New Mexico

A new Mexico

The name is Spanish, Nuevo México, and it is older than the country of Mexico. In the 1500s Spanish explorers pushing north from New Spain named the region after Mexico, the Aztec heartland in the Valley of Mexico, hoping to find wealthy cities like the ones they had found there. The Catholic Encyclopedia says the name probably began with Francisco de Ibarra, whose expedition returned in 1565 claiming to have found “a new Mexico”; other accounts credit expeditions of the early 1580s. Either way, the name was in common use by the 1590s, long before the modern nation took the name Mexico at independence in 1821.

Four centuries of capitals

Spanish colonists led by Juan de Oñate arrived in 1598, making a village near Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, renamed San Gabriel, their first capital. In 1610 Governor Pedro de Peralta founded Santa Fe as the new seat of the colony, and its Palace of the Governors became the seat of government. Santa Fe has been the capital ever since, under Spain, under Mexico after 1821, and under the United States, which took control in 1846, with one long break: the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 drove the Spanish government out until 1693. The capital page tells the story, including today’s Roundhouse, the only round state capitol in the country.

A long road to statehood

New Mexico’s territorial period began in 1850 and lasted more than six decades. President William Howard Taft finally signed it into statehood on January 6, 1912, making it the 47th state, a few weeks before Arizona.

The Zia sun

New Mexico’s flag, adopted in 1925, is strikingly simple: a red sun symbol of Zia Pueblo on a yellow field, in the red and yellow of old Spain. Its four groups of four rays reflect the sacred number four of the Zia people. The flag even has official salutes in English and Spanish, calling it “the Zia symbol of perfect friendship among united cultures.” Zia Pueblo’s leaders, for their part, say the state never asked permission to use their sacred symbol.

Land of Enchantment

The state’s nickname comes from the title of Lillian Whiting’s 1906 book about New Mexico. The State Tourist Bureau and New Mexico Magazine began promoting it in 1935, it has been on license plates since 1941, and in 1999 it became the official nickname. The motto on the seal is Crescit eundo, “It grows as it goes.”

Chile, cookies and Christmas

New Mexico has 38 official state symbols, and many of them taste good. Chile and the pinto bean became the state vegetables together in 1965, after lawmakers argued that the two foods could not be separated. The anise-flavored bizcochito became the state cookie in 1989; the secretary of state says New Mexico was the first state with an official cookie. The state even has an official question, “Red or green?”, the choice of chile servers ask diners about, and an official answer: “Red and green or Christmas.” The roadrunner is the state bird and the yucca the state flower. The American black bear is the state animal; Smokey Bear, the fire-prevention icon, was a black bear cub rescued after a fire in New Mexico’s Lincoln National Forest. Other symbols include turquoise, the bolo tie, the squash blossom necklace and the hot air balloon. See them all on the New Mexico symbols page.

Land and people

New Mexico covers 121,590 square miles, 5th among the states, but with about 2.13 million residents in 2025, 36th in the country, it has just 17.5 people per square mile. It borders Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and Arizona, and Mexico to the south. Albuquerque, with about 557,000 people, is the largest city, followed by Las Cruces, Rio Rancho, Santa Fe and Roswell.