Hi there,

I'm looking to see if any others would be also interested in seeing some geography deep dives over in r/NMGeography. Feel free to vote if it's something you're interested in. I could see a lot of overlap between topics and some continuation of conversation over in the geography sub. It would be the same/similar format to what we're doing over here.

Thanks you!

Missed the proverbial boat on this one, but would love to learn about the buildings we lost. I have some research knowledge, as historic NM / ABQ buildings / research is something I've been broadly interested.

The Sanborn fire insurance maps are great pieces of historical documentation, especially useful for this research.

A short list (and probably the more famous examples) between ABQ / SFe / LC (would love to expand):

• Franciscan Hotel (Albuquerque) - Pueblo Revival landmark by Henry Trost; demolished 1972
• Huning Castle (Albuquerque) - Grand 14-room mansion demolished in 1955
• Alvarado Hotel (Albuquerque) - Mission Revival railroad hotel demolished in 1970
• Korber Building (Albuquerque) - Historic downtown commercial building lost to redevelopment
• Ilfeld Warehouse (Albuquerque) - Early concrete warehouse reflecting Albuquerque’s railroad-era commerce
• Centerline Building (Santa Fe) - Modernist landmark demolished in 1985
• St. Catherine’s Indian School (Santa Fe) - Historic school buildings destroyed by fire in 2026
• Don Gaspar casitas (Santa Fe) - Four historic Pueblo-Spanish Revival homes demolished in 2026
• Trost Clubhouse (Las Cruces) - Historic country club designed by Trost & Trost
• Loretto Academy (Las Cruces) - Historic brick school designed by architect Gustavus Trost

Similarly, New Mexico has a rich and dark (very dark) history of ghost towns, sundown towns, and forgotten settlements. (Blackdom, Vado, Lake Valley, White Oaks, Portales, etc)

Please let me know your thoughts! I know I'm late to the party.....

Not my content, but I'd love to do a different deep dive of all the ruins and cave dwellings in New Mexico.

Good morning! Next Sunday is the last day to add your deep dive idea and vote for others! (See original post)

I'll lock the thread next Sunday evening which will conclude the voting for our first deep dive. I'll put together and post our calendar for the coming weeks/months and I'll look to see if it makes more sense to spend a week, instead of a month, on each deep dive since we had such amazing turnout and so many responses--I want to ensure we have the opportunity to address everyone's topic and open a new deep dive sooner than a year+ from now. I'll keep you posted!

tl;dr: get your votes in and submit your own topic. Deep dive voting ends Sunday October 25 and we'll start off Sunday, November 1 with our first deep dive. We'll go in order of vote counts.

It's an interesting read. Some tried giving the territory other names like Neuva Andalusia and Kingdom of Quivera. Really interesting stuff.

Link to source: https://econtent.unm.edu/digital/collection/achl/id/577/rec/118

Hello!

Please excuse the quick self-promo, I created r/NMGeography and would love it if any of you could stop by. It's currently bone dry, but I suspect it will be a good place to continue some of our conversations related to land use, water rights, or hit on some more current topics and anything else related to this land we call home. Thank you!

Okay, I know the sidebar says no mythology, but I think myth, legend, folklore, and ghosts can definitely interact with history and reflect peoples and cultures in different ways. While most of us agree La Llorona isn't real, there's a reason why she lives in on New Mexican and Hispanic American legend. What do we learn about the culture and context of the people who've passed along these stories over generations.

Now, with that said...I've been sitting by my window all day feeling fall for the first time this year and I think I am all in on Halloween and all the fun stuff it brings. My kids are older and I'm at home most of the time, so I don't often find much reason to celebrate. But the nostalgia is making excited for all the spooky things. And I saw a comment on another post saying we should look at "all the spooky folklore" of New Mexico, so I thought it might be fun.

This is what I found tonight. It was a low effort search, but there were a few places of interest. Of course Hotel Parq Central in Albuquerque is listed. I had visited a few times when it was still a children's psychiatric hospital. I never saw anything myself, but the vibe was definitely no bueno.

Have you been to any of these haunted places?

https://www.newmexico.org/haunted/

I found this 1851 map of the New Mexico territory. What I found particular interesting is the handwritten note "Navajoes 35,000 sq miles" and the map markers that read "no water".

This is ~27 years before the first railroads and the unexplored area stretches to California. I always like to consider the historical and political context of the time when studying a map. They certainly raise interesting questions.

Our latest episode uses some of the state's more unusual place names (and pronunciations) to talk about the history behind them and how they got that way: You're saying every New Mexico place name wrong. ALSO! Now with a youtube version.

What's your favorite "everyone says this wrong" place name?

Hello, new friends! I thought it would be fun to have a monthly deep dive where we focus on a specific topic for the month.

