On 6 January 1912, President William Howard Taft sat down at his big desk in Washington, dipped a pen, and signed a proclamation that made New Mexico the 47th state of the United States. People in Santa Fe, the state's tiny mountain capital, set off fireworks and rang church bells. A brand-new flag was raised with 47 stars - though it only flew for a month before Arizona joined in too, bumping the count up to 48.
New Mexico had been waiting a very long time. It had been a Spanish colony, then part of Mexico, then a U.S. territory after the Mexican-American War in 1848. For 62 years its people had asked Congress to let them in. Many in Washington kept saying no, partly because most New Mexicans spoke Spanish and partly because the land was full of high deserts, ancient pueblos, and the homelands of the Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo peoples who had lived there for thousands of years.
Today New Mexico is known as the Land of Enchantment. Its red mesas, white sand dunes, and chilli-pepper farms draw visitors from around the world. The state designed itself a beautiful yellow flag with the red sun symbol of the Zia Pueblo people. Scientists at Los Alamos and giant telescope arrays out in the desert do cutting-edge research there. And every October, hundreds of hot-air balloons rise above Albuquerque in the biggest balloon festival on the planet.
