New Mexico Trivia & Tidbits - Page 18

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

The Chihuahuan Desert, stretching from Albuquerque south into Mexico, is the largest desert in North America. It covers 175,000 square miles, extending into Texas and Arizona.

first appeared: 2/10/2002

Tree New Mexico, a grassroots, nonprofit group dedicated to planting trees on public lands, was founded by a group of high school students in 1990 and since then has planted more than half a million trees in the state.

first appeared: 2/3/2002

In Santa Fe, people burn their troubles once a year. Each September, residents erect a 30-foot statue made of paper and cardboard designed to look like the ancient god Zozobra, the master of doom and gloom. The statue is set ablaze during a citywide celebration in order to bring in a new year of prosperity—free of the accumulated gloom of the previous year.

first appeared: 2/3/2002

The 47-acre New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces salutes 1,000 years of farming and ranching and features a working farm and ranch with live demonstrations of sheepshearing, blacksmithing, and butter churning. The museum has exhibits and illustrations ranging from replicas of Anasazi structures to antique tractors.

first appeared: 1/27/2002

Workers at a mine near Glenwood (pop. 300) in the 1890s had to maintain a three-mile water pipeline hung on the walls of the Whitewater Canyon by walking on the pipeline about 20 feet above Whitewater Creek. The pipeline carried water to the mine and the town of Graham. The pipeline is gone now, but the experience of walking on what the workers called the “catwalk” can still be had. The 1.1-mile Catwalk National Recreation Trail is a metal walkway built into the canyon wall in the 1930s to duplicate the path taken by the pipeline.

first appeared: 1/20/2002

More than 500 dinosaur footprints can be seen in sandstone at Clayton Lake State Park near Clayton (pop. 2,524). Dinosaurs roaming the area more than 100 million years ago left the footprints.

first appeared: 1/13/2002

The Petroglyph National Monument near Albuquerque has more than 15,000 stone carvings that date back more than 2,000 years. The images were carved by those who have inhabited the area for the last 12,000 years.

first appeared: 1/6/2002

New Mexico’s state seal, adopted in 1913, shows an American bald eagle with its wings spread. The eagle shields the official symbol of the Mexican Republic—a Mexican brown, or Harpy, eagle with a snake in its beak.

first appeared: 12/30/2001

Madonna of the Trail, an 18-foot statue of a pioneer woman holding a child in her arms while another clings to her legs, pays tribute to women who moved West during the 1800s. The statue outside Albuquerque is one of 12 markers long the old wagon train route from Maryland to California.

first appeared: 12/30/2001

New Mexico honors, with a planetarium, the man who discovered Pluto. The Clyde W. Tombaugh Space Theater in Alamogordo (pop. 35,582) offers movies about space and hosts astronomy programs. Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, is considered the father of the astronomy research program at New Mexico State University.

first appeared: 12/23/2001

The El Rancho Hotel near Gallup (pop. 20,209) was built in 1937 by R.E. “Griff” Griffith, brother of the famed film producer D.W. Griffith. Stars who stayed there while shooting on location included Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, and Ronald Reagan.

first appeared: 12/16/2001

Roswell got its start when Van C. Smith opened a lone store near the start of the Chisolm Trail. The professional gambler filed his claim for property in the area in 1871 and then named the settlement Roswell in honor of his father.

first appeared: 12/9/2001

The town of Hobbs (pop. 28,657) is actually a consolidation of three separate communities born of an oil boom in 1928. When oil was discovered in Hobbs, the resulting population boom prompted the creation of two new communities—New Hobbs and All Hobbs. The communities later merged into one.

first appeared: 12/2/2001

The Rock Hound State Park near Silver City (pop. 10,545) allows collectors to take up to 15 pounds of semiprecious stones such as jasper, geodes, and perlite.

first appeared: 12/2/2001

When Tucumcari (pop. 5,989) served as a tent city for workers on the Rock Island Railroad at the turn of the century, it was known as “Six-Shooter Siding.” After becoming a town, it was named Tucumcari for a nearby mountain.

first appeared: 11/25/2001

The Acoma Pueblo near Albuquerque is believed to be the longest continually inhabited city in the United States. The pueblo, established atop a 367-foot-high rock rising from the desert floor, was built in about A.D. 1150 and is still home to about 4,600 people.

first appeared: 11/18/2001

The highest point in New Mexico is Wheeler Peak (formerly Taos Peak) in the Rockies. It stands 13,161 feet above sea level.

first appeared: 11/11/2001

American Indians who inhabited south-central New Mexico more than 1,000 years ago left signs of their presence chiseled into rocks near Alamogordo (pop. 35,582). The Three Rivers Petroglyph Site has more than 21,000 rock carvings left by the Mimbres, a prehistoric Indian culture. Carvings include symbols of animals and people, along with abstract symbols of unknown meanings.

first appeared: 11/11/2001

The easiest way to get to the top of Sandia Peak near Albuquerque is to ride the world’s longest aerial tramway. The Sandia Peak Tramway takes riders 2.7 miles from the base of the mountain to its 10,378-foot peak in about 15 minutes.

first appeared: 11/4/2001

Scientists at the National Solar Observatory-Sacramento Peak near Cloudcroft (pop. 749) use an enormous telescope to study the sun. The Robert B. Dunn Solar Telescope reaches 13 stories above the ground—but more of the structure, equal to 20 stories, is found underground.

first appeared: 10/28/2001

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