New Mexico

Human presence in what is now New Mexico probably spans about 10,000 years. Before Europeans arrived, Pueblo civilizations had built irrigation systems, pueblos and cliff dwellings; the Navajo and Apache peoples arrived in the region in the 15th century.⁠[1]

The earliest dated evidence of human presence in Chaco Canyon is from around the 900s BC; pithouses appeared around AD 200, and large pithouse villages from about AD 500. From 850 to 1150, Chaco Canyon was a major center of the Ancestral Puebloans, known for its monumental Great Houses and astronomy and serving as a hub of ceremony, trade and administration. Construction of Great Houses stopped between 1150 and 1250 and the people migrated elsewhere; their descendants became the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico and the Hopi of Arizona. Navajo settlement patterns appear in the canyon by the 1600s.⁠[2]

Spain claimed the region in the 16th century. In 1540 an expedition led by the Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado entered New Mexico in search of the fabled Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola, the first European entry into the area; it found nothing and returned to New Spain.⁠[3]

In 1595 Juan de Oñate was given contracts for colonization, and the first permanent settlements were established a few years later. In 1610 Santa Fe was established as the permanent capital.⁠[3]

Santa Fe is the oldest continuously used seat of government in North America.⁠[4]

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 pushed Europeans out of the area for 12 years; by 1700 the Spanish had reasserted their rule.⁠[3]

Albuquerque, founded in 1706, became the focal point of the south. The Spanish population then grew rapidly, possibly reaching 25,000 by 1800.⁠[3]

In 1806–1807 U.S. Army Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike led a small detachment of troops into New Mexican territory and was captured and imprisoned; afterward he wrote a report praising the region.⁠[3]

In 1821 New Mexico became part of the Republic of Mexico, by which time trade over the Santa Fe Trail had already begun.⁠[3]

The Santa Fe Trail was a wagon route linking MissouriMissouriMissouri is a state of the United States bounded on the east by the Mississippi River; its capital is Jefferson City, its largest city is Kansas City, and its second-largest is St. Louis. It was admitted to the Union on August 10, 1821, as the 24th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 6,154,913.Open the full entry with the Southwest, used from 1821 to 1880 until the railroad was completed.⁠[4]

When the Mexican-American War began in 1846, U.S. forces under Gen. Stephen Kearny took New Mexico; residents who swore allegiance to the United States received amnesty and citizenship.⁠[3]

The United States acquired most of the area of present-day New Mexico from Mexico in 1848.⁠[5]

On May 25, 1850, a constitutional convention in Santa Fe drafted a state constitution, which voters ratified on June 20; a legislature elected two senators, but Congress rejected the statehood petition, partly because of the constitution’s anti-slavery provision.⁠[6]

On September 9, 1850, the Compromise of 1850 made New Mexico a territory; New Mexico Territory was organized on December 13, 1850.⁠[6][5]

In 1850 New Mexico had more than 61,000 people, enough to qualify for statehood, but statehood was denied.⁠[7]

On December 1, 1851, Richard H. Weightman of Santa Fe became the first of New Mexico’s 17 territorial delegates to the U.S. House of Representatives.⁠[6]

In 1853 the United States acquired a small southwestern corner of present-day New Mexico through the Gadsden Purchase.⁠[5]

New Mexico Territory was reduced when Colorado Territory (1861) and Arizona Territory (1863) were organized.⁠[5]

During the Civil War an invading Confederate force was driven out by the Colorado Volunteers, although southern New Mexico remained a stronghold of Confederate sympathizers.⁠[3]

In 1864 the Navajo were subdued and forcibly resettled on a reservation near Fort Sumner; in 1868 they were given a large reservation in northwestern New Mexico and northeastern ArizonaArizonaArizona is a state in the southwestern United States; its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1912, as the 48th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 7,151,502.Open the full entry.⁠[3]

After New Mexico became a territory in 1850, at least fifty unsuccessful statehood acts were introduced in Congress. Proposed constitutions drafted in 1872 and 1889 were both defeated at the polls, and an 1876 statehood bill failed in Congress.⁠[8][9]

The 1889 draft constitution, which capped property taxes at one percent and required court proceedings in English, was rejected by voters 16,180 to 7,493. In 1904 Senator Matthew S. Quay proposed joining New Mexico and Arizona as a single state; in the joint-statehood vote of November 1906 New Mexico approved 26,195 to 14,735, but Arizona rejected it 3,141 to 16,265, and the plan failed.⁠[10]

In 1878 the local range war in Lincoln County reached its bloodiest year, involving Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. In 1880 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway reached Albuquerque and brought new immigration; that year the Apache were settled on two reservations, and their resistance continued until 1886.⁠[3]

