New Mexico Admitted to the Union
New Mexico was admitted to the United States as the 47th state on January 6, 1912, following a lengthy and complex history. Prior to statehood, the region was inhabited by diverse Native American civilizations, notably the Pueblo Indians, and saw extensive exploration by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. Over the years, New Mexico transitioned from a Spanish territory to part of Mexico after its independence in 1821, and subsequently became a U.S. territory after the Mexican-American War in 1848.
Efforts to establish a civil government and achieve statehood faced numerous challenges, including political setbacks and conflicts with Native American tribes. Although New Mexico was designated a territory in 1850, its statehood aspirations were delayed for decades due to various political dynamics, including the failed joint statehood proposal with Arizona. Eventually, the U.S. Congress passed an enabling act in 1910, allowing New Mexico to adopt a state constitution and gain admission to the Union, culminating in its official statehood in early 1912. This timeline reflects the region's rich cultural tapestry and the ongoing interactions among its diverse populations, shaping New Mexico's identity as it entered the United States.
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New Mexico Admitted to the Union
New Mexico Admitted to the Union
On January 6, 1912, New Mexico entered the Union as the 47th state. The area now known as the State of New Mexico has a long and varied history extending back to pre-Columbian times. Ancient southwestern Indian civilizations antedated the flourishing culture of the Pueblo Indians found by the early 16th-century Spanish explorers along the Rio Grande basin. Spanish interest in the area began in 1528, when Nuño de Guzman, the governor of New Spain, heard about the supposed hoards of gold and silver in seven towns so large that they could be compared in size to Mexico.
Determined to reach these settlements, vaguely described as being northward between the two seas and across a grassy desert for 40 days, Guzman assembled an army of 400 Spanish soldiers and some native auxiliaries. He set out in December 1529 to find what became known as the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola, but lost his way. In 1539, a new viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, outfitted an exploration party under the direction of the Franciscan missionary Fray Marcos de Niza. A full-scale expedition headed by Captain General Francisco Vásquez de Coronado followed in 1540–1542. Since none of these groups had discovered the legendary golden cities or even gold deposits, further Spanish government-sponsored expeditions north of Mexico were suspended by royal ordinance. However, the Southwest remained an attractive field for missionary activity among the Pueblo peoples.
In 1582, Antonio de Espejo led an expedition to rescue some Franciscan friars. His reports about the great mineral wealth and good grazing lands in much of the Pueblo country led in 1598 to Don Juan de Oñate's founding of the first permanent colony in New Mexico at San Juan de los Caballeros, 30 miles north of present-day Santa Fe. It was the second oldest permanent settlement in what is now the United States, the first having been made at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. In the winter of 1609–1610, Santa Fe, the new capital of the Province of New Mexico, was founded.
Colonization in the 17th century proceeded at a slow pace. Having failed as a source of easy gold, New Mexico was of interest to the Spanish authorities only as a frontier buffer for northern Mexico and as a mission field. Santa Fe was the only major city, although sparsely populated Spanish settlements had spread along the Rio Grande from Taos in the north to Isleta south of the capital. Friction between Spanish civil and religious authorities and conflicts with the Native Americans further hindered the development of Spanish New Mexico. The exploitation of native peoples through forced labor and the exaction of tribute, as well as the suppression of their religion, led to a series of sporadic uprisings beginning as early as 1640. The unrest culminated in the Apache revolt of 1676 and the Great Pueblo Revolt of 1680, which forced the Spaniards to abandon their holdings in New Mexico and retreat back to Mexico for 13 years. A campaign led by Captain General Don Diego de Vargas Zapata Lujan Ponce de León restored Spanish rule in 1692.
In the 19th century, the Spanish became alarmed at the westward expansion of the Americans, especially after the United States acquired the huge Louisiana Territory in 1803. The Spanish undertook measures, which ultimately proved unsuccessful, to prevent American penetration of Spanish-held Texas and New Mexico. Trade with the new American settlements in the Missouri Valley was discouraged until Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821. The independent Mexican republic, which promptly assumed control of New Mexico, legalized economic contacts with the United States.
As early as 1822, William Becknell took the first wagon loads of merchandise across the plains from Missouri to New Mexico, gaining the title Father of the Santa Fe Trail. This important caravan route, operating from Westport (now part of Kansas City) and Independence, Missouri, grew by leaps and bounds. The spring wagon train in 1824, for example, carried $30,000 in goods to Santa Fe and returned with $180,000 in precious metals and $10,000 in furs. In 1860, the route was used by 3,033 wagons, 9,084 men, 6,147 mules, and 27,920 oxen. However, the laying of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad to Santa Fe in 1880 sounded the death knell for the famous trail.
At the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846, the Army of the West, commanded by Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny, crossed into New Mexican territory and occupied Las Vegas on August 15 and Santa Fe three days later. On August 23, the construction of Fort Marcy, the first U.S. military fort in New Mexico, began northeast of Santa Fe. On September 22, Kearny set up a civil government for New Mexico, appointing Charles Bent, a partner in the largest southwestern fur-trading company, as governor. At the end of the Mexican War in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded Mexican New Mexico, which encompassed present-day Arizona and other territory, to the United States.
Delegates meeting at Santa Fe on October 10, 1848, petitioned Congress for a civil territorial government and for an end to Texan claims to New Mexican land. In May 1850 a constitutional convention framed a constitution for the state of New Mexico, which was subsequently ratified by the inhabitants and submitted to Congress. However, the bid for statehood failed. Instead, a provision of the Compromise of 1850, namely the Organic Act of the Territory of New Mexico, made New Mexico a territory and granted it a civil territorial government. Texas, by then a state, relinquished all claims to the area. The newly established Territory of New Mexico extended all the way to California. It was enlarged in 1853 by the purchase from Mexico of 45,535 square miles west of the Rio Grande and south of the Gila River, known as the Gadsden Purchase.
New Mexico's present boundaries were fixed in the early 1860s. The creation of the Territory of Colorado on February 28, 1861, took away the northeastern section of New Mexico territory, while the Territory of Arizona was fashioned out of New Mexico's western half on February 24, 1863.
New Mexico was a frontier backwater during the Civil War. In 1861, only 22 slaves lived in the sparsely settled territory, and it was of little strategic importance to either the Union or the Confederacy. For the settlers, however, the withdrawal of Union troops, felt to be more essential elsewhere on the military front, meant that large sections of New Mexico lay open to devastating Apache and Navajo raids. Conflicts with the tribes continued after the war, due in large part to the American policy of confining native peoples to reservations in the poorer lands bypassed by white settlers. A peace commission negotiated a treaty with the Navajos in 1868, permitting them to transfer to reservations set up on their home ground of northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. New reservations in other sections of the territory were also established for the Mescalero Apache in 1873 and for the Jicarilla Apache in 1880. Nevertheless, Geronimo, one of the last prominent Apache leaders, went on the warpath as late as 1885 before his final capture and deportation from the territory.
Another bid for statehood was blocked in 1906, when the people of Arizona rejected a bill proposing Arizona's joint statehood with New Mexico. New Mexico's half-century struggle to obtain statehood ended on June 20, 1910, when Congress passed the enabling act providing for the admission of New Mexico and Arizona as separate states, once each had adopted a suitable state constitution. On January 6, 1912, New Mexico, having fulfilled the requirement, formally entered the Union.