New Mexico USA
Destination Travel Guide & Hotel Reservations
Settled in turn by Native Americans, Spaniards, Mexicans and Yankees, NEW MEXICO
is among the most ethnically and culturally diverse of all the states in the US. Each
successive group has built upon the legacy of its predecessors; their various histories
and achievements are closely intertwined, and in some ways the late-coming white Americans
from the north and east have had comparatively little impact. Signs of the region's rich
heritage are everywhere, from ancient pictographs and cliff dwellings to the design of the
state's license plates, taken from a Zia Indian symbol for the sun - the one
near-constant fact of life in this arid land.
New Mexico's indigenous peoples - especially the Pueblo Indians , as the name
suggests clear descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans - provide a sense of cultural
continuity. Despite the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, which forced a temporary Spanish
withdrawal into Mexico, the missionary endeavor here was in general less brutal than
elsewhere. The proselytizing padres eventually co-opted the natives without destroying
their traditional ways of life, as local deities and celebrations were incorporated into
Catholic practice. Somewhat bizarrely to outsiders, grand churches still stand at the
center of many Pueblo settlements, often adjacent to the underground ceremonial chambers
known as kivas , and almost always built in the local adobe style.
The Americans who took over from the Mexicans in 1848 saw New Mexico as a useless
wasteland. But for a few mining booms and range wars - such as the Lincoln County War,
which brought Billy the Kid to fame - New Mexico was left relatively undisturbed
until it finally became a state in 1912. During World War II, it was the base of
operations for the top-secret Manhattan Project , which built and detonated the
first atomic bomb, and since then it has been home to America's premier weapons research
outposts. By and large, people here work close to the land - mining, farming and ranching
- with tourism increasingly underpinning the economy.
Northern New Mexico centers on the magnificent landscapes of the Rio Grande
Valley , which contains its two finest cities: Santa Fe , the adobe-fronted
capital, and the artists' colony and winter resort of Taos , with its nearby
pueblo. More than a dozen Pueblo villages can be found in the mountainous area
between the two, while to the west lie the evocative ancient ruins at Bandelier and
Puyé . The broad swath of central New Mexico along I-40 - the interstate
highway that succeeded the old Route 66 - pivots around the state's biggest city, Albuquerque
, with the extraordinary mesa-top Pueblo village of Ácoma ("Sky City")
an hour's drive to the west. In wild and wide-open southern New Mexico , the deep Carlsbad
Caverns are the main attraction, while you can still stumble upon old mining and
cattle-ranching towns that have somehow hung on since the end of the Wild West.
For many visitors, the defining feature of New Mexico is its adobe architecture
, as seen on homes, churches, and even shopping malls and motels. Adobe bricks are a
sun-baked mixture of earth, sand, charcoal and chopped grass or straw, set with a mortar
of much the same composition, and then plastered over with mud and straw. The color of the
soil used dictates the color of the final building, and thus subtle variations can be seen
all across the state. However, adobe is a far from convenient material: it needs
replastering every few years and turns to mud when water seeps up from the ground, so that
many buildings have to be sporadically raised and bolstered by the insertion of rocks at
their base. These days, most of what looks like adobe is actually painted cement or
concrete, but even this looks attractive enough in its own semi-kitsch way, and hunting
out such superb old adobes as the remote Santuario de Chimayó on the " High
Road " between Taos and Santa Fe, the formidable church of San Francisco de
Asis in Ranchos de Taos, or the multitiered dwellings of Taos Pueblo , can
provide the focus of an enjoyable New Mexico tour.
Reserve a Hotel Room in New Mexico USA
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