NEW MEXICO

Settled in turn by Native Americans, Spaniards, Mexicans and Yankees, NEW MEXICO is among the most ethnically and culturally diverse of all the states in the US. Each successive group has built upon the legacy of its predecessors; their various histories and achievements are closely intertwined, and in some ways the late-coming white Americans from the north and east have had comparatively little impact. Signs of the region's rich heritage are everywhere, from ancient pictographs and cliff dwellings to the design of the state's license plates, taken from a Zia Indian symbol for the sun – the one near-constant fact of life in this arid land. New Mexico's indigenous peoples – especially the Pueblo Indians, as the name suggests clear descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans – provide a sense of cultural continuity. Despite the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, which forced a temporary Spanish withdrawal into Mexico, the missionary endeavor here was in general less brutal than elsewhere. The proselytizing padres eventually co-opted the natives without destroying their traditional ways of life, as local deities and celebrations were incorporated into Catholic practice. Somewhat bizarrely to outsiders, grand churches still stand at the center of many Pueblo settlements, often adjacent to the underground ceremonial chambers known as kivas, and almost always built in the local adobe style. The Americans who took over from the Mexicans in 1848 saw New Mexico as a useless wasteland.

But for a few mining booms and range wars – such as the Lincoln County War, which brought Billy the Kid to fame – New Mexico was left relatively undisturbed until it finally became a state in 1912. During World War II, it was the base of operations for the top-secret Manhattan Project, which built and detonated the first atomic bomb, and since then it has been home to America's premier weapons research outposts. By and large, people here work close to the land – mining, farming and ranching – with tourism increasingly underpinning the economy. Northern New Mexico centers on the magnificent landscapes of the Rio Grande Valley, which contains its two finest cities: Santa Fe, the adobe-fronted capital, and the artists' colony and winter resort of Taos, with its nearby pueblo. More than a dozen Pueblo villages can be found in the mountainous area between the two, while to the west lie the evocative ancient ruins at Bandelier and Puyι.

The broad swath of central New Mexico along I-40 – the interstate highway that succeeded the old Route 66 – pivots around the state's biggest city, Albuquerque, with the extraordinary mesa-top Pueblo village of Αcoma ("Sky City") an hour's drive to the west. In wild and wide-open southern New Mexico, the deep Carlsbad Caverns are the main attraction, while you can still stumble upon old mining and cattle-ranching towns that have somehow hung on since the end of the Wild West. For many visitors, the defining feature of New Mexico is its adobe architecture, as seen on homes, churches, and even shopping malls and motels. Adobe bricks are a sun-baked mixture of earth, sand, charcoal and chopped grass or straw, set with a mortar of much the same composition, and then plastered over with mud and straw. The color of the soil used dictates the color of the final building, and thus subtle variations can be seen all across the state. However, adobe is a far from convenient material: it needs replastering every few years and turns to mud when water seeps up from the ground, so that many buildings have to be sporadically raised and bolstered by the insertion of rocks at their base.

These days, most of what looks like adobe is actually painted cement or concrete, but even this looks attractive enough in its own semi-kitsch way, and hunting out such superb old adobes as the remote Santuario de Chimayσ on the "High Road" between Taos and Santa Fe, the formidable church of San Francisco de Asis in Ranchos de Taos, or the multitiered dwellings of Taos Pueblo, can provide the focus of an enjoyable New Mexico tour. You'll also become familiar with another New Mexico trademark, the bright-red ristras, or strings of dried chili peppers, that adorn doorways throughout the state; festooned on restaurant entrances, they serve as warnings of the fiery delights that await within.

Central New Mexico
Although to most travelers central New Mexico is an area to be raced through as quickly as possible, it does hold isolated pockets of interest, with the scenery, at least in the west, the main attraction. Dozens of all-American small towns hang on to the last remnants of Route 66, the winding old "Chicago-to-LA" transcontinental highway which has by and large been superseded by high-speed Interstate 40. Albuquerque – New Mexico's largest city, with a third of the state's population – sits dead center, at the intersection of I-40 and I-25. It's also a main stop for Amtrak and Greyhound, and holds New Mexico's only major airport. Though the area east of Albuquerque, stretching along I-40 toward Texas, is among the most desolate parts of the Southwest, one or two towns merit a quick detour off the interstate, thanks largely to Wild West heroes such as Kit Carson and Billy the Kid. The mountainous region to the west of Albuquerque has more to see – above all Αcoma Pueblo, the mesa-top community known as "Sky City."

Northern New Mexico
The mountainous north is the New Mexico of popular imagination, with its pastel colors, vivid desert landscape and adobe architecture. Even Santa Fe, the one real city is, with well under 100,000 residents, hardly metropolitan in scale, and the narrow streets of its small, historic center, though thronged with tourists, retain the feel of bygone days. Ranging along the headwaters of the Rio Grande 75 miles northeast, the amiable frontier town of Taos – immortalized by Georgia O'Keeffe and D.H.Lawrence – is remarkable chiefly for the stacked dwellings of neighboring Taos Pueblo. An hour's drive west from Taos or Santa Fe brings you to Bandelier National Monument, where ancient cliff dwellings were carved out of the same forested volcanic plateau that now holds the eerie Los Alamos National Weapons Laboratory. Alternatively, the hills to the east of the Rio Grande hold a succession of characterful Hispanic hamlets, strung along a scenic mountain highway known as the High Road.

Southern New Mexico
Most of the travelers who come to southern New Mexico are here to visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Crassly commercialized it may be, but, like the Grand Canyon, it's too amazing a geological spectacle to miss. Northwest of Carlsbad, the Sacramento and Jicarilla mountains – home to the MescaleroApache reservation as well as some rough-and-ready resorts with alpine settings to match Taos – rise from the desert plains once roamed by Billy the Kid and other Wild West heroes. The desolate dunes of the White Sands – half national park, half missile and bombing range – spread west of the mountains with the rolling hills of the Rio Grande Valley beyond. The little-visited southwest corner is among the most attractive reaches of the Southwest, with dozens more ghost towns and some fine scenery, plus the undisturbed pre-Columbian remains of the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.

New Mexico State Museums
The Museum of New Mexico is made up of four individual museums, two – the Palace of the Governors and the Museum of Fine Arts – in the heart of downtown Santa Fe, and two – the Museum of International Folk Art and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture – close together a couple of miles away. Admission to each museum costs $5; a more economical option is a $10 ticket, valid for four days in all four museums. All are open daily except Mondays between 10am and 5pm, and also between 5pm and 8pm on Fridays, when admission is free.

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