State Of New Mexico – Page 7

January 6, 2005

Happy State Hood to New Mexico

The State Of New Mexico, the state I’m living in, became an official state this day in 1912. At one point the portion of the country that makes up Arizona and New Mexico was one whole Territory, and was split up into two states. More importantly New Mexico was first and Arizona was second, take that you Arizona scum! Oh wait, I was born in Arizona, DOH!

The incorporation of the modern-day state’s territory into the United States was a gradual process. The northeastern corner was ceded by France in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The remainder of what is now New Mexico was then wholly claimed by the Spanish colony of New Spain and its successor state (after 1810), the Republic of Mexico. The incorporation of this territory into the USA came in three stages: the portion to the east of the Rio Grande was claimed by the breakaway Republic of Texas when it seceded from Mexico in 1836; this territory was transferred to the federal government by Texas in 1850.

Most of the western portion of the state (to the west of the river) was surrendered by Mexico under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848. Finally, the southwestern corner of the state (the “boot heel”) was ceded by Mexico under the 1853 Gadsden Purchase. The Territory of New Mexico was established on September 9, 1850; under the terms of the Missouri Compromise, slavery was legal in the territory, but does not appear to have taken significant hold there. The eastern half of the territory became the State of New Mexico, which was admitted to the Union as its 47th member on January 6, 1912, the western half being admitted separately as the 48th state of Arizona on February 14, 1912.

December 16, 2004

ABQ Website 10 Years Old

Thanks to QuirkyBurky for pointing out the the City Of Albuquerque’s website is 10 years old today.

On this day, the City of Albuquerque was one of the first governments in the state of New Mexico to “give birth” to a website. In fact, based upon our research, Albuquerque’s website appears to be the 3rd oldest municipal website in the country, just behind the City of Palo Alto, CA (Feb 1994) and the City of San Carlos, CA (May 1994).

The city has a very useful website. I’ve used it on multiple occasions to look up city services and almost always found what I was looking for.

November 27, 2004

Most Dangerous/Safest Cities in the U.S.

These are the most dangerous and safest cities in America. Nothing in New Mexico showed up in either list. But I was surprised to see Phoenix show up in the top 10 for most dangerous of cities with a population of 500,000 or more. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale showed up under the most dangerous 25 list of metropolitan areas. (I grew up around those areas,)

August 30, 2004

Santa Fe Macintosh User Group

The Mac User Groups (MUGs) are really the singe best resource Mac Users have. I got an email about the Santa Fe Macintosh Users Group but unfortunately I won’t be able to make it this time. (by the way, should this get filed under Macintosh or New Mexico? Darn you iBlog!)

September 1st meeting will be at The College of Santa Fe, 1600 St. Michaels Drive at 7:00 P.M. until 9:00 P.M. the first Wednesday of the month

Tipton Hall: The Santa Fe Macintosh User Group: Location Map: http://santafemug.org/map/index1.html

August 22, 2004

Wrong Kind Of Cactus On New Mexico Poster

The 2004 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is due to start in October. There’s been a bit of hub-bub because of the poster.

The major problem to me is they hired a Texas artist to do the poster. There’s always been a kind of Texas/New Mexico rivalry between the two states but this isn’t my issue. See New Mexico is pretty well know for it’s fancy-smancy artists. Santa Fe and Taos both have quite a few of those types there. I suspect they are at least better known for their artists than Texas.

Second problem is the Texas Artist screwed it up. There’s Balloons and there’s a cowboy. Sounds good. There are also Saguaro cactuses. For those not familiar with the South West United States, these are native to the Sonoran Desert which, “has a quite limited geographical range, centred on southern Arizona and extending into western Sonora (Mexico)” which means they don’t even exists in New Mexico. I know, to the rest of the world these cactuses exist in the desert southwest and that includes New Mexico. But if you want to accurately show one of New Mexico’s few claims to fames then it’s probably a good idea to be accurate on such a little detail. Perhaps the cactuses could be replaced with power lines.

By the way, thanks to Metaquerque for the links.

June 16, 2004

Rio Rancho & Lots Of WiFI

Rio Rancho, New Mexico is just butted up against Albuquerque to the north. Thanks to Intel (the largest employer in Rio Rancho and one of the largest in the state) they will have the worlds largest WiFi hot spot. It will cover 103 square miles including residential homes. Funny since you can barley get DSL and no internet via cable.

