The State of New Mexico ; is a state in the southwestern region of the United States of America.
Over its relatively long history it has been inhabited by Native American populations and has been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory.
Among U.S. states, New Mexico has simultaneously the highest percentage of Hispanic Americans (comprising both recent immigrants and descendants of Spanish colonists) and the second-highest percentage of Native Americans after Alaska (mostly Navajo and Pueblo peoples).
As a result, the demographics and culture of the state are unique for their strong Spanish, Mexican, and American Indian cultural influences. The climate of the state is highly arid and its territory is mostly covered by mountains and desert. At a population density of 15 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth most sparsely inhabited U.S. State.
Geography
The state's total area is 121,665 square miles (315,110 km²). The eastern border of New Mexico lies along 103° W longitude with the state of Oklahoma, and three miles (5 km) west of 103° W longitude with Texas. On the southern border, Texas makes up the eastern two-thirds, while the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora make up the western third, with Chihuahua making up about 90% of that. The western border with Arizona runs along the 109° 03' W longitude.
The 37° N latitude parallel forms the northern boundary with Colorado. The states New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah come together at the Four Corners in the northwestern corner of New Mexico.
New Mexico, although a large state, has little water. Its surface water area is only about 250 square miles (650 km²). New Mexico's average precipitation rate is only 15 inches (380 mm) a year.
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, especially towards the north.
The Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains, the southernmost part of the Rocky Mountains, run roughly north-south along the east side of the Rio Grande in the rugged, pastoral north.
The most important of New Mexico's rivers are the Rio Grande, Pecos, Canadian, San Juan, and Gila. The Rio Grande is the third longest river in the U.S.
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 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)
- Gila National Forest
- Gila Wilderness
Other protected lands include the following national monuments and parks:
- Aztec Ruins National Monumentat
- Bandelier National Monument in Los Alamos
- Capulin Volcano National Monument near Capulin
- Carlsbad Caverns National Park near Carlsbad
- Chaco Culture National Historical Park at Nageezi
- El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail
- El Malpais National Monument in Grants
- El Morro National Monument in Ramah
- Fort Union National Monument at Watrous
- ila Cliff Dwellings National Monument near Silver City
- Old Spanish National Historic Trail
- Pecos National Historical Park in Pecos
- Petroglyph National Monument near Albuquerque
- Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument at Mountainair
- Santa Fe National Historic Trail
- White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo
Visitors also frequent the surviving native pueblos of New Mexico. Tourists visiting these sites bring significant monies to the state. Other areas of geographical and scenic interest include Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument and the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The Gila Wilderness lies in the southwest of the state.
History
The first known inhabitants of New Mexico were members of the Clovis culture of Paleo-Indians. Indeed the culture is named for the New Mexico city where the first artifacts of this culture were discovered.
Later inhabitants include Native Americans of the Anasazi and the Mogollon cultures. By the time of European contact in the 1500s, the region was settled by the villages of the Pueblo peoples and groups of Navajo, Apache and Ute.
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado assembled an enormous expedition at Compostela in 1540–1542 to explore and find the mystical Seven Golden Cities of Cibola as described by Cabeza de Vaca who had just arrived from his eight-year ordeal traveling from Florida to Mexico. Coronado's men found several mud baked pueblos in 1541, but found no rich cities of gold.
Further widespread expeditions found no fabulous cities anywhere in the Southwest or Great Plains. A dispirited and now poor Coronado and his men began their journey back to Mexico leaving New Mexico behind.
Over 50 years after Coronado, Juan de Oñate founded the San Juan colony on the Rio Grande in 1598, the first permanent European settlement in the future state of New Mexico.
Oñate pioneered the grandly named El Camino Real, Royal Road", as a 700 mile (1,100 km) trail from the rest of New Spain to his remote colony. Oñate was made the first governor of the new Province of New Mexico. The Native Americans at Acoma revolted against this Spanish encroachment but faced severe suppression.
In 1609, Pedro de Peralta, a later governor of the Province of New Mexico, established the settlement of Santa Fe at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
The city, along with most of the settled areas of the state, was abandoned by the Spanish for 12 years (1680-1692) as a result of the successful Pueblo Revolt. After the death of the Pueblo leader Popé, Diego de Vargas restored the area to Spanish rule.
While developing Santa Fe as a trade center, the returning settlers founded the old town of Albuquerque in 1706, naming it for the viceroy of New Spain, the Duke of Alburquerque.
