New Mexico (Spanish: Nuevo México) is a southwestern state in the United States of America. Over its relatively long history it has also been occupied by Native American populations, part of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, a province of Mexico, and a U.S. territory.
Acoma Alamogordo Albuquerque Angel Fire Artesia Belen Bernalillo Bloomfield Carlsbad Clayton Cloudcroft Clovis Deming Dulce Eagle Nest Espanola Farmington Gallup Grants Hobbs Las Cruces Las Vegas Lordsburg Los Alamos Los Lunas Mescalero Moriarty Portales Raton Red River Rio Rancho Roswell Ruidoso Ruidoso Downs San Juan Pueblo Santa Fe Santa Rosa Silver City Sipapu Socorro Taos Tucumcari
New Mexico has the highest percentage of people of Hispanic ancestry of any state, some recent immigrants and others descendants of Spanish colonists. The state also has a large Native American population. As a result, the demographics and culture of the state are unique for their strong Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. Amerindian cultural influences.
The landscape ranges from wide, rose-colored deserts to broken mesas to high, snow-capped peaks. Despite New Mexico's arid image, heavily forested mountain wildernesses cover a significant portion of the state. Part of the Rocky Mountains, the broken, north-south oriented Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) range flanks both sides of the Rio Grande from the rugged, pastoral north through the center of the state.
Cacti, yuccas, creosote bush, sagebrush, and desert grasses cover the broad, semiarid plains that cover the southern portion of the state.
The Federal government protects millions of acres of beautiful New Mexico as national forests including:
* Carson National Forest * Cibola National Forest (headquartered in Albuquerque) * Lincoln National Forest * Santa Fe National Forest (headquartered in Santa Fe)
The first inhabitants of New Mexico were Native Americans of the Clovis culture. By the time of European contact in the 1500s the region was settled the by the villages of the Pueblo peoples.
As a part of New Spain, the claims for the province of New Mexico passed to independent Mexico following the 1810-1821 Mexican War of Independence. During the brief 26 year period of nominal Mexican control, Mexican authority and investment in New Mexico were weak, as their often conflicted government had little time or interest in a New Mexico that had been poor since the Spanish settlements started. Some Mexican officials, saying they were wary of encroachments by the growing United States, and wanting to reward themselves and their friends, began issuing enormous land grants (usually free) to groups of Mexican families as an incentive to populate the province.
Following the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded its mostly unsettled northern holdings, today known as the American Southwest and California to the United States of America in exchange for an end to hostilities, the evacuation of Mexico City and many other areas under American control. Mexico also received $15 million cash, plus the assumption of slightly more than $3 million in outstanding Mexican debts.
Congress admitted New Mexico as the 47th state in the Union on January 6, 1912. The admission of the neighboring State of Arizona on February 14, 1912 completed the contiguous 48 states.
The United States government built the Los Alamos Research Center in 1943 amid the Second World War. Top-secret personnel there developed the atomic bomb, first detonated at Trinity site in the desert on the White Sands Proving Grounds between Socorro and Alamogordo on July 16, 1945.
Albuquerque expanded rapidly after the war. High-altitude experiments near Roswell in 1947 reputedly led to persistent (unproven) claims by a few that the government captured and concealed extraterrestrial corpses and equipment. The state quickly emerged as a leader in nuclear, solar, and geothermal energy research and development. The Sandia National Laboratories, founded in 1949, carried out nuclear research and special weapons development at Kirtland Air Force Base south of Albuquerque and at Livermore, California.
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