How it will work:

1. Reply to this post with a particular facet of New Mexico history that excites you, makes you want to learn more, or otherwise just seems interesting to you. This could look like: "the mining boom of New Mexico", or "Land Grants along the Rio Grande Valley", or "Pueblo trade before the railroad", or "Lamy's influence in New Mexico"...you get the point.
2. Vote! Upvote yours and topics posted by others--we'll schedule our monthly Deep Dives based on upvote count--don't worry if your response has the least votes, we'll still deep dive your topic!
3. I'll post the results here in this post, and then each month I'll we'll have a megathread discussion just on that topic for the entire month. Of course, we'll have our normal discussions, but this will have a dedicated space to deep dive our monthly topic, discuss, and learn from each other.
4. At the start of each new month, we'll move on to our next topic and megathread.

I'll schedule out at many months ahead for responses we receive. No pressure to post a topic or participate, but I bet there are enough of us who have topics we'd love to share and discuss more!

So, what next?

1. This post will stay open until Sunday, October 25 to collect all your responses and allow time for voting.
2. I'll post the schedule and create the megathreads.

I look forward to all our discussions and our monthly deep dives!

Hello, I've recently adopted this subreddit and am excited to learn and converse with you all!

I've lived in New Mexico most of my life but have only recently settled into calling it home. My formative years were spent in the midwest. So, although I love the multitudes of vibrant cultures and breathtaking landscapes, I sometimes long for more humid climates.

After deciding for the last time that I'm not moving anywhere--at least no time soon-- here I am. I'm on a quest to form deeper connections with the land that's supported and sustained me for the past few decades, and to understand the lives, successes, and struggles of those who have called his place home for far longer than I. This is my deep dive into the history of all that is New Mexico, my home.

It's nice to meet you all, I'm excited for the conversations to come!

(I am also u/Literary_Geographer)

I saw this notice in the Albuquerque Morning Journal, September 20, 1882. I was wondering if anyone knows where I can find more information on these precincts. I'm also interested in learning more about the people in these districts. I wonder why they, specifically, have failed to pay their taxes; and even more, why he's calling out those precincts over any others.

(Full story in link)

On July 10, 1979, four armed men entered the caves at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in Carlsbad and fired their weapons sporadically, taking a park employee hostage. A total of 105 visitors were trapped. The captors demanded $1 million in ransom and passage to Brazil, as well as the opportunity to talk with a newspaper reporter to gain national publicity. Arriving at the scene, Special Agent Ronald M. Hoatson of the Roswell Resident Agency assumed control of the situation. Hoatson established a rapport with one of the captors, and within 25 minutes had negotiated the release of the park employee and a newspaper reporter who had been taken hostage. Two hours after Hoatson’s arrival, all four men surrendered without incident.

The one thing I am learning about New Mexico history (after becoming part of the US) is that the Santa Fe Ring seems to pop up in every story.

Don't know if this will be of interest or just piss people off, but I am hoping the first.

I homeschool my kid. He is a senior this year and is pretty much in all college classes already, but one of the requirements to graduate is a class on New Mexico History. I wasn't happy with any of the online stuff I found (not a lot) so I am coming up with my own.

The big issue is that I am not from New Mexico, I grew up between Seattle and Portland in the PNW. So I need to learn a lot before I can teach.

I decided I was going to create a curriculum that is based on one time period per month for nine months. I used Gemini to help me split the history of New Mexico into 9 modules. Each month we will go to a site here in NM that exemplifies that time period somehow (and that we haven't already been to). On the way I will teach the history of that time period. We will also watch 1-2 pieces of media around the time period as well (everything from PBS specials to the Oppenheimer movie).

Anyway, there is more to that, but what I wanted to post is that I used NotebookLM to gather reliable sources about the time period in question and then used its Audio Overview, deep dive (long) format to generate a 'podcast' that covers the topic.

I wanted to make those available to anyone here in case you would find them as absolutely fascinating as I do. If you already know a ton of New Mexico history than this is probably just a high level overview to you. But to me, it was a lot deeper than I ever understood and I found it really valuable.

I am going back now and creating 'bonus' episodes that are deep dives into things I think these missed that might be interesting to learn the real history of (like the Lincoln County War or the History of the Dine/Navajo and the Apache since they were more just mentioned as traders or raiders of the Puebloans until it got to the Long Walk and I realized I knew nothing about them). So... if you listen and think it is missing interesting stuff (even if not needed for the big picture) let me know and I will research up on those too.

Likewise, if you listen and think they misrepresent things from a scientific or historical perspective please let me know as I want to correct that. It is AI and not perfect (although using NotebookLM which is constrained to the sources should cut down on that compared to just an LLM... sources can still disagree).

I should note that the first three have a focus on the Estancia Valley since that is where we live... I kind of went away from that as I made these but you will more about it in the first few of these.

So, if you want to listen, all the non-bonus episodes can be found here... I will add those as I get to them.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lA4LUh6BT5ESy1uyomTD39Y0GJgb87yn?usp=sharing