On June 20, 1910, President William Howard Taft signed the Enabling Act for New Mexico statehood. On October 3 of that year, 100 delegates from 26 counties convened a constitutional convention in Santa Fe, which approved a draft state constitution on November 21.⁠[8][9]

The 1910 constitution allowed women to vote in school-board elections but did not grant full suffrage; initiative, recall and referendum were left out of the final draft, and the amendment process was made very difficult.⁠[10]

On January 21, 1911, New Mexico voters approved the state constitution by 31,742 to 13,399. On August 21 of that year Congress approved statehood for New Mexico and Arizona, and Taft gave final approval to New Mexico’s constitution that day; he withheld approval of Arizona’s until its judicial-recall provision was removed.⁠[8][6]

President Taft signed the proclamation admitting New Mexico at 1:35 p.m. that day, ending more than 60 years as a territory.⁠[8][7]

William C. McDonald was inaugurated as the first governor on January 15, 1912, and the first state legislature convened in Santa Fe on March 11. On April 2, Thomas Catron and Albert B. Fall were seated as the state’s first U.S. senators.⁠[9][8][6]

On November 7, 1916, Andrieus Aristieus Jones of East Las Vegas became the state’s first directly elected U.S. senator under the Seventeenth Amendment. On November 6, 1928, former governor Octaviano A. Larrazolo was elected as the state’s first Hispanic American senator. On May 11, 1935, Dennis Chavez was appointed to the Senate, becoming the first American-born Hispanic senator; he served until his death in 1962.⁠[6]

During the Great Depression, the New Deal relief program brought most rural New Mexicans into contact with the federal government for the first time. During World War II a Japanese internment camp was set up outside Santa Fe, and research at Los Alamos became the center of the project that created the first atomic bomb in 1945. From 1940 to 1960 New Mexico’s population nearly doubled.⁠[3]

On July 16, 1945, the world’s first nuclear explosion took place on the barren plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range known as the Jornada del Muerto. The plutonium device, called “Gadget,” detonated at about 5:30 a.m., releasing 18.6 kilotons of power. The Trinity site is now part of the White Sands Missile Range.⁠[11]

On March 31, 1966, Congress accepted a bronze statue of Dennis Chavez as New Mexico’s first contribution to the National Statuary Hall Collection. On September 22, 2005, it accepted a marble statue of Po’pay, a 17th-century Native American religious leader, as the state’s second.⁠[6]

In March 1999 the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the world’s first underground storage facility for radioactive waste, opened in southeastern New Mexico.⁠[3]

Compared with 2010, New Mexico’s population in the 2020 census was up 58,343, or 2.8%; the population aged 18 and over was 1,638,989, or 77.4% of the total. The national population grew 7.4% over the same period.⁠[5][12]

On April 26, 2021, the Census Bureau delivered the 2020 census apportionment results to the President. Under them New Mexico has 3 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, with an average of 706,740 people per seat, and 5 electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[13][14][15]

The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimates, released on January 27, 2026, show New Mexico as one of five states whose population declined between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025.⁠[16]

Under the Census Bureau’s state area measurements (2010 census), New Mexico has a total area of 121,590 square miles (314,917 square kilometers), of which 121,298 square miles (314,161 square kilometers) is land and 292 square miles (757 square kilometers) is water; it is the fifth-largest state by area. The state has 33 counties.⁠[17][5]

New Mexico is bounded by ColoradoColoradoColorado is a U.S. state classified as one of the Mountain states, with Denver as its capital. It was admitted to the Union on August 1, 1876, as the 38th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,773,714.Open the full entry to the north, OklahomaOklahomaOklahoma is a U.S. state whose capital is Oklahoma City. It was admitted to the Union on November 16, 1907, as the 46th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 3,959,353.Open the full entry and TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry to the east, Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora to the south, and Arizona to the west and also borders UtahUtahUtah is a U.S. state bordered by Idaho to the north, Wyoming to the northeast, Colorado to the east, Arizona to the south and Nevada to the west, with its capital at Salt Lake City. It was admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896, as the 45th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 3,271,616 residents.Open the full entry. Its landforms fall into four regions: the Great Plains (including the Llano Estacado) in the eastern third, the Rocky Mountains extending into the north-central part, the Basin and Range Province to their south and west, and the Colorado Plateau in the northwest.⁠[4][5]

The highest point is Wheeler Peak in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, at 13,161 feet (4,011 meters). The main rivers are the Rio Grande, which runs north to south through the state, the Pecos, the Canadian, the San Juan and the Gila. The average annual temperature is in the mid-50s °F (about 12 °C), average annual precipitation is about 13 inches (330 millimeters), and temperatures fall about 5 °F for every 1,000-foot rise in elevation.⁠[4]

