Relocating to New Mexico?

Enjoy your adventure as you visit the best New Mexico relocation resource available today.

Before you start your journey, take a minute and review what makes New Mexico a great place to work and play.

What makes New Mexico real estate worthwhile?

From scrabbly deserts in the south to snow-capped crests in the north, New Mexico offers a rough-hewn landscape of striking contrasts. The Great Plains sweep across the state’s eastern third, giving way to the jagged skyline of the Rocky Mountains in the north, and to the broad, parched lowlands of the Basin and Range Region in the south. The Colorado Plateau, a fractured expanse of wide valleys, gaping canyons, and coarse, flattened heights called mesas, rests in the northwestern part of the state. Both the Continental Divide and the region’s major river, the Rio Grande, stretch the length of New Mexico in a north-south direction. Wheeler Peak, of the Sangre de Cristo range, is the highest point in the state at 4,011 meters (13,161 feet).

The percentage of Hispanic Americans and Native Americans is higher in New Mexico than in any other U.S. state. Of the Hispanic Americans who make up almost 40 percent of the state’s populace, about one-half are Hispanos, descended from the original Spanish settlers. Around 9 percent of the people in New Mexico are Native American, most of whom belong to the Pueblo, Navajo, Ute, or Apache groups. Nearly half of all New Mexicans live within the state’s three largest metropolitan areas of Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Santa Fe. And despite a steady growth rate since the mid-1940s, New Mexico remains one of the most sparsely populated states in the country.

Ancient artifacts unearthed throughout the region indicate that New Mexico has been occupied by humans for more than 10,000 years. Folsom points, ancient stone spearheads found near the town of Folsom in the early 1900s, provided the first scientific evidence that humans inhabited North America as far back as the Ice Age. Thousands of years later the Pueblos, Native Americans who were highly advanced in architecture, the arts, and agriculture, flourished in sophisticated communities built along the Rio Grande.

The first Europeans to explore what is now New Mexico were Spanish treasure hunters who arrived around 1540. By 1610 the region’s first permanent European settlement, called Santa Fe, was established by Spain. Two centuries of uneasy peace lacerated by violent conflict followed as zealous Spanish missionaries employed sword and cross to convert indigenous people. Spain ceded the area to the new Republic of Mexico in 1821, but Mexico's troubled rule of the territory, marred by violent clashes with Hispanos, Native Americans, and the fledgling Republic of Texas, ended in 1848 when the United States acquired it as a spoil of the Mexican War. For the next several decades, New Mexico was notorious as a crossroads of the Old West. Although its reputation was based as much on story as on fact, most Americans of the time fancied New Mexico a lawless land of cattle wars, boot hill graveyards, and Billy the Kid.

Want to know more about New Mexico real estate?

Ruidoso, New Mexico Real Estate Mountain homes and land, horse properties, and luxury homes in the tall cool pines of Ruidoso New Mexico. Free MLS Search

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