what states border new mexico
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About New Mexico
Where in the United States is New Mexico? Location map of New Mexico in the US.
New Mexico is a landlocked state in the Mountain Division of the southwestern United States. It borders (clockwise) Colorado to the north, Oklahoma and Texas to the east, the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora in the south, and Arizona in the west.
Some History
Native Americans inhabited the territory of what is now New Mexico for thousands of years. Clovis, Folsom, Cochise, Anasazi, and Pueblo Indian societies successive called the land their home.
For more than two centuries, Santa Fe de Nuevo México was a province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the Spanish possessions in Central and North America. It became a territory of Mexico that gained independence from Spain in 1821.
In 1846 United States forces invaded and occupied New Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war between the United States and Mexico in 1848. On 6 January 1912, New Mexico finally became the 47th state of the United States.
New Mexico State Map
General Map of New Mexico, United States.The detailed map shows the US state of New Mexico with boundaries, the location of the state capital Santa Fe, major cities and populated places, rivers and lakes, interstate highways, principal highways, railroads and major airports. You are free to use the above map for educational and similar purposes; if you publish it online or in print, you need to credit Nations Online Project as the source.
More about New Mexico State
Area
New Mexico covers an area of 314,917 km² (121,590 sq mi), making it the 5th largest US state. In comparison, it is about the size of Poland or slightly smaller than half the size of Texas.
Mountains of New Mexico
New Mexico is blessed with mountains; half of the country is mountainous; there are more than 80 named mountain ranges in the state. The rest of the state is dominated by the Llano Estacado, one of the largest plateaus (mesas) on the North American continent, with elevations ranging from 900 m (3,000 ft) to over 1,500 m (5,000 ft) and steep slopes in the eastern, northern and western parts.
Wheeler Peak is the highest of them at 4,013 m (13,167 ft). Nearby Mount Walter is only six meters lower, so the two peaks are often confused with each other. Both mountains are part of the Sangre de Cristo Range, the southernmost mountain range of the Rocky Mountains. The Wheeler Peak Wilderness Area was established to protect local fauna and flora.
In the northwest of New Mexico is Mount Taylor (Navajo: Tsoodził), a 3,446 m tall dormant stratovolcano.
Other prominent mountain ranges are the Sacramento Mountains, the San Andres Mountains, the Black Range, the Chuska and the Zuni Mountains.
Main Rivers
Principal rivers are the Rio Grande (Great River), New Mexico’s longest river, and the third-longest in the USA. The Pecos River has its source near Santa Fe and flows over 1490 km through the eastern part of New Mexico.
Image: US National Park Service
Best of New Mexico
New Mexico is nicknamed the “Land of Enchantment,” and its landscape appropriately offers a variety of amazing sights.
From the footprints of ancient Pueblo societies to a connection to the stars at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array Radio Astronomy Observatory.
New Mexico’s scenery offers heavily forested mountain wildernesses, inhospitable white deserts and snow-capped peaks; there are Aztec Ruins, the Gila Cliff Dwellings and petroglyphs in New Mexico’s West Mesa.
New Mexico for travelers
Highlights on a tourist’s itinerary for New Mexico are:
- Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, is considered one of the world‘s great art cities and is recognized by UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network.
- Albuquerque lies in the shadow of the Sandia Mountains on the Rio Grande; New Mexico’s largest city is 1,619 m (5,312 ft) above sea level. Albuquerque was a stopover on the El Camino Real, a trade route that ran between Mexico City in colonial Mexico and Santa Fe. The city is home to Petroglyph National Monument, one of the largest petroglyph sites in North America, with thousands of prehistoric Native American drawings on volcanic rock.
- Roswell is the United States’ UFO capital; the Roswell UFO incident was named after the town. In the city you will meet many humanoid aliens who are looking for the truth behind the alien/UFO conspiracy theories. To satisfy this need, Roswell has the International UFO Museum and Research Center – with a connected gift store.