As of November 2026, the governor is Michelle Lujan Grisham, who took office on January 1, 2019, as the 32nd governor and began her second term on January 1, 2023. Born in Los Alamos, she previously served as the first secretary of the Aging and Long-Term Services Department and as secretary of the Department of Health, and served three terms in the U.S. House for New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District.⁠[18]

The lieutenant governor is Howie Morales. The Office of the Governor is on the fourth floor of the New Mexico State Capitol.⁠[19]

The New Mexico Legislature has 112 members: 70 in the House of Representatives and 42 in the Senate. Representatives are elected every two years and senators serve four-year terms. The legislature holds 60-day sessions in odd-numbered years and 30-day sessions in even-numbered years. Legislators receive no salary, only per diem and mileage reimbursement.⁠[20]

The Supreme Court of New Mexico is the state’s highest court and court of last resort. Located in Santa Fe, it consists of five justices who serve eight-year terms.⁠[21]

In the 2020 census the most populous cities were Albuquerque (564,559), Las Cruces (111,385), Rio Rancho (104,046) and Santa Fe (87,505). About two-fifths of residents live in Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo County.⁠[22][4]

Hispanics (Hispanos and Latinos) make up more than two-fifths of the population and Native Americans about one-tenth, including the Navajo, Ute, Jicarilla Apache, Mescalero Apache and Pueblo peoples. The state has 23 federally recognized American Indian reservations (11 with off-reservation trust lands) and 2 joint-use areas, as well as 4 metropolitan and 15 micropolitan statistical areas.⁠[4][5]

An April 2021 population report by the Legislative Finance Committee found that from 2010 to 2019 the state’s population aged over 65 grew 38% while the under-18 population fell 8.3%; net migration cost the state 58,915 residents; and annual births fell from about 27,800 in 2010 to about 21,800 in 2020.⁠[12]

New Mexico’s nominal GDP, as measured by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, was $152,120.0 million in 2025 and $147,202.0 million in 2024.⁠[23]

The service sector accounts for about half of the economy, and much of the rest comes from extractive industries such as mining and oil production; government spending makes up nearly one-fourth of the economy. New Mexico produces more than four-fifths of U.S. potash and is the leading U.S. producer of perlite, and oil and natural gas provide about half of its natural-resource income; the state long led the country in uranium production, but output had dropped considerably by the 1990s. Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories conduct nuclear weapons and energy research.⁠[24]

Irrigated farming is the most important form of agriculture; since the 1990s milk, sorghum, wheat, hay, chili peppers and onions have been major products. Tourism is the state’s leading industry: the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is held in early October, and national parks and monuments such as Carlsbad Caverns, Chaco Culture, El Morro and Gila Cliff Dwellings draw visitors.⁠[24]

The University of New Mexico was founded in Albuquerque in 1889.⁠[1]

President Theodore Roosevelt established Chaco Canyon National Monument on March 11, 1907; on December 19, 1980, Congress redesignated it Chaco Culture National Historical Park and added about 13,000 acres; on December 8, 1987, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.⁠[2]

The state’s name grew out of the dreams of Spanish colonizers: as early as the 1520s, officials and would-be explorers in Mexico City imagined a “Nuevo México” far to the north.⁠[25]

New Mexico’s nickname is “Land of Enchantment,” its motto is the Latin “Crescit eundo” (“It grows as it goes”), and its state song is “O, Fair New Mexico.”⁠[26]

The state bird is the greater roadrunner, the state flower the soaptree yucca, the state tree the piñón pine, the state vegetables chile and frijoles, and the state cookie the biscochito; the official state question is “Red or green?”, referring to New Mexico chile.⁠[5]

The first state flag, designed by historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell and authorized in 1915, had a blue field with a small U.S. flag in the upper left, the state seal in the lower right and “New Mexico” embroidered diagonally. The New Mexico chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution pushed for a new flag in 1920 and held a design competition in 1923, won by Dr. Harry Mera, a Santa Fe physician and archaeologist, whose wife Reba made the design. In March 1925 Governor Arthur T. Hannett signed the legislation making it the official state flag.⁠[27][28]

The current flag follows Laws 1925, chapter 115 (now Section 12-3-2 of the New Mexico Statutes): the ancient Zia sun symbol in red at the center of a yellow field, using the red and yellow of old Spain; the flag is two-thirds as wide as it is long and the symbol one-third of the flag’s length, with four groups of four rays set at right angles, the two inner rays of each group one-fifth longer than the outer ones, and a central circle one-third the width of the symbol. The Zia symbol comes from a sun design on a late 19th-century water jar from Zia Pueblo.⁠[29][27]

State of New Mexico: Official website: https://www.nm.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[30]

Office of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham: Official website: https://governor.state.nm.us/ (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

New Mexico Legislature: Official website: https://www.nmlegis.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20][30]

New Mexico Secretary of State: Official website: https://www.sos.nm.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]