Fascinating Facts of New Mexico: Aliens Artists, Atoms

by Marty Gerber

Overview

The who, what, when, where, and how of New Mexico are brought together into an easy-to-read compilation of well-known and unknown information that may sometimes be beyond belief–but always is absolutely true!

This story of this colorful and historic state–organized for easy use in home, office, or school–is told through hundreds of questions and answers about its fascinating land and people. It's a book guaranteed to educate and entertain as it conveys the complex and intriguing story of New Mexico's people, places, and culture, from ancient times to the movies and TV shows being made there today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938288715
Publisher:	Terra Nova Books
Publication date:	02/01/2017
Pages:	92
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

The author has been a writer and editor for many New Mexico publications since first moving to the state in 1979.

Read an Excerpt

1. Why does New Mexico have two state songs?
One is the official English-language song, "O, Fair New Mexico," and the other is the official Spanish-language song, "Asi Es Nuevo Mejico." (There is also an official state ballad, "Land of Enchantment–New Mexico").

2. What New Mexico town has the country's only Merchant Marine cemetery?
Fort Stanton, fifteen miles northeast of Ruidoso. Though it was built to help the Army battle Mescalero Apaches in the mid-1850s, and changed hands twice during the Civil War, the military base there was acquired by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1899 as a tuberculosis hospital for members of the Merchant Marine, since fresh air and sunshine were the only known "cures" then. Some fifteen hundred patients are buried nearby.

3. What church has built a major facility, including underground tunnels, near the isolated little town of Trementina?
The Scientologist-owned Church of Spiritual Technology, which says the purpose of its Trementina Base is to preserve the writings, films, and recordings of founder L. Ron Hubbard for future generations. The texts have been engraved on stainless steel tablets, encased in titanium capsules, and stored deep in a mountainside. Enormous Scientology symbols, visible only from the air, are reportedly intended to guide future Scientologists to the site when they travel here from elsewhere in the universe.

4. Who were the "Harvey girls"?
Young women, mostly from the East, who were hired by Fred Harvey to work in his Harvey House restaurants along the route of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway in New Mexico and elsewhere in the west.

5. Where in New Mexico is the country's oldest church?
It's San Miguel Mission, in Santa Fe. Ground was broken for the chapel in 1610, the year New Mexico's second governor, Don Pedro de Peralta, established La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asa­s, the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi.

6. Where did native people in New Mexico create the state's largest art gallery?
Just a few miles northwest of Albuquerque, where nearly twenty thousand pictures were carved over the centuries into a seventeen-mile basalt escarpment that is now Petroglyph National Monument.