Mexican province
dependence. 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.
Small trapping parties from the United States had previously reached and stayed in Santa Fe, but the Spanish authorities officially forbade them to trade. Trader William Becknell returned to the United States in November 1821 with news that independent Mexico now welcomed trade through Santa Fe.
William Becknell left Independence, Missouri, for Santa Fe early in 1822 with the first party of traders. The Santa Fe Trail trading company, headed by the brothers Charles Bent and William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain, was one of the most successful in the West.
They had their first trading post in the area in 1826, and, by 1833, they had built their adobe fort and trading post called Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River.
This fort and trading post, located about 200 miles (322 km) east of Taos, New Mexico, was the only place settled by whites along the Santa Fe trail before it hit Taos. The Santa Fe National Historic Trail follows the route of the old trail, with many sites marked or restored.
The Spanish Trail from Los Angeles, California to Santa Fe, New Mexico was primarily used by Hispanics, white traders and ex-trappers living part of the year in or near Santa Fe. Started in about 1829, the trail was an arduous 2,400 (3862 km) mile round trip pack train sojourn that extended into Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California and back, allowing only one hard round trip per year.
The trade consisted primarily of blankets and some trade goods from Santa Fe being traded for horses in California.
The Republic of Texas claimed the mostly vacant territory north and east of the Rio Grande when it successfully seceded from Mexico in 1836. New Mexico authorities captured a group of Texans who embarked an expedition to assert their claim to the province in 1841.
American territory
Following the Mexican-American War, from 1846-1848 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico forcibly 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.
The Congressional Compromise of 1850 halted a bid for statehood under a proposed antislavery constitution. Texas transferred eastern New Mexico to the federal government, settling a lengthy boundary dispute. Under the compromise, the American government established the Territory of New Mexico on September 9, 1850.
The territory, which included most of the future states of Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado, officially established its capital at Santa Fe in 1851.
The United States acquired the southwestern boot heel of the state and southern Arizona below the Gila river in the mostly desert Gadsden Purchase of 1853.
This purchase was desired when it was found that a much easier route for a proposed transcontinental railroad was located slightly south of the Gila river.
The Southern Pacific built the second transcontinental railroad though this purchased land in 1881.
During the American Civil War, Confederate troops from Texas briefly occupied the Rio Grande valley as far north as Santa Fe.
Union troops from the Territory of Colorado re-captured the territory in March 1862 at the Battle of Glorieta Pass.
The Territory of Arizona was split off as a separate territory on February 24, 1863.
There were centuries of conflict between the Apache, the Navajo and Spanish-Mexican settlements in the territory.
It took the federal government another 25 years after the Civil War to exert control over both the civilian and Native American populations of the territory. This started in 1864 when the Navajo were sent on "The Long Walk" to Bosque Redondo Reservation and then returned to most of their lands in 1868.
The Apache were moved to various reservations and Apache wars continued until Geronimo finally surrendered in 1886.
The railway encouraged the great cattle boom of the 1880s and the development of accompanying cow towns. The cattle barons could not keep out sheepherders, and eventually homesteaders and squatters overwhelmed the cattlemen by fencing in and plowing under the "sea of grass" on which the cattle fed. Conflicting land claims led to bitter quarrels among the original Spanish inhabitants, cattle ranchers, and newer homesteaders. Despite destructive overgrazing, ranching survived and remains a mainstay of the New Mexican economy.
Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico, on the middle Rio Grande, was incorporated in 1889.
Statehood
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 but unproven suspicions 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.
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.
Located in the remote Chihuahuan Desert the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is located 26 miles (42 km) southeast of Carlsbad.
Here nuclear wastes are buried deep in carved out salt formation disposal rooms mined 2,150 feet (655 m) underground in a 2,000-foot (610 m) thick salt formation that has been stable for more than 200 million years.
WIPP began operations on March 26, 1999.
Economy
The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that New Mexico's total state product in 2003 was $57 billion.
Per capita personal income in 2003 was $24,995, 48th in the nation.
Cattle and dairy products top the list of major animal products of New Mexico. Cattle, sheep, and other livestock graze most of the arable land of the state throughout the year.
Limited, scientifically controlled dryland farming prospers alongside cattle ranching. Major crops include hay, nursery stock, pecans, and chile peppers. Hay and sorghum top the list of major dryland crops. Farmers also produce onions, potatoes, and dairy products. New Mexico specialty crops include piñon nuts, pinto beans, and chiles.
