100 facts about New Mexico as it marks 100 years of statehood

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1. Jan. 6, 1912 ? President William Howard Taft signs Proclamation 1175 admitting New Mexico to the union. The state has a population of about 330,000. Bernalillo is the largest county, just ahead of San Miguel.

2. Oct. 13, 1913 ? An explosion kills 263 coal miners in Dawson, Colfax County. History repeated in 1923 when another mine explosion killed 123 workers. The town itself would die in 1950 after the old Phelps Dodge Corp. closed the Dawson mines.

3. 1915 ? The University of New Mexico denies admission to Birdie Hardin because she is black. UNM in 1921 began basing admissions on qualifications, not skin color.

4. March 9, 1916 ? Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa sends his army to attack the small border town of Columbus, N.M. Ninety-eight people died in the fighting, 80 of them Villa's cohorts. The U.S. Army then invaded Mexico in an unsuccessful attempt to capture Villa.

5. October 1916 ? Elephant Butte Dam is completed. The $10 million project created the largest man-made reservoir in the world, even bigger than Aswan Dam in Egypt.

6. 1919 ? An oil gusher named Illinois No. 3 starts Eddy County's lucrative oil and gas productions.

7. June 5, 1919 ? Carlsbad approves an ordinance creating a paid fire department. Firemen received $1 a fire.

8. 1920 ? A new state flag is chosen. Dr. Harry Mera, a physician and archeologist from Santa Fe, de-signed the winning entry. The red and yellow flag

features a Zia. The colors mirrored the flag of Spanish conquistadors, who in the 1500s entered what now is New Mexico.

9. Sept. 25, 1922 ? Midwest Refining Co. drilled New Mexico's first commercial oil well near Shiprock, on the Navajo Nation. It produced 375 barrels a day, prompting Midwest to drill 11 more wells.

10. Jan. 24, 1923 ? Aztec Ruins, a collection of Anasazi structures dating to 1000 A.D., is designated as a national monument. Now overseen by the National Park Service, it is part of an extensive collection of ruins, including Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde.

11. Oct. 25, 1923 ? Carlsbad Caverns becomes a national monument. About 1 million Mexican freetail bats live there.

12. Nov. 11, 1926 ? U.S. Route 66 is commissioned. This famous 2,448-mile highway ran through eight states, from Chicago to Los Angeles. New Mexico had the largest section, 487 miles. Route 66 was re-moved from the U.S. highway system in 1985.

13. Sept. 24, 1927 ? Charles Lindbergh lands in Lordsburg to dedicate the state's first airport and pro-mote aviation. Another well-known aviator, Amelia Earhart, would also make a stop there.

14. Nov. 16, 1928 ? Vigilantes in Farmington kidnap Raphael Benavedes from his hospital room and lynch him. A Mexican national, Benavedes allegedly assaulted the wife of a rancher who owed him money. A sheriff's posse shot Benavedes, landing him in the hospital. His killing was the last known lynching in New Mexico.

15. Dec. 31, 1929 ? One of Las Cruces' most prominent residents, Ralph W. Goddard, was electrocuted at radio station KOB FM. Goddard was dean of engineering at what is now New Mexico State University when he started the station in 1920.

16. Early 1930s ? W.J. Stahmann and his son, Deane, plant the first major pecan orchard in the Mesilla Valley. Stahmann Farms is now the largest family-owned pecan producer in the world.

17. Aug. 13, 1932 ? Notorious outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow kidnap Eddy County Sheriff Joe Johns after he spots them in Carlsbad. They released Johns unharmed the next day in San Antonio, Texas.

18. April 7, 1933 ? Carlsbad native Bruce Cabot plays a key role as a blockbuster movie opens. Cabot rescues the character portrayed by Fay Wray in "King Kong."

19. May 6, 1935 ? U.S. Sen. Bronson Cutting, R-N.M., dies in a plane crash in Missouri. Many Republicans thought Cutting could contend for the presidential nomination in 1936. New Mexico did not elect another Republican U.S. senator until Pete Domenici in 1972.

20. Feb. 22, 1938 ? Elizabeth Garrett, daughter of the late sheriff Pat Garrett, sang the state song, "O Fair New Mexico," at the dedication of the Do?a Ana County Courthouse. Blind since birth, Garrett gave the crowd a first look at her new guide dog.