I lived in Rio Rancho (often called Rio Rathole) when I first moved here. At the time it was mostly a overgrown truck stop with no roads. The road have improved some and the whole city has grown up a lot, it’s good to see some high tech anything moving in.

[Update:] Check out the submission I made to slashdot. Unfortunately I couldn’t remember my password otherwise I would have tons of traffic coming to this site 🙂

May 12, 2004

New Mexico's Space Port

The Southwest Regional Spaceport located in New Mexico has been chosen as the location of the X Prize competition. The X Prize competition is a contest to get a civilian spacecraft into space and back to earth. The winner gets $10 million US dollars.

I believe the Spaceport is located south of Roswell. On the way back from Carlsbad Caverns last year I recall seeing a sign saying “Future Location of the Southwest Reginal Spaceport” with a big field behind it. I thought it was some crackpot scheme related to the UFO landing near Roswell. Guess not.

May 8, 2004

Lasers + Desert = Kaboom

Wonder what all this vast New Mexico desert is good for? Well some scorpions and tarantulas might call it home but humans use it to test out weapons. The latest is something from science fiction, lasers to blow up missiles. I’ve been out to the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in the middle of the New Mexico and can tell you that they’ve got some weird looking buildings and equipment out there. IT’s been a while but they use to launch missiles from the base quite a bit. It’s kind of a strange feeling when your leaving for work at 5am and can see a while streak with a bright ball at the top of it streaking through the sothern sky.

If you don’t bother to read the press release here is the link to the pictures and video.

April 2, 2004

Modern Ruins

I have traveled between Albuquerque and the Phoenix area about 100 times. I have tried every route possible settling on the Albuquerque to Flagstaff via I-40 then Flag to Phx via I-10. This is the fast way taking less then 8 hours (a lot less if your not worried about Cops). I’ve written about the trip before and some of the sites to see. Some of the interesting parts are the modern ruins of Route 66 along I-40. I never knew Route 66 as a road only what I have seen driving along at high speed and can only imagine what it was like when Route 66 was a real road.

Just west of Albuquerque is the Rio Puerco Bridge. This bridge is an remnant of the orignal Route 66 and the New Mexico highway department has chosen to keep it in tact for history along with a little bit of the original route 66. What facinates me most about this bridge is it appears to be a 1 lane bridge. With people zipping by on nearby I-40 it’s hard to imagine a time when people had to slow down for this. You can read more here. The sign on the bridge reads the following” “This parker through truss located on the historic route 66 was built in 1933. It was fabricated by the Kansas City Structural Steel Company and erected by F.D. Shufflebarger of Albuquerque. It’s 250 good lenght is on eo fhte longest in New Mexico. Repairs and remodeling were completed in 1957. This structure was replaced in 1999 and is being preserved by the New Mexico State Hightway and Transportation Department.”

On down the road in Arizona you will find the Meteor Crater, “50,000 years ago, a huge iron-nickel meteorite, hurtling at about 40,000 miles per hour, struck the rocky plain of Northern Arizona with an explosive force greater than 20 million tons of TNT. The meteorite estimated to have been about 150 feet across and weighing several hundred thousand tons, in less than a few seconds, left a crater 700 feet deep and over 4000 feet across”. You will find a modern vistors center at the crater site itself. What is most interesting is the original visitors outpost located along the old route 66. It amazes me how quickly and easily a building can be come run down so quickly.

I can only imagine what a place Two Guns was back in it’s day. The run down buildings once held wild animals one of them still partially stands to say “Mountian Lions”. There’s a standing bridge crossing the Diablo Canyon which was part of the original route 66 road. The whole place is for sale you as of this writing you can drive up on the property. I assume that is so prospective buyers can take a look at the place. Looks like there was once an attempt at a modern gas station but apparently didn’t get enough business.

Twin Arrows is another abandon outpost along the old Route 66. Looks a little more modern and from the gas price still partly up on the sign it appears to be opened sometime during the last decade at least. I guess people don’t need to stop as often as they use to for gas thought this station looks a lot more interesting than the run of the mill “modern” stations do. There’s more to Twin Arrows then what you can see from the interstate as the old Route 66 loops back and around this gas station to the Padre Canyon Bridge. There’s nothing to stop you from driving along these areas of old Route 66.

You can read more about these sites and others along Route 66 here

Tag: State Of New Mexico