HISTORY
New Mexico, home to 11,000 years of human occupation
The history of New Mexico is based on archaeological evidence, attesting to the varying cultures of humans occupying the area of New Mexico since approximately 9200 BCE, and written records. The earliest peoples had migrated from northern areas of North America after leaving Siberia via the Bering Land Bridge. Artifacts and architecture reveal the complex cultures of ancient times in this region.
The very first written records of the region were made by the Indians who were half Spanish conquistadors, who encountered Native American Pueblos when they explored the area in the 16th century. Since that time, the Spanish Empire, Mexico, and the United States [...] have claimed control of the area.
The area was governed as New Mexico Territory until 1912, when it was admitted as a state. The relatively isolated state had an economy dependent on mining. New Mexico introduced the Atomic Age in 1945, as the first nuclear weapons were developed by the federal government in the research center it established at Los Alamos. Ethnically, New Mexico's population consists of a mixture of Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos. (From Wikipedia, "History of New Mexico".)