21. Early 1942 ? U.S. military leaders need a place for a laboratory to create a nuclear weapon, which they consider critical to winning World War II. They select a secluded school for boys in the desert of Los Alamos. So it was that a small New Mexico town became prominent in the Manhattan Project, codename for development of an atomic bomb.

22. Feb. 6, 1942 ? The U.S. government begins taking land from Alamogordo-area ranchers, promising to return it when World War II ends. Construction begins on Alamogordo Army Air Field. It will evolve into what is now Holloman Air Force Base.

23. June 1942 ? The first of some 1,500 Japanese-Americans begin arriving at an internment camp in Lordsburg. The U.S. government removed them from their homes in California, Oregon and Washington after Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor.

24. July 13, 1942 ? Carlsbad Army Air Field opens to train bombardiers. Many would fly missions over Europe in World War II.

25. July 1943 ? Las Cruces becomes home to Italian prisoners of war. Two old Civilian Conservation Corps camps were transformed into prison camps. By 1945 more than 1,000 Italian and German POWs were held at the camps. They worked at Mesilla Valley farms.

26. 1945 ? The federal government begins recruiting Nazi German scientists to work in the United States under codename Operation Paperclip. Most of the scientists, numbering almost 500, were deployed at White Sands Proving Ground, N.M., Fort Bliss, Texas, and Huntsville, Ala., to work on guided missile and ballistic missile technology. This led to the foundation of NASA.

27. July 16, 1945 ? The first atomic bomb is detonated at Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range. The test was codenamed Trinity.

28. Oct. 5, 1946 ? Aspencade is launched in Ruidoso as a community picnic. The event later became a nationally known motorcycle rally, as well as a line of Honda motorcycles.

29. July 8, 1947 ? The public information officer for Roswell Army Air Field issues a press release saying soldiers had recovered a crashed "flying disk." Next day, a general said the object actually was a weather balloon, but the initial report fueled wild speculation about UFOs and aliens. It became known as The Roswell Incident.

30. May 25, 1948 ? Ernie Pyle's home in Albuquerque is designated as the city's first branch library. Pyle, the brave and gifted World War II correspondent, died in the Pacific in 1945 after being hit by a sniper's bullet.

31. March 16, 1949 ? New Mexico legislators select the roadrunner as the state bird. It was adopted under the name Chaparral Bird.

32. March 31, 1950 ? The town of Hot Springs changes its name to Truth or Consequences. It accepted a challenge from radio-show host Ralph Edwards, whose program was named Truth of Consequences.

33. May 9, 1950 ? A badly singed bear is rescued from the Capitan Gap fire by soldiers from Fort Bliss. The cub was later named Smokey and became the symbol of programs to prevent forest fires.

34. Summer 1950 ? Paddy Martinez of the Navajo Nation discovers uranium on Haystack Mountain near Grants. The ensuing mining boom would last 30 years, spurred by the world race to develop atomic en-ergy.

35. Oct. 17, 1950 ? Miners in Grant County begin a strike that would last 15 months. After Empire Zinc Corp. was able to enjoin strikers from picketing, the miners' wives took their place. The strike inspired the 1954 movie "Salt of the Earth."

36. June 30, 1951 ? A judge in Las Cruces acquits Pittsburgh Steelers running back Jerry Nuzum of mur-der. Nuzum, 27, was charged with killing an 18-year-old waitress, Ovida "Cricket" Coogler in 1949. Her murder was never solved.

37. Oct. 27, 1953 ? President Dwight Eisenhower awards the Medal of Honor to Hiroshi Miyamura of Gallup. During an epic battle in Korea in 1951, Miyamura killed more than 50 enemy soldiers before he was wounded. He endured 28 months as a prisoner of war, accounting for the delay in his receiving Amer-ica's highest award for valor in combat.

38. 1956 ? Lonnie Allsup opens the first of what would become the largest chain of convenience stores in the state. Launched in Roswell but based in Clovis, Allsup's has more than 300 stores in New Mexico and Texas.

39. Aug. 24, 1956 ? A team from Roswell wins the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. The Lions Hondo Little League team defeated a club from Delaware Township, N.J., 3-1 in the championship game.

40. Feb. 25, 1957 ? The Crickets with Buddy Holly record "That'll Be The Day" at the Norman Petty Studio in Clovis. It was released in late May and by June it reached No. 3 on the pop charts and No. 2 on rhythm-and-blues charts.

