New Mexico Trivia & Tidbits - Page 8

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

Southwest of Lordsburg (pop. 3,379), Granite Gap may be a ghost town today, but in the late 19th century it was home to silver, lead, zinc and copper miners. Residents had to haul water from three miles away to the primarily walled-tent and adobe town, whose first mining claims were recorded in 1879.

first appeared: 9/25/2005

Just outside Aztec, welcome signs read "the home of 6,378 friendly people and 6 old soreheads." Since 1969, the community has bestowed the "honor" on six of its residents based on their community involvement, fund-raising activity and sense of humor.

first appeared: 9/18/2005

Established in the 1860s after gold was discovered nearby, Elizabethtown was the state’s first incorporated town and Colfax County’s (pop. 14,189) first county seat. Named after one of the founders’ daughters, "E-town" boasted 7,000 people, seven saloons, three dance halls, five stores, a school and two churches by 1870. Today, only ruins, a general store and a museum remain.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

During the heyday of travel along Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles, hundreds of billboards promoted "Tucumcari Tonite!"—a town of 2,000 motel rooms. A favorite overnight stopping point in years past, Tucumcari (pop. 5,989) is experiencing a resurgence of tourism with the renewed popularity of travel on the historic highway.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

A 1610 adobe house on East DeVargas Street in Santa Fe (pop. 62,203) is one of the nation’s oldest houses. Built on the site of an ancient pueblo dating to 1200, the house was refurbished in 2003 by Hampton Inn’s Save-A-Landmark program.

first appeared: 8/28/2005

Northwestern New Mexico is home to the 319-acre Aztec Ruins National Monument near Aztec (pop. 6,378). Early settlers wrongly believed that people from the Aztec Empire in Mexico built the structures they found there. Later researchers attributed them to ancestral Pueblo peoples who lived in the area from about 1100 to 1300.

first appeared: 8/14/2005

Truchas (pop. 500), in Rio Arriba County, was one of the settings for the 1988 movie The Milagro Beanfield War, directed by Robert Redford. Located in the Sangre de Cristo foothills, Truchas takes its name from the Spanish word for "trout."

first appeared: 8/14/2005

Founded in 1983, Ganados del Valle—which means "Flocks of the Valley"—in Los Ojos, near Chama (pop. 1,199), is a non-profit, collective enterprise that was created to improve the economic situation of local communities and revive traditional sheep raising and weaving arts. One of its businesses, Tierra Wools, buys wool from local growers, washes, spins and weaves it, and sells the creations from its Los Ojos workshop.

first appeared: 7/31/2005

Transportation was important to Gallup (pop. 20,209) even before it was officially established in 1881. The town began as a stagecoach stop and saloon known as the Blue Goose and then embraced the railroad’s early 1880s arrival by becoming a coal mining center and division terminal. In the 20th century, its location along Route 66 continued the wheeled tradition as cross-country motorists rolled through town.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

Located in the northwest corner of New Mexico in San Juan County, Farmington (pop. 37,844) originally was known as Junction City because of the confluence of three major waterways there: the Animas, La Plata and San Juan rivers.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

Maidenhair ferns, wild orchids and moss thrive not far from desert vegetation such as mesquite and yucca at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, on the western flank of the Sacramento Mountains near Alamogordo (pop. 35,582). The moisture-loving plants survive in the park’s Dog Canyon, where water flows year-round.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

The park’s namesake, Oliver Milton Lee (1865-1941), was one of the area’s best-known ranchers in the 1890s and was elected to the state Legislature in 1918. Lee began building Dog Canyon Ranch in 1893 and continued improving it until 1907, when it was sold. Today, his restored 19th-century ranch house is open to the public.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

The Isleta Pueblo dates to the 1300s and gains its name from the Spanish word for "little island," likely from its location on a tongue of land projecting into the Rio Grande. Composed of Oraibi, Chicale and the main pueblo, Isleta, the community is home to St. Augustine Church, founded about 1612, one of the nation’s oldest mission churches.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

Artist Ernest Blumenschein, one of the original members of the Taos Society of Artists, first visited Taos (pop. 4,700) in 1898. He and his family became residents of the town in 1919, purchasing an adobe house, sections of which had been built in 1797. Today, the Blumenschein Home and Museum preserves the 11-room house, filled with European and Spanish Colonial antiques and original art, as it was when the artist and his family lived there.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

Near Taos (pop. 4,700), the Greater World Earthship Community features "earthships"—homes constructed of earth and recycled materials such as rubber tires. Designed to be environmentally sensitive and fully independent, the buildings use solar power to produce their own electricity, collect rainwater through a cistern system and process wastewater using greenhouse technology.

first appeared: 5/8/2005

The Spencer Theater for the Performing Arts in Alto (pop. 800) contains one of the Southwest’s largest private collections of glass art by Dale Chihuly. The collection includes Crystal Lobby’s "Glowing Sunset Tower," a 14-foot-high, 564-piece conical tower of ribbon-like red and orange glass that weighs 1,200 pounds, and "Indian Paint Brushes," a 177-piece work inspired by a native wild flower.

first appeared: 4/24/2005

Author Tony Hillerman, who lives in Albuquerque, came to New Mexico in the 1950s as a newspaper reporter and editor. Many of his popular novels feature the characters Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police.

first appeared: 4/24/2005

Farmington (pop. 37,844) is the mid-point on the annual Durango-100, a bicycle road tour that begins and ends in Durango, Colo., covering 100 miles in distance and 4,042 feet in vertical gain. While the July event is not a race, most riders finish in less than seven hours, with the fastest coming in at the four-hour mark.

first appeared: 4/10/2005

Chilili (pop. 113)—the site of an American Indian community in the 16th and 17th centuries—was later settled when seven petitioners, representing themselves and 20 others, requested a land grant on March 8, 1841. New Mexico Gov. Manuel Armijo authorized the grant and the petitioners gained possession three weeks later.

first appeared: 4/10/2005

Built in 1923 by Clem "Pop" Shaffer, the Shaffer Hotel in Mountainair (pop. 1,116) is one of the nation’s few pueblo art deco buildings. Shaffer painted the concrete exterior with his interpretations of American Indian and Southwestern motifs.

first appeared: 3/27/2005

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