state pen.
• You know the punch line to at least one Espanola joke.
• You have driven to an Indian Casino at 3 a.m. because you were hungry.
• You think the Lobos fight song is "Louie, Louie".
• You know whether you want "red or green."
• You're relieved when the pavement ends because the dirt road has fewer pot-holes.
• You see nothing odd when, in the conversations of the people in line around you at the grocery store, every other word of each sentence alternates between Spanish and English.
• You know you will run into at least three cousins whenever you shop at Walmart, Sams or Home Depot.

Songs about New Mexico

• Along the Santa Fe Trail - Bing Crosby (1941)
• Land of Enchantment - Sons of the San Joaquin (1999)
• New Mexico - Jimmy Stadler (2007)
• New Mexico Rain - Michael Hearne (2002)
• New Mexico Morn - Friends and Consequences (2003)
• New Mexico Sky - Tony Schueller (2007)
• New Mexico Waltz - Don Richmond (2007)

Songs about Albuquerque

• Albuquerque - Neil Young (1975)
• Albuquerque Rainbow - Chris Darrow (1973)
• Lights of Albuquerque - Jim Glaser (1986)

Songs about Cimarron

• Rose of Cimarron - Poco (1976)
• Stage to Cimarron - Santo and Johnny (1962)

Songs about Santa Fe

• Back to Santa Fe - Cee Cee Chapman (1989)
• Santa Fe Blues - Alexis Corner (1979)
• Santa Fe, New Mexico - Sons of the Pioneers (1949)
• Santa Fe Souvenir - Mason Williams (2003)

Songs about New Mexico Cities

• Farmington, New Mexico - Orville Couch (1966)
• Taos - Eddie Dean (1955)
• Taos Moon - John Carey (2007)