41. Oct. 8, 1958 ? Lt. Clifton McClure reaches an altitude of 99,900 feet in the Manhigh III balloon, launched from Holloman Air Force Base. The flight, to test effects of space on the human body, saw his body temperature rise to more than 108 degrees. McClure survived and in 1960 received the Distin-guished Flying Cross.

42. January 1959 ? The Fireballs, a band from Raton, release their first records. The group becomes nationally prominent. Its later songs included "Sugar Shack."

43. Jan. 9, 1959 ? The television Western "Rawhide," with scenes shot in Tucumcari, debuts on CBS. Paul Brinegar, who played Wishbone on the series, grew up in Tucumcari.

44. Nov. 16, 1959 ? Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger Jr. embarks on Project Excelsior I, to test the effective-ness of parachutes. His first jump above the New Mexico desert is from an altitude of 76,400 feet. His jump in August 1960 would be even more impressive ? from 102,800 feet.

45. June 12, 1962 ? Abo Elementary School in Artesia is the first public school in the United States to be constructed completely underground. The school had a concrete slab roof and was designed to function as a fallout shelter capable of housing 2,160 people. Abo closed in 1995 because of high maintenance costs.

46. June 13, 1962 ? Congress approved the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, connected to Navajo Dam. The Navajo Agricultural Products Industry now farms about 70,000 acres south of Farmington, producing potatoes, pinto beans and other crops.

47. Sept. 24, 1964 ? The first firing of an Apollo engine occurs at the new NASA Testing Facility east of Las Cruces. It continued testing propulsions systems for all Apollo flights until 1971.

48. August 1965 ? Farmington hosts its first Connie Mack World Series, the largest amateur baseball tournament in the country. Open to teams from the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, the tourna-ment has been held in Farmington since.

49. Dec. 8, 1966 ? A new state Capitol building is dedicated. The only round capitol building in the coun-try, the structure near Downtown Santa Fe cost $4.7 million.

50. 1967 ? President Lyndon Johnson rejects a portrait by New Mexico artist Peter Hurd. Instead, it is donated to the Smithsonian museum, and a joke takes hold at the White House: "Artists should be seen but not Hurd."

51. June 5, 1967 ? Chicano activist Reies Lopez Tijerina leads a raid on the Rio Arriba County Courthouse. His group was trying to free its jailed members and make a citizen's arrest of the district attorney, with whom it was warring. Members of the group shot and wounded a jailer and a state police officer, and they took a sheriff and a reporter hostage.

52. 1968 ? The state creates a film office to attract moviemakers. Gov. David Cargo said this was the first economic development department in the country targeting Hollywood.

53. May 30, 1968 ? Bobby Unser becomes the first member of his Albuquerque-based family to win the Indianapolis 500. His brother, Al, and nephew, Al Jr., also would become Indy champions.

54. June 26, 1969 ? Columbia Pictures releases "Easy Rider," starring Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. The Las Vegas jailhouse was a prominent location in the movie about two bikers on a trek from Los Angeles to New Orleans.

55. 1969-70 ? The Hobbs High School basketball team averages an incredible 114 points a game for the season. These high-flying Eagles finished 26-1 and won the state championship under legendary coach Ralph Tasker.

56. May 8, 1970 ? The University of New Mexico is a powder keg as Vietnam war protesters and the National Guard face off. National Guard soldiers had shot and killed four students at Kent State University in Ohio four days earlier. UNM President Ferrel Heady defuses the tension by meeting with students for hours and then walking alongside 1,500 war protesters.

57. Dec. 15, 1970 ? President Nixon signs a law returning 48,000 acres, including Blue Lake, to Taos Pueblo Indians. The U.S. government had taken the property in 1906.

58. 1972 ? The Albuquerque Dukes become a triple-A farm team of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dukes manager that season was a quotable up-and-comer named Tommy Lasorda.

59. September 1972 ? Catherine Carr, 18, of Albuquerque wins gold medals in the 100-meter breast-stroke and the 4x100 meter medley relay at the Summer Olympics in Munich.

60. Dec. 11, 1972 ? Silver City's Harrison Schmitt walks on the moon. Schmitt was one of three astronauts on Apollo 17, the last American lunar mission.

61. 1973 ? Goddard High School in Roswell allows Nancy Lopez to join the boys' golf team. Goddard has no girls' team, but Congress passed the Title IX law mandating gender equality in school athletics. Lopez helps Goddard win two boys' state championships, then goes on to a hall-of-fame professional career on the women's tour.

