New Mexico Trivia & Tidbits
Looking for New Mexico trivia? Try our list New Mexico little know facts, tidbits and trivia.
—Buried in a former Alamogordo (pop. 35,582) landfill are millions of Atari “E.T.” video games. The games were dumped in 1983 from Atari’s El Paso, Texas, plant, where excess inventory of the game, called the worst in video-game history, were stored.
first appeared: 5/4/2008
Bottomless Lakes State Park near Roswell (pop. 45,293) is noted for its “Pecos Diamonds,” which are quartz crystals formed inside gypsum. The soft gypsum crumbles to expose the “diamonds.” A display of the crystals is in the park’s visitors’ center.
Bottomless Lakes State Park is named for its lakes, which appear bottomless. According to legend, cowboys tried without success to find the bottom with lariats tied together. The lakes’ greenish color, from algae and other aquatic plants, creates the illusion of depth.
first appeared: 5/4/2008
—Visitors to the Rancho de San Juan resort between Espanola (pop. 9,688) and Ojo Caliente can view an impressive shrine carved into a sandstone outcropping on the side of a mesa. Sculptor Ra Paulette spent two and one-half years in the mid-1990s creating the hand-carved work of art named “Windows in the Earth.” The shrine’s interior curved walls, cathedral windows, inlaid stones and mirrors to reflect light have made the site a favorite location for weddings and small concerts.
first appeared: 3/9/2008
—Santa Fe bills its Spanish Market as the largest exhibition and sale of Spanish colonial folk art in the United States. Held the last weekend of July, it features 250 artists who sell their works in basketry, bone work, furniture, hide paintings, ironwork, pottery and other media. A smaller Winter Market is held each December.
first appeared: 2/24/2008
The Folsom (pop. 75) Museum houses artifacts from the nearby “Folsom Man Site,” where George McJunkin in the early 1900s discovered spear points embedded in ancient bison bones, proving that humans lived and hunted in the area more than 10,000 years ago. The museum also houses information on the Folsom Flood of 1908, which nearly demolished the cattle town.
The town of Folsom was named for Frances Folsom, the 21-year-old beauty who married President Grover Cleveland in 1886.
first appeared: 2/24/2008
—The round barn at the Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs Resort and Spa in Ojo Caliente is billed as the only round adobe barn in the nation. Built in 1924 as a dairy barn, the restored structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
first appeared: 2/10/2008
––The 60-acre Pancho Villa State Park in Columbus (pop. 1,765) is located on the grounds of the former Camp Furlong, where Gen. John J. Pershing launched a counterattack against Mexican Gen. Pancho Villa, who in 1916 led a raid against the base and village and killed 18 people. The park’s exhibit hall contains vehicles and technology used by Pershing, including a full-size replica “Jenny” airplane, a 1916 Dodge touring car, military weapons and other artifacts.
Columbus also is home to the City of the Sun, a small community whose residents build and live in alternative dwellings made of recycled materials, including tires, bottles, cans, adobe, rocks, and papercrete (recycled paper blended with concrete and water).
first appeared: 1/27/2008
—Snowy River, an underground dry river made of calcite crystals, has been found to be flowing with water for probably the first time in 150 years. At more than two miles long, the river is believed to be the world’s largest single calcite formation. It was discovered by four cavers in Fort Stanton Cave in Lincoln County (pop. 19,411) in 2001 and access is restricted to researchers. Snowy River already has been the subject of major scientific findings, including exotic manganese-eating microorganisms and antibiotic-producing bacteria, which hold the potential for medical and industrial advances.
first appeared: 1/13/2008
—As a fund-raiser to combat heart disease, D.J. Jones of Albuquerque took a motorcycle ride in 2006 through all 50 states, a total of 25,000 miles in 169 days, including a ride by cargo ship to Hawaii. She is believed to be the world’s first person to ride the same motorcycle through all 50 states alone.
first appeared: 12/30/2007
Las Vegas (pop. 14,565) has been the location of many films since the early 1900s, when it was known as a silent film capital. Tom Mix, one of the country’s most famous cowboys, settled in the Plaza Hotel and made many of his silent films in and around the town. More recent movies that used Las Vegas as a filming location were Red Dawn, Easy Rider, Convoy, All the Pretty Horses, and Wyatt Earp.
first appeared: 12/30/2007
—“The Solar Capital of the World” is Taos (pop. 4,700), so proclaimed in 1997 by then Gov. Gary Johnson. The town enjoys about 300 days of sunny weather. KTAO-FM, the locally owned 50,000-watt radio station, is solar powered, and each June residents host the Taos Solar Music Festival with a Solar Village where vendors and organizations tout renewable energy.
