NEW MEXICO AT 100



New Mexico Centennial

On January 6, 1912, New Mexico became the 47th State in the U.S.

Continuing throughout 2012, communities statewide will commemorate one hundred years of New Mexico statehood: telling stories of the past, while envisioning the state’s next hundred years.

At 11:35 on Friday, January 6, 2012, New Mexicans are being encouraged to honk their car horns for 30 seconds to wish the state Happy Birthday. That's the approximate time President William Howard Taft signed New Mexico into statehood a century earlier.


The history of photography in New Mexico is as old as the history of photography itself. Itinerant daguerreotypists were active here as early as the 1840’s. Later, well-equipped photographic expeditions led by men like Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan came through New Mexico making documentary surveys for the railroads and government, and helping to feed the appetites of Easterners, eager for pictorial information about the newly opened continent. Read the full article in the Collector's Guide.

More: New Mexico: Photographer's Eden