New Mexico
Northwest
Welcome to Indian Country, a place that holds a wealth of Native American culture. Walk in the footsteps of the Anasazi, an ancient people who lived in Chaco Canyon, now a National Historic Park featuring dramatic rock formations. Explore America's largest Indian reservation, the Navajo Nation, as well as the Zuni, Acoma, and Laguna pueblos, and the Jicarilla Apache Nation. Walk the streets of Gallup and discover the Native American arts. Witness the natural desert beauty of the Four Corners.
In the late 1800s, the Santa Fe Railway used the Indian culture to attract rail passengers to the West until the early 1970s when Amtrak took over. When Route 66, the first major multistate highway, was built motorists claimed the Northwest's section its most memorable.
This region is now preserved for posterity, so come learn about its deep history. Nearly every major landmark in the Northwest has some type of Native American legend connected with it. There's Mount Taylor Ship Rock Peak, El Malpais and Cabezón Peak, as well as the Bisti Wilderness Area and the Chuska Mountains, to name a few.
North Central
Welcome to a region we call North to Adventure and Central to Everything. Bring your energy and enthusiasm to enjoy endless recreational activities, art, history, and great cuisine. This is the landscape that inspired Georgia O'Keefe's startlingly colorful and shapely paintings. Allow it to do the same to you - ski or snowboard on our powdery snow (Taos Ski Valley, Ski Santa Fe, Angel Fire Resort, Red River, and many others), climb our highest mountain, Wheeler Peak (13,161 feet), or raft through the cavernous Rio Grande Gorge. Hard to miss, it dominates the landscape of the Enchanted Circle (a too-short, very scenic 86-mile drive) between the towns of Taos and Angel Fire. Also hard to miss is Santa Fe, our state's capital and home to North America's oldest church and world-renowned art galleries, marketplaces, and performance venues.
Northeast
Welcome to the land "where the plains meet the mountains." Visit Capulín Volcano National Monument, an extinct volcanic cone (inactive now for 10,000 years) and you can say you saw the plains of Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. Still visible are the deep wagon-wheel ruts left by those frontiering souls traveling the 175-mile Santa Fe Trail from Missouri to our capital city. Explore the Army post ruins established in 1851 at the Fort Union National Monument near Las Vegas, NM and you'll learn about the soldiers whose job it was to protect the trail. Also around Las Vegas, check out the spring and fall commutes of waterfowl and birds of prey at the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge.
You may be surprised and delighted to learn that if you're an angler, a boater, or a Scuba diver, the Northeast region of New Mexico is paradise. Catch pike, bass, catfish, and trout at any number of the lakes in the area - Conchas, Eagle Nest, Maloya, Maxwell, McAllister, Morphy, Springer, Storrie and Ute, among others or waterski, canoe or sail in these desert bodies of fresh water. For Scuba divers from around the world, there's the Blue Hole in Santa Rose, an 81-foot-deep clear pool that's a lovely 63-degree temperature year-round.
Central
Come enjoy the "Heart of New Mexico." Nearly smack in the geographic middle is Albuquerque, our largest city and only metropolitan area. Here you can find the Kodak International Balloon Fiesta, Sandia Peak Ski Area and World's Longest Tramway, the Albuquerque Biological Park, numerous museums, art galleries, performance halls, vineyards, and historic Route 66. While the city and the surrounding area has a contemporary, bustling feel, the legends of the past are present and preserved.
Now a thriving city, Albuquerque was once unchartered territory sought after by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado who was in search of what proved to be a highly elusive legend - the Golden Cities of Cíbola. What he found were vast, beautiful landscapes and a rich Pueblo heritage. The Santa Ana, Sandía, Zia, and Isleta pueblos remain and do well, most of them operating successful business ventures, mainly in the form of Las Vegas-style casinos that feature nationally known musical acts.
Southwest
Welcome to Old West Country, a region home to many old tales that still get spun to this day. To name a few: Billy the Kid was a kid for a spell in Silver City; the 13th century Mogollón Indians carved cliffside dwellings into the rock of the Gila Mountains (now called Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument); those same mountains later claimed the lives of many legendary frontier men and in 1924 were designated as the first wilderness area in the country; La Mesilla is where Confederate soldiers raised a flag calling it the capital of both New Mexico and Arizona; more gold mining towns than you can count went boom and bust here (check out Mogollón, Kelly, Kingston, and Chloride) and it's said that you can still feel the ghosts of a time past in towns like Shakespeare and Steins.
In Old West Country you'll find our state's second-largest city, Las Cruces (Spanish for "the crosses"), so named because it was the site of a cluster of crosses marking the graves of a group of travelers from Taos who were ambushed by Apaches in 1830, our largest lake, Elephant Butte (36 miles long), and the "Chile Capital of the World," an agricultural village called Hatch, where more than 30,000 acres of our addictive chile is grown and celebrated every Labor Day.
Southeast
Start by spending some time at the largest petroglyph site in the Southwest - Three Rivers Petroglyph National Recreation Site claims more than 21,000 ancient symbols scribed on their rocks and we challenge you to find at least half! And speaking of large - the southeast has what's been referred to by many as the 8th Wonder of the World - Carlsbad Caverns National Park invites you to explore some of the largest caves in the world - there are 100 known, 870-foot underground caves where the collection of stalagmites, stalactites, and Mexican freetail bats will leave you speechless. So may the world's richest quarter-horse race in Ruidoso Downs. Also in Ruidoso is the 2nd largest ski mountain in New Mexico - Ski Apache at 12,000 feet in the Lincoln National Forest has some of the best warm-weather powder in our state. For a different take on mountains of white, be sure to travel to White Sands National Monument outside of Alamogordo, where you can hike through the largest natural reservoir of gypsum in the world
And then there's Roswell, famous for what is now known as the Roswell Incident, a UFO story that is most definitely out of this world. For those of you who need a little background - allegedly, a flying saucer crashed here in 1947. In addition to an annual UFO festival, Roswell hosts the International UFO Museum and Research Center where you can decide for yourself about the crash through exhibits and programs.
New Mexico Board of Tourism
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