62. October 1973 ? The first Peanut Valley Festival is held on the campus of Eastern New Mexico Univer-sity in Portales. New Mexico now produces 46 million pounds of peanuts a year, according to the state Department of Agriculture.

63. April 21, 1974 ? The burned and beaten bodies of two Navajo men were found in Chokecherry Can-yon. Another Navajo man's body was discovered later. Three white Farmington High School students were prosecuted as juveniles in the murders. They did short stays in reform school.

64. 1975 ? The white-sided jackrabbit is listed as an endangered species by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. Today, about 60 of these jackrabbits exist in the United States. All of them live in Hi-dalgo County, the New Mexico Bootheel.

65. 1976 ? Four members of the Vagos Motorcycle Club are freed from New Mexico's death row. They were wrongly convicted in the 1974 kidnapping and murder of a student at the University of New Mexico.

66. Dec. 17, 1979 ? The University of New Mexico fires basketball coach Norm Ellenberger after an inves-tigation shows a player's academic transcript was falsified. The scandal widened and became known as Lobogate.

67. Feb. 2-3, 1980 ? Thirty-three inmates die in rioting at the New Mexico State Penitentiary near Santa Fe. Other prisoners killed them, claiming they were snitches.

68. March 30, 1982 ? The Space Shuttle Columbia lands at Northrup Strip near Holloman Air Force Base. It was the first and only time a space shuttle landed in New Mexico after a mission.

69. Nov. 29, 1982 ? With sales of denim jeans in decline, Levi Strauss & Co. announces it will close its plants in Clovis and Hobbs. The Clovis factory employed 235 people and the one in Hobbs had 180 work-ers.

70. March 11, 1983 ? A jury in Las Cruces decides 10-2 that the Albuquerque Journal did not libel William Marchiondo. Marchiondo, an attorney, claimed the newspaper defamed him in 1977 when it published a photo of him playing cards with a headline saying "Organized crime showing interest in New Mexico."

71. April 4, 1983 ? Jim Valvano's North Carolina State team upsets Houston, 54-52, to win the NCAA basketball championship in Albuquerque. The game, at UNM's Pit, was part of the last Final Four played on a university campus.

72. July 11, 1988 ? Three inmates escape from the Penitentiary of New Mexico in a helicopter. The girl-friend of one prisoner hired an unsuspecting pilot, then pulled a pistol and ordered him to fly into the prison yard. The prisoners were soon caught. The state charged the pilot as an accomplice, but attorney F. Lee Bailey got him an acquittal.

73. Feb. 10, 1990 ? Two gunmen kill four people in a morning robbery at a Las Cruces bowling alley. Three others were wounded. Those who died were 26, 13, 6 and 2 years old. The killers were never caught.

74. May 14, 1993 ? A seemingly healthy man living on the Navajo Nation collapses and soon dies of acute respiratory failure. His girlfriend died that same week under similar circumstances. Scientists identified the disease that killed them as hantavirus. It would cause 45 deaths in the Southwest between 1993 and 1995.

75. Aug. 23, 1993 ? A report on the "Taos Hum" is released but sheds no light on the cause of the unex-plained sound residents have complained about for years. The low-pitched hum was described as similar to the noise of a distant diesel engine. Its origin remains a mystery.

76. June 20, 1997 ? Casino gambling is legalized in New Mexico. The law permits electronic gambling devices and "high-stakes gambling" in casinos on Indian reservations. Slot machines are allowed at horse tracks.

77. July 17, 1997 ? The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum opens in Santa Fe, 11 years after her death. It is the first art museum dedicated to the work of a woman artist of international stature.

78. 1998 ? For the first time since its founding in 1891, a woman leads the Corps of Cadets at the New Mexico Military Institute. She was Heather Christensen of Roswell.

79. March 1999 ? After years of studies and protests, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant opens in the Chi-huahuan Desert outside Carlsbad. WIPP is an underground repository for nuclear waste.

80. May 28, 1999 ? DNA from an animal led to a murder conviction for the first time in U.S. history. A hair from a reddish-brown pit bull mix was in the sock of Elizabeth Ballard, a Ruidoso woman who was strangled and left in the desert. The hair connected the murder to the dog's owner, Charles Martinez, 41.

81. April 17, 2000 ? President Clinton becomes the first sitting U.S. president to make an official visit to the Navajo Nation. He met with residents of Shiprock.

82. Aug. 20, 2000 ? A natural gas pipeline explosion kills 12 members of a family camping along the Delaware River south of Carlsbad. The explosion, caused by a corroded section of pipeline, becomes a catalyst for safety improvements.