- The White Sands National Monument displays an amazing landscape with its rare pure-white gypsum dunes in the northern Chihuahuan Desert. (https://www.nps.gov/whsa/index.htm)
- Bandelier National Monument
Human settlements from around 11,000 years ago. The monument protects Ancestral Pueblo archeological sites within a diverse and scenic landscape. (www.nps.gov/band/) - The Petroglyph National Monument, an archaeological site with thousands of prehistoric Native American drawings near Albuquerque. (https://www.nps.gov/petr/index.htm)
World Heritage Sites
Pueblo Bonito in the Chaco Culture National Historical Park; the center of the Chacoan world seen from the canyon rim. The Chaco people quarried sandstone blocks and transported lumber from far away; they built fifteen large urban complexes that remained the largest buildings ever constructed in North America until the 19th century.
New Mexico has not one but three outstanding UNESCO World Heritage Sites, more sites than any other US state.
1. Chaco Culture
Chaco Culture National Historical Park in San Juan and McKinley counties. The site is registered as Chaco Culture
Chaco Culture is a network of archaeological sites in northwestern New Mexico that preserves outstanding elements of a vast pre-Columbian cultural complex that dominated much of what is now the southwestern United States from the mid-9th to early 13th centuries.
For over 2,000 years, Pueblo peoples occupied the vast region of the southwestern United States. Chaco Canyon was a major hub of ancestral Pueblo culture between 850 and 1250 and the center for ceremonials, trade, and political activity for the prehistoric Four Corners area.
Chaco Culture National Historical Park (National Park Service https://www.nps.gov/chcu/index.htm)
On 19 August 2013, Chaco Culture National Historical Park became an International Dark Sky Park. [3]
2. Taos Pueblo
Taos Pueblo was a Pueblo Indian settlement from the late 13th and early 14th centuries, consisting of ceremonial buildings and facilities and multi-story adobe dwellings built in terraced tiers.
The site is situated in the valley of a small tributary of the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico.
Taos Pueblo represents a significant stage in the history of urban, community, and cultural life. The settlement was a central trading point between the indigenous population along the Rio Grande and their neighbors in the northwest, the Plains Tribes.
Taos Pueblo has been continuously inhabited and is the largest of these Pueblos that still exist.
3. Carlsbad Caverns National Park
250 million years ago, during the Permian period, the region of today Carlsbad Caverns National Park
was the coastline of an inland sea with a plethora of marine life, whose remains formed a reef. The Permian reef deposits are now the rock formation called the Capitan Limestone.
The karst landscape in the state of New Mexico comprises over 80 recognized caves. The caves are outstanding because of their size, mode of origin, and the abundance, diversity, and beauty of the rock formations within.
Geological processes within the caves continue to form rare and unique rock formations, like stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones, calcite crystals, cave popcorn (coralloids), and sinter terraces, particularly in the Lechuguilla Cave.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Stalactites and stalagmites in limestone chambers, ingredients to make a great tourist attraction. (www.nps.gov/cave/).
Drainage
Five major river systems—the Rio Grande, the Pecos, the Canadian, the San Juan, and the Gila—drain the state. The Rio Grande, which has played an influential role in New Mexico’s history, virtually bisects the state from north to south.
The Canadian River, rising in the Sangre de Cristo range and flowing east across the arid plains, was a useful avenue for explorers despite its deep canyons. The San Juan and Gila rivers lie west of the Continental Divide, in the northwest and southwest, respectively.
Plant and animal life
New Mexico has six vegetation zones, which are determined mainly by elevation. The Lower Sonoran Zone, in the southern sections of the Rio Grande and Pecos valleys and in the state’s southwestern corner, usually occurs at elevations below 4,500 feet (1,400 metres). It includes nearly 20,000 square miles (52,000 square km) of New Mexico’s best grazing area and irrigated farmland.
The Upper Sonoran Zone, comprising about three-fourths of the state and including most of the plains, foothills, and valleys above 4,500 feet, is a region of prairie grasses, low piñon pines, and juniper shrubs. At higher elevations, better stands are a result of more abundant rainfall. The Transition Zone, covering some 19,000 square miles (49,000 square km), is identified chiefly by the ponderosa pine. The Canadian Zone, covering 4,000 square miles (10,000 square km) at elevations of 8,500 to 9,500 feet (2,600 to 2,900 metres), contains blue spruce and Douglas fir. The Hudsonian and Arctic-Alpine zones, above 9,500 feet, are too small in area and too sparsely covered to be of great importance.
