By Michael Ann Sullivan On 16 July 1945 the U.S. Army and civilian scientists attached to the Manhattan Engineering District detonated the first atomic device in the New Mexico desert at Trinity Site, a remote location sixty miles northwest of Alamogordo. At 5:30 am in the morning a brilliant…
By Kim Suina In the late seventeenth century a brewing revolt orchestrated by the Pueblos to remove the Spanish gripped communities along the Camino Real. Under the primary leadership of Pueblo leader Po’pay, a spiritual head from San Juan Pueblo, Pueblos and Apache allies attempted to expel Spanish settlers…
By Suzanne Stamatov The U.S. government operated two internment camps in New Mexico. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, and the roundup of Japanese-Americans began in California, the Justice Department named New Mexico as a site for internment camps. Between March 1942 and April 1946, the…
4 10 1827 By William H. Wroth Lew Wallace (1827-1905) served as territorial governor of New Mexico from 1878 to 1881. Wallace was born in Brooksville, Indiana, on April 10, 1827, and moved to Indianapolis in 1837 when his father David Wallace was elected governor of Indiana. With the…
4 22 1904 By Michael Ann Sullivan Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born 22 April 1904 to Julius and Ella Oppenhiemer. Julius, a German-Jewish immigrant, came to America from Germany in 1888. His father started with nothing and worked hard to become a successful cloth importer. His mother Ella came…
Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley led his force of 2,500 men across the Rio Grande River and up the east side of the river to the ford at Valverde, north of Fort Craig, New Mexico, hoping to cut Federal communications between the fort and military headquarters in Santa Fe….
Glorieta Pass was a strategic location, situated at the southern tip of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, southeast of Santa Fe, and on the Santa Fe Trail. In March 1862, a Confederate force of 200-300 Texans under the command of Maj. Charles L. Pyron encamped at Johnson’s Ranch, at…
WHEREAS a treaty between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic was concluded and signed at the City of Mexico on the thirtieth day of December, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three; which treaty, as amended by the Senate of the United States, and being in the…
Following the appointment of James Gadsden to president of the South Carolina Railroad Company, his goal was to connect the Southern transcontinental railroad to the Pacific. Engineers advised Gadsden, however, that the most direct and practicable route for the Southern transcontinental railroad would be south of the United States…
Mesilla Plaza; In the center of the plaza of Old Mesilla is a small bandstand painted white. On its south side, facing Mexico is a painted scene of the Mexican and United States flags crossed at their poles with the letter “M” above and number “54” below. To tourists,…