83. Oct. 8, 2000 ? Roberto Estrada of Las Cruces set a Guinness world record for making the largest en-chilada. His was 10.5 feet in diameter. The record has since been broken.

84. April 9, 2002 ? The first federally funded memorial to soldiers in the Bataan Death March is dedi-cated. "Heroes of Bataan," an eight-foot bronze statue at Las Cruces Veterans' Park, features the cast footprints of march survivors.

85. Sept. 14, 2002 ? Bill Richardson, the Democrats' candidate for governor, shakes the hands of 13,392 people at the New Mexico State Fair and a UNM football game against Baylor. Richardson's feat made "Ripley's Believe It Or Not." He won the election seven weeks later.

86. March 9, 2005 ? State Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino argues that El Paso, Texas, should be part of New Mexico, based on old surveying errors. His proposal died, keeping his hometown of Albuquerque as New Mexico's largest city.

87. June 17, 2005 ? The Legislature approves the hot-air balloon as the official state aircraft. This is a tribute to the annual Hot Air Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, which began in 1972 and is the largest air show of its kind in the world.

88. July 14, 2006 ? The Rail Runner begins service between the Downtown Albuquerque, Los Ranchos and Sandoval County stations. The train's routes would expand from Belen to Santa Fe. In all, the project cost more than $380 million.

89. Dec. 19, 2006 ? David Iglesias, U.S. attorney for New Mexico, announces that he has been forced to resign. An appointee of President George W. Bush, Iglesias said Republicans looking for a political advan-tage were behind his ouster. Iglesias said U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici and U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson called him before the 2006 election to ask whether he would be indicting a Democrat.

90. March 12, 2007 ? New Mexico outlaws cockfighting. It was a triumph for state Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, D-Dona Ana, who for 18 years introduced bills seeking the ban. Louisiana was left as the only state where cockfighting was legal.

91. June 21, 2007 ? Four former football players who sued New Mexico State University for religious discrimination receive a $165,000 settlement. Coach Hal Mumme said neither he nor his staff did anything wrong, but the school paid the money to dispose of the case.

92. July 26-27, 2008 ? Flash flooding causes more than $20 million damage around Ruidoso. Raging wa-ters ripped out nearly a dozen bridges. About 900 people had to be rescued, and one died in the floodwa-ters.

93. Feb. 2, 2009 ? A woman out for a walk on Albuquerque's West Side finds a human bone protruding from a trail. Police investigate and discover the skeletal remains of 11 women and one unborn child in makeshift graves. The killings remain unsolved.

94. March 18, 2009 ? Gov. Bill Richardson signs a bill outlawing the death penalty. New Mexico was the 15th state to ban capital punishment.

95. May 2, 2009 ? Mine That Bird, a 50-1 long shot, wins the Kentucky Derby. The gelding for a time was stabled at Sunland Park. His owners were from Roswell.

96. Dec. 31, 2010 ? On his last day in office, Gov. Bill Richardson decides not to pardon Billy the Kid. The case involved the killing of a sheriff more than a century earlier. Richardson reviewed whether territorial governor Lew Wallace reneged on a promise to pardon the Kid in return for grand jury testimony in another case.

97. March 10, 2011 ? Scandal shakes the border town of Columbus. Its mayor, police chief and a village trustee were among 11 people indicted on suspicion of smuggling firearms to Mexico.

98. March 18, 2011 ? The state Legislature, after days of rancorous debate, agrees to expand Katie's Law. It requires that DNA samples be collected in every felony arrest. The law is named for Katie Sepich, raped and murdered by a stranger at age 22 in Las Cruces.

99. April 5, 2011 ? Gov. Susana Martinez signs a bill making it illegal to claim that chile grown elsewhere is from New Mexico.

100. June 27, 2011 ? The Las Conchas Wildfire, which burned for nearly a month and threatened the town of Los Alamos, is mostly contained. It destroyed 63 homes and burned 156,593 acres.

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Santa Fe Bureau Chief Milan Simonich can be reached at msimonich@tnmnp.com or 505-820-6898. His blog is at nmcapitolreport.com.

Contributing to this story were Michael Johnson in Alamogordo, Martha Mauritson in Carlsbad, Alysa Landry in Farmington, Christopher Schurtz in Las Cruces and Terrance Vestal in Ruidoso.

Source: http://www.currentargus.com/ci_19655930?source=rss_viewed

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