About New Mexico

Interesting Facts About New Mexico

-New Mexico became the 47th state to enter the union on Jan. 6, 1912.
-The nickname of New Mexico is "Land of Enchantment."
-Our flag represents the Zia Sun symbol on a field of yellow.

-The New Mexico motto is "It Grows As It Goes".
-New Mexico has two state songs "O Fair New Mexico" and "Asi es Nuevo Mexico".
-Our state tree is the pinion pine.

-Each October, Albuquerque, New Mexico hosts the world's largest
International hot air balloon fiesta. Here is a picture of an accident from this year's fiesta.

-Santa Fe is the highest capital city in the U.S at 7,000 feet above sea level.
-The largest forest fire in the state's history was ignited on May 4, 2000 near Los Alamos, NM. It burned down many homes.

The Story of the Loretto Chapel Staircase

The Loretto Chapel of Santa Fe, NM. was completed in 1878 and has since seen many additions and renovations such as the introduction of the Stations of the Cross, the Gothic altar and the frescos during the 1890s.
When the Loretto Chapel was completed, there was no way to access the choir loft, 22 feet above. Carpenters were called in to address the problem but they all concluded access to the loft would have to be via ladder as a staircase would interfere with the interior space of the small Chapel.
To find a solution to the problem, the Sisters of the Chapel made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. Legend says on the ninth and final day of prayer, a man showed up at the Chapel with a donkey and a toolbox looking for work. Months later the elegant circular staircase was completed and the carpenter disappeared without pay or thanks. After searching for the man (an ad even ran in the local newspaper) and finding no trace of him, some concluded that he was St. Joseph himself.

The stairway's carpenter, whoever he was, built a magnificent structure. The design was innovative for the time and some of the design considerations still perplex experts today.
The staircase has two 360 degree turns and has no visible means of support. Also, it is said that the staircase was built without nails -- only wooden pegs. Questions also surround the number of stair risers compared to the height of the choir loft and about the types of wood and other materials used in the stairway's construction.
Over the years many have flocked to the Loretto Chapel to see the Miraculous Staircase. The staircase has been the subject of many articles, TV specials, and movies including "Unsolved Mysteries" and the Kraft movie
The Miraculous Staircase, which legend says was constructed or inspired by St. Joseph the Carpenter, was built sometime between 1877 and 1881. It took at least six months to build, and has two 360 degree turns with no visible means of support.
The Loretto Academy was closed in 1968, and the property was put up for sale. At the time of sale in 1971, Our Lady of Light Chapel was informally deconsecrated as a Catholic Chapel.
Loretto Chapel is now a private museum operated and maintained, in part, for the preservation of the Miraculous Staircase and the Chapel itself.

Smokey The Bear
In May of 1950 a fire ravaged 17,000 acres of forest in the Capitan Gap area of the Lincoln National Forest of New Mexico. Trying to get away from the fire, a tiny bear cub clawed his way up a Ponderosa Pine tree. With badly burned feet the cub clung tenaciously to the side of that pine tree, until he was found by one of the fire crews who had been fighting the fire. The cub was briefly named "Hotfoot" but fire fighters involved quickly called him Smokey Bear.

Little Smokey Bear was flown by Game Warden Ray Bell, to a veterinary hospital in Santa Fe. Once healed he was flown to the National Zoo in Washington, D. C. where he quickly became a "star". In July of 1950 U. S. senator Chaves of New Mexico, presented Smokey The Bear to the school children of America.
By 1952 Congress passed into law a bill governing the commercialization of the name and image of Smokey The Bear. At about the same time Smokey The Bear was given his own zip code because of the large amount of mail he has receiving.
As a result of Smokey The Bear's life, the Village of Capitan, the State of New Mexico, the nation and possibly the entire world has been altered to some degree. A study was made of the school children in the U. S. and selected foreign countries using familiar slogans to be finished when only the first few words were given. With, "ONLY YOU", more children were able to say, CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES", than any other motto presented.
New Mexico adopted the black bear as the state animal in 1962.
Smokey The Bear died in 1976 at the age of 26 and was buried near his birthplace in the Lincoln National Forest. He is buried in a small park which bears his name, in the heart of the Village of Capitan.
"Remember, Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires."

San Miguel Chapel

The San Miguel Chapel is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was built in 1610. It is the oldest chapel in the United States. In the mid 1800s it served as a mass for St. Michael's High and College. It has paintings of St. Terisa, St. Michael, St. Gertude, St. Frances, and St. Louis IX. It was partially destroyed in 1680 during the Pueblo Revolt. It is still standing strong to this day.