Famous for its juicy hamburgers, the Bobcat Bite restaurant in Santa Fe was so named because wild bobcats used to hang around the restaurants for scraps from the kitchen.
first appeared: 12/2/2007
—When a flash flood threatened Folsom (pop. 75) on Aug. 27, 1908, telephone operator Sarah Rooke was at the switchboard, warning residents to evacuate their homes for higher ground. She remained on the phone when the flood overtook her own home. Seventeen people drowned in the flood, including Rooke. A granite memorial in Folsom Cemetery, erected by telephone operators throughout the country, commemorates Rooke’s heroism.
first appeared: 11/18/2007
Tucumcari (pop. 5,989) was founded in 1901 as a railroad town by A.D. Goldenberg and several business partners. According to legend, Goldenberg took in two strangers during a three-week-long snowstorm in 1900. The strangers thanked him with the valuable tip that a railroad would soon be laying track through the area.
first appeared: 11/18/2007
—People flying high above a desert mountain near Trementina in San Miguel County (pop. 30,126) can see a mysterious symbol, two overlapping circles with diamond shapes, bulldozed into the side of the mountain. The symbol marks the spot where the Church of Spiritual Technology, a part of Scientology, has built underground vaults to store stainless-steel tablets engraved with the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer who founded the church in the 1950s.
first appeared: 11/4/2007
The 1954 movie
Salt of the Earth depicts the historic strike by a
predominantly Latino union against the Empire Zinc Company in the Silver
City-Bayard-Hanover mining district in 1950-51. Because the miners were
forbidden to picket, their wives took to the lines and eventually won
concessions on mine safety and equal pay for Latinos. The film was shot on
location in Bayard (pop. 2,534) and Silver City (pop. 10,545).
first appeared: 10/21/2007
—Visitors to the Hondo Iris Farm about 25 miles east of Ruidoso (pop. 7,698) can wander among rows of exotic bearded irises, sit on the “hummingbird” porch or view a gallery of paintings, sculptures and jewelry by Hondo artist Alice Warder Seely and others. But the blooming irises, some of them antique varieties, are the main event.
Alice Warder Seely, owner of the Hondo Iris Farm, is a writer, painter, sculptor and jewelry designer whose style is said to reflect her American Indian, Spanish and Anglo heritage. Her work is exhibited in stores and galleries throughout the United States.
first appeared: 10/7/2007
—Rescued cougars, wolves, bear, elk, raptors and other animals that no longer can survive in the wild are cared for by volunteers and paid staff at Wildlife West Nature Park in Edgewood (pop. 1,893). The 122-acre wildlife refuge and zoo features animals and plants that are native to the state. Chuckwagon dinners, music festivals and other events are held at the park, which was opened in 1994 as an educational project of the New Mexico Wildlife Association.
first appeared: 9/30/2007
Novelist Cormac McCarthy, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road, lives in Tesuque (pop. 909) in Sante Fe County, where he spends much of his time at the Santa Fe Institute, a think tank founded by his friend, physicist Murray Gell-Mann.
first appeared: 9/30/2007
—Model trains of various gauges and sizes crisscross the Toy Train Depot in Alamogordo (pop. 35,582). Housed in an 1898 depot, the museum celebrates the region’s railroad heritage with a re-creation of Alamogordo and the surrounding area where trains chug over bridges, through tunnels and along flats. Visitors also can circle the surrounding Alameda Park and Zoo while aboard a 16-inch gauge train.
first appeared: 9/9/2007
—ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson, actor Owen Wilson, hotelier Conrad Hilton and Football Hall of Fame member Roger Staubach are among alumni of the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell (pop. 45,293).
first appeared: 8/26/2007
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