The Centennial Letters Project
Do your part for the Centennial by writing a letter about your life in 2012. The New Mexico History Museum will collect letters throughout the year and offer a selection of them for visitors to read. Most important, we'll hold onto them for future historians to learn more about our lives.
Some of the things you could write about include descriptions of your house and neighborhood, places you shop, and things you like to eat. What games do you play? Where do you go to enjoy the outdoors and what does it look like today? What kind of job do you have and what's the status of that industry? What do you worry about? What gives you hope? What is it about New Mexico that makes it your home place and heart place?
Spread the word among your family, friends, school groups, businesses and libraries.
Send your letters—handwritten, typed or computer-printed—to Centennial Letters Project, New Mexico History Museum, 113 Lincoln Ave., Santa Fe, NM 87501.
The Struggle for Statehood.
Audio re-enactments of arguments for and against New Mexico's entry into the union, produced by aural historian Jack Loeffler.
Listen to audio here >>
Moments In Time
Fifteen short videos about New Mexico's unique and diverse history, ranging from early filmmaking in New Mexico to the story of the Palace of the Governors, the Rough Riders, Billy the Kid and more. Produced in collaboration with KNME, the documentaries will soon have classroom curricula tailored to each one.
View videos here >>
Computer Interactives
Check out online versions of features available in our museum. One of the keys to understanding New Mexico statehood is to look at how our boundaries changed over time.
Shifting Boundaries explores those changes and can prompt some interesting discussion questions. Among them: What if New Mexico really had ended up with the Grand Canyon?
The Threads of Memory explains Spain's lengthy – and lasting – history in the state.
The Treaty of Guadalupe offers bilingual versions of this historic document and examines how it continues to impact the state today.
The Segesser Hides looks at details within this hide painting of 17th- and 18th-century expeditions by people whose descendants still live in New Mexico.
View Interactives Here >>
47 Stars – a special New Mexico History Museum exhibition
January 6 – November 25, 2012
On April 4, 1818, Congress enacted the Flag Act of 1818, setting forth a rule that no new stars could be added to the flag until the Fourth of July immediately following a state's admission to the union. New Mexico became a state on January 6, 1912, swiftly followed by Arizona on February 14, 1912. By coming in second, Arizona would receive its just due on July 4, 1912, when the official flag of the United States switched from 46 to 48 stars. But New Mexicans wanted a flag of their own to proclaim their elevation from territory to statehood. Eager U.S. flag manufacturers were happy to help. Thus was born the unofficial 47-star flag. Visit the History Museum to see the flag on display in the main exhibition Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now.
Included in the permanent display of Telling New Mexico's statehood section are a state seal made of spoons and other utilitarian tools by Shapleigh Hardware in St. Louis; a photo of the 1910 Constitutional Convention; President Taft's proclamation of statehood and the pen he used to sign it; and the top hat worn by William McDonald to his inauguration as New Mexico's first governor.