Everything You Need to Know About the State of New Mexico (NM)

Colonized by Spain, the land that is now New Mexico became U.S. territory as part of the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, though New Mexico did not become a U.S. state until 1912. During World War II, New Mexico was the site of the top-secret Manhattan Project, in which top U.S. scientists raced to create the first atomic bomb, which was tested at the Trinity Bomb site, near Alamogordo, on July 16, 1945. In 1947, Roswell, New Mexico, became a topic of speculation about extraterrestrial life when a local farmer discovered unidentified debris on his property, which some believed was the remains of a crashed alien spacecraft. Visitors to New Mexico get frequent attractions like the Very Large Array telescope in Socorro and the historic city of Santa Fe, which artist Georgia O’Keeffe famously called home.

It is one of the Mountain States and shares the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. New Mexico is also bordered by the state of Texas to the east-southeast, Oklahoma to the northeast, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua to the south and Sonora to the southwest. New Mexico was officially recognized as the state on January 6, 1912. The state capital is Santa Fe.