The Carlsbad and Fort Sumner reclamation projects on the Pecos River and the nearby Tucumcari project provide adequate water for limited irrigation in those areas of the desert and semiarid portions of the state where scant rainfall evaporates rapidly, generally leaving insufficient water supplies for large-scale irrigation..
Located upstream of Las Cruces, the Elephant Butte Reservoir provides a major irrigation source for the extensive farming along the Rio Grande. Other irrigation projects use the Colorado River basin and the San Juan River.
Lumber mills in Albuquerque process pinewood, the chief commercial wood of the rich timber economy of northern New Mexico.
Mineral extraction: New Mexicans derive much of their income from mineral extraction. Even before European exploration, Native Americans mined turquoise for making jewelry.
After the Spanish introduced refined silver alloys they were incorporated into the Indian jewelry designs. New Mexico produces uranium ore (see Uranium mining in New Mexico), manganese ore, potash, salt, perlite, copper ore, beryllium, and tin concentrates.
Natural gas, petroleum, and coal are also found in smaller quantities.
Industrial output, centered around Albuquerque, includes electric equipment; petroleum and coal products; food processing; printing and publishing; and stone, glass, and clay products.
Defense-related industries include ordnance. Important high-technology industries include lasers, data processing, and solar energy.
Federal government spending is a major driver of the New Mexico economy.
The federal government spends $2 on New Mexico for every dollar of tax revenue collected from the state.
This rate of return is higher than any other state in the Union. The federal government also a major employer in New Mexico providing more than a quarter of the state's jobs.
Many of the federal jobs relate to the military; the state hosts three air force bases (Kirtland Air Force Base, Holloman Air Force Base, and Cannon Air Force Base); a testing range (White Sands Missile Range); an army proving ground and maneuver range (Fort Bliss Military Reservation - McGregor Range);national observatories; and the technology labs of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL).
SNL conducts electronic and industrial research on Kirtland AFB, on the southeast side of Albuquerque. These installations also include the missile and spacecraft proving grounds at White Sands.
In addition to the military employers, other federal agencies such as the National Park Service, the United States Forest Service, and the United States Bureau of Land Management are a big part of the states rural employment base.
Virgin Galactic, the first space tourism company to develop commercial flights into space, has decided to put its world headquarters and mission control in Upham, New Mexico (25 miles (40 km) south of Truth or Consequences); Virgin Galactic will have its inaugural launch of the VSS Enterprise spaceship in 2008, and will begin launching ordinary citizens in early 2009.
Tourism provides many service jobs.
Private service economy in urban New Mexico, especially in Albuquerque, has boomed in recent decades. Since the end of World War II, the city has gained an ever-growing number of retirees, especially among armed forces veterans and government workers.
It is also increasingly gaining notice as a health conscious community, and contains many hospitals and a high per capita number of massage and alternative therapists. The warm, semiarid climate has contributed to the exploding population of Albuquerque, attracting new industries to New Mexico.
By contrast, many heavily Native American and Hispanic rural communities remain economically underdeveloped.
Feature films have used New Mexico as a location since The Indian School in 1898.
Financial incentives and construction of facilities (such as The Albuquerque Studios) have created opportunities for locally based crew members with production reaching an all time high in 2007. As of the end of August 2007, 30 major projects have been filmed in the state, more than in any other calendar year in history.
Film and television post-production is also growing with companies such as Sony Imageworks establishing a permanent home in the state.
Taxes
Personal income tax rates for New Mexico range from 1.7% to 5.3%, within 4 income brackets.
New Mexico does not have a sales tax. Instead, it has a 5% gross receipts tax.
In almost every case, the business passes along the tax to the consumer, so that the gross receipts tax resembles a sales tax.
The combined gross receipts tax rate varies throughout the state from 5.125% to 7.8125%. The total rate is a combination of all rates imposed by the state, counties and municipalities.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2005, New Mexicans no longer pay taxes on most food purchases; however, there are exceptions to this program.
Also beginning Jan. 1, 2005, the state eliminated the tax on certain medical services.
In general, taxes are not assessed on personal property.
Personal household effects, licensed vehicles, registered aircraft, certain personal property warehoused in the state and business personal property that is not depreciated for federal income tax purposes are exempt from the property tax.
Property tax rates vary substantially and depend on the type of property and its location.
The state does not assess tax on intangible personal property.
There is no inheritance tax, but an inheritance may be reflected in a taxpayer's modified gross income and taxed that way.
