”’New Mexico”’ is a mountainous state in the southwestern United States. The state is bordered by Colorado in the north, by Oklahoma and Texas in the east, by Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora in the south, and by Arizona in the west. The name of the state was received from Spanish Nuevo Mexico.
The capital of the state is Santa Fe.
New Mexico’s nicknames
Land of Enchantment
Area
New Mexico area
Total 121,699 sq mi (315,198 km2)
Width 343 miles (551 km)
Length 370 miles (595 km)
History
The ancestors of the Pueblo tribes lived here, creating the Anasazi culture known for its fantastic rock buildings dating the XII century BC. On the territory of New Mexico also the ancestors of the Apaches, Comanches, and Navajo lived. The Spaniards appeared here in the XVI century when they were looking for gold.
The first Europeans who visited these places were the Spaniard Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his slave Estebanico.
In 1605, these lands became the Spanish province of New Mexico. In 1680, the Pueblo Indians rebelled. Many people were killed, and few survivors escaped. Several years later, the Spaniards conquered the lands of the state. Since 1771, New Mexico became part of the Spanish colony of New Spain. Napoleon sold the north of New Mexico to the United States in 1803.
The result of the Spanish American wars of independence (1810-1826) was the annexation of state areas to Mexico (1821), and the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) ended in the seizure of territory by the Americans. As a result of the acquisition of area by the USA from Mexico in 1853, the region of the state expanded, and the final boundaries were determined by 1863. In 1912, the 47th state of New Mexico appeared in the USA.
In the XX century, the state became the place of the creation of the most significant scientific base. In Los Alamos in the 1940s, the first nuclear bomb was tested, and after a few weeks, two nuclear warheads were dropped on Japan.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the astroclimate of the state attracted astronomers’ attention to it: in the Mayhill region there are more than a dozen observatories with remote access that allow an observer to control telescopes via the Internet from anywhere in the world.
Demographics
Around 2,100,000 people live in the state of New Mexico. The average population density in New Mexico is about 17.2/sq mi (6.62/km2).
The largest city in the state is Albuquerque, where about 560,000 people live. Other big cities in New Mexico are Las Cruces (about 100,000 people), Rio Rancho (more than 90,000 people), the state capital Santa Fe (about 70,000 people) and Roswell (about 50,000 people).
TOP 5 Universities
Best Universities in New Mexico
* University of New Mexico
* New Mexico State University
* New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
* Eastern New Mexico University
* Western New Mexico University
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