Hatch Chile Festival - Woodstock for Chile Heads

While potatoes are the signature veggie for Idaho, chiles are the official state vegetable in New Mexico (although botanically, the pepper pods are fruits). And of course there's Hatch, NM, the self-proclaimed "Chile Capital of the World".

Normally, the little town, just about 30 minutes driving northwest of Las Cruces, or 3 hours south of Albuquerque, has a population of about 1,000. But on a Labor Day weekend, Hatch's population swells to about 12,000 to 15,000 - most of them chile heads. It's the Hatch Chile Festival! It's not Woodstock - it's Chilestock! On Labor Day weekend, the Hatch "airport" doubles as a fairground for one of the world's most popular chile head events.
Even from a distance, the smoke from dozens of chile roasters can be seen - and smelled. And what a great smell that is!
The year 2000 had the 29th annual chile festival, and more than 40 booths sold arts and crafts, food, and of course, lots of fresh green and red chile at this annual celebration of the area's most famous cash crop. Customers who bought at least one bushel (about 40 pounds) of peppers, got their pods roasted right on the spot. This way, the tough skin can be easily removed, and locals then freeze the peppers, so they have a year-round supply. After all, mild and medium hot local chile is a signature ingredient of many local dishes.

The Story of Los Alamos and the First Nuclear Bomb

In August 1939, German American physicist Albert Einstein sent a letter to U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt that the fission of uranium could be used to create an extremely powerful explosive weapon. This discovery was being used by other nations. The U.S. government established a top secret Manhattan Project in 1942 to develop an atomic device.

The leader of the Manhattan Project was U.S. Army Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves. His team, working in Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer, designed and built the first atomic bombs.

The first explosion was conducted at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The energy released from this explosion was equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. This is a photo of when they detonated the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945 at White Sands Missile Range, which is near Alamogordo, New Mexico. This site is called the Trinity Site.

The Story of Roswell, New Mexico UFO's

The "Roswell incident" began on June 14, 1947, when rancher Mac Brazel found some debris on the spread he managed about 75 miles northwest of Roswell, New Mexico. The junk included sticks, metallic paper, and tape with mysterious writing on it. Total weight: five pounds.

The makings of an alien spacecraft? More like the makings of an alien kite. Brazel probably wouldn't have given the matter much thought, except that 11 days later the first sighting of a "flying saucer" occurred in Washington state. Brazel decided to report his find to the local sheriff, who called the military intelligence office at the Roswell army airfield.
The military guys didn't know what to make of the stuff they collected from Brazel's ranch. But they'd read about flying saucers like everybody else and, let's face it, after you've been stationed a while in an isolated outpost you get a little desperate for excitement. They sent out a press release saying they'd found the wreckage of a flying saucer. The army's top brass went nuts. They immediately confiscated the Roswell junk and held a press conference at which they declared it was the remains of a weather balloon.

The truth wouldn't come out till years later. In 1947 the government was conducting Project Mogul, an attempt to use high-altitude balloons to detect expected Soviet atom-bomb tests. Periodically researchers in Alamogordo, New Mexico, sent up a "balloon train," a string of balloons carrying electronics plus a sticks-and-tinfoil radar reflector. The remains of one of these balloon trains was undoubtedly what Brazel found. In fact, contact with one had been lost when it was less than 20 miles away from his ranch.
The clincher: the tape with mysterious writing. According to Charles Moore, a Project Mogul scientist, the radar reflectors had been made during World War II by a company in New York City's garment district. When early models proved too flimsy, the company did a quick fix by reinforcing the reflectors using tape with stylized flower designs on it.
We now fast-forward to the late 1970s. Renewed interest in UFOs has led researchers to reexamine the Roswell case. Various parties obligingly come forward with tales about having seen or heard about alien crash victims 30 years earlier.
Having consulted with Philip Klass, a noted UFO debunker who's written extensively about Roswell, I'd say what we've got here is a bunch of people who spent too much time in the desert without a hat. Nonetheless entrepreneurs have used this unpromising material to create a veritable industry of Roswell books, films, museums, and more.

Now it's 1995. An English TV producer--a TV producer, for God's sake--comes up with what he claims is a film of an autopsy conducted on the aliens' bodies. Doctors, Hollywood special-effects guys, and even many UFO buffs who see it pretty much roll their eyes.

The thing obviously depicts a bunch of actors in space suits with no idea how a real autopsy is done fumbling over a reject from a Steven Spielberg flick. One giveaway, reported in the July/August 1997 Skeptical Inquirer, was that a standard-issue "danger" sign visible on the wall was in a graphic format not adopted until 1967.
This metal object is the debri was found by a farmer in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico

Go Back