New Mexico Trivia & Tidbits - Page 14

Looking for New Mexico trivia? Try our list New Mexico little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Biscochito (biz-co-cheeto) is the official state cookie, adopted in 1989 as a sweet tribute to the early Spaniards. The anise-flavored shortbread cookie is popular at weddings, baptisms, and on holidays.

first appeared: 4/6/2003

Lucien Maxwell, frontiersman and friend of Kit Carson, once owned the largest single tract of land—1.7 million acres—in the Western Hemisphere. Most of it was inherited from his father-in-law, Charles Beaubien, who with partners secured a million-acre land grant in 1841 along the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains from the Mexican government. Maxwell lived in Cimarron (pop. 917) and served as first postmaster. In 1870, he sold the Maxwell Land Grant and Railway Co. for $1,350,000 to British investors.

first appeared: 3/30/2003

Unusual rock formations resembling cone-shaped tents hug the steep cliffs of Peralta Canyon, 40 miles southwest of Santa Fe. The pumice and tuff deposits were created by volcanic eruptions and water and wind erosion. In 2001, a 4,114-acre area encompassing the formations was protected as Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument.

first appeared: 3/23/2003

Cool breezes from the Manzano Mountains inspired the name for Mountainair (pop. 1,116), a railroad town built in 1901 atop Abo Pass when the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad expanded westward to Belen (pop. 6,901).

first appeared: 3/16/2003

John Henry Holliday was trained as a dentist in the 1870s, but his career was marred by occasional conflicts with lawmen. His last attempt at running a dentist’s office came in 1879 in Las Vegas (pop. 14,565). When he left after a short time—again in some legal trouble—he joined up with friends in Tombstone, Ariz., where he entered the history books as “Doc” Holliday.

first appeared: 3/9/2003

Zuni artist and muralist Alex Seowtewa has spent years painting murals on the walls of Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission (Mission Church of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe). A restoration of the 1629 church at Zuni Pueblo (pop. 6,367) began in 1968 and Seowtewa has painted Zuni Kachinas—the intangible spirits representing rain, corn, the hunt, and other Zuni beliefs—above the Stations of the Cross. He began work in 1970 and, with the help of his son Kenneth, has almost completed the murals.

first appeared: 3/2/2003

The yucca is also known as the Lamparas de dios, which translates to “Lamps of the Lord.” New Mexico’s state flower gets that name from the bright mass of white flowers that protrude from a center stalk within the plant.

first appeared: 3/2/2003

In 1965, the New Mexico Legislature adopted the pinto bean, or frijol, and the chili as the state’s vegetables.

first appeared: 2/23/2003

The original main street of Silver City (pop. 10,545) is now a ditch. Floods in 1895 turned what had been Main Street into a deep chasm, with buildings on either side separated by the ditch. The Civilian Conservation Corps lined the ditch with masonry in 1936, and Silver City dedicated part of it as a park in 1980, with a seasonal river walk with water from snow melt.

first appeared: 2/23/2003

Chili pepper farmers, processors, and scientists organized the New Mexico Chile Pepper Task Force in 1998 to speed development of mechanical harvesters for the state’s $200 million crop. Most of the state’s 20,000 acres of chilies—paprika, cayenne, jalapeno, long green, and hot peppers—have been hand-harvested.

first appeared: 2/16/2003

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado never found his “Seven Cities of Gold” during his exploration of the Southwest in the 1500s—but he did get a monument for his efforts. The Coronado State Monument in Bernalillo (pop. 6,611) is near a spot where the Spanish explorer and his men camped. Its displays include the ruins of the Kuaua Pueblo, settled in the 1300s and later abandoned.

first appeared: 2/9/2003

Fossils, including petrified logs, and unique rock formations can be found at the Bisti Wilderness near Farmington (pop. 37,844).

first appeared: 2/9/2003

Ezequiel C’de Baca was New Mexico’s first lieutenant governor and the nation’s first Hispanic governor, but died of an illness a few weeks after his inauguration in 1917.

first appeared: 2/2/2003

New Mexico is one of the major petroleum producers of this country with two principal oil and gas producing areas, in the San Juan Basin and the Permian Basin.

first appeared: 2/2/2003

The ghost town of Mogollon once got a makeover of sorts for the filming of the movie My Name is Nobody. Producers of the movie, released in 1974 and starring Henry Fonda, gave some of the buildings in the old mining town new facades for the film.

first appeared: 1/26/2003

Aztec Indians had nothing to do with the villages in the Aztec Ruins National Monument, northeast of Farmington (pop. 37,844). The ruins are actually from settlements of the Anasazi, ancestors of the Pueblo. Early settlers mistakenly thought the ruins were of Aztec villages.

first appeared: 1/19/2003

Santa Fe means “holy faith” in Spanish. The full name of the city is actually La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis, or “The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi.”

first appeared: 1/12/2003

Dexter (pop. 1,235) is home to the country’s only facility dedicated to breeding endangered fish. The Dexter National Fish Hatchery and Technology Center has been involved in the restoration of endangered fish since 1978 and helped protect such species as the Colorado squawfish, razorback sucker, and Yaqui catfish.

first appeared: 1/5/2003

Ann Nolan Clark began writing her own stories when she taught at American Indian schools in New Mexico. Her one-room pueblo school could not afford books, so she wrote children’s stories about American Indians and animals. She later won the 1953 Newberry Medal—a top children’s book honor—for The Secret of the Andes.

first appeared: 12/29/2002

Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman, all of New Mexico, were the first people to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon—in 1978 in the Double Eagle II.

first appeared: 12/22/2002

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