New Mexico: Arid, Squarish, Newer than Mexico

Courtesy New Mexico Tech: an awesome image.

New Mexico is a state with right angles. It comes into corners with three other states. The only time I've been to New Mexico when I stepped onto that side of the monument, which is actually on an Indian reservation. By the way, New Mexico has a rich native history, starting with the Clovis culture, one of the oldest civilizations documented in North America. They ate mastadons! And possibly disappeared! Later was the Anasazi, who, of course, also disappeared. Was it a meteor? Aliens? Over-hunting? But anyway, now New Mexico is the home of Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, and Ute Indians. ALSO: 43% of the state's population is Hispanic, though Spanish is not actually one of the state's "official" languages, contrary to popular belief. New Mexico is full of a bunch of national forests, parks, and monuments. It's full of pueblos, mountains, and deserts and not really very much water. The Spanish first looked into the area while searching for some sort of set of seven gold cities which sounds shiny. The area became a Spanish province in 1598, and the city of Santa Fe was established ten years later. It is old. It was part of New Spain for awhile, then Mexico proper, and then the Great American Mullet won us a buncha land. Then we got that little square nub at the bottom through the Gadsen Purchase in order to accommodate some railroad shit. The area has been a trade and travel route since pre-Columbian times. New Mexico became our 47th state in 1912. It became awesome during WWII when we stationed our atomic research in Los Alamos hooray! Bombs! There are still several research facilities and three Air Force bases in New Mexico.

Awesome abandoned ancient Anasazi site in New Mexico!

ROSWELL! ROSWELL!

The city of Santa Fe apparently has a hoppin' art scene and was home to Georgia O'Keeffe of vaginal imagery fame. They have aerospace shit, and also passenger railroads. New Mexico's current governor is overachiever Bill Richardson, who looks even more cartoonish than normal now that he has a beard. A few weeks ago, the state abolished the death penalty, hooray! That's all I got.