Slideshow: Alluring New Mexico: Engineered Enchantment 1821-2001

Marta Weigle presents a slideshow and signs her new book Alluring New Mexico: Engineered Enchantment, 1821-2001 (Museum of New Mexico Press, $39.95), which examines the many identities of New Mexico. Today officially known as the Land of Enchantment, it has also been the Land without Law, the Land of Heart's Desire, the Land of the Well Country, the Land of Pueblos, and the Land of Sunshine. Since statehood in 1912 it has been dubbed the Colorful State, the Volcano State, the Science State, the Space State, and the Atomic State. Weigle explores all these and more between the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 and the Diamond Jubilee of Route 66 in 2001.

This overview begins with the Birthplace of Montezuma at Pecos Pueblo missions and moves through the Lourdes of America at Chimayo, Carlsbad Caverns, Shiprock and Four Corners, ending with White Sands and Trinity Site, the birthplace of the atomic age. Outlaws Black Jack Ketchum and Billy the Kid, Taos and Santa Fe art colonists, Abiquiu's Georgia O'Keeffe, Pancho Villa raiding Columbus, and Roswell aliens figure among the attractions Weigle explores.  Influential publicity came from the Territorial Bureau of Immigration, the Great Southwest corporate imagery of the AT&SF Railway and the Fred Harvey Company, Route 66, and the New Mexico State Tourist Bureau set up in 1935. It ends with the Department of Tourism's Essence of Enchantment ad campaign following 9/11.

In its illustrations and abundant quotations from ephemeral, newspaper, archival and contemporary historical and popular sources, Alluring New Mexico orchestrates a wide range of voices that engineered a dynamic enchantment which continues unabated in the 21st century.

Marta Weigle is University Regents Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico.  In 2005 she received the inaugural State Historian's Award for Excellence in New Mexico Heritage Scholarship from the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division.  Among her numerous New Mexico books are the co-edited volumes Telling New Mexico: A New History andSpanish New Mexico: The Spanish Colonial Arts Society Collection (both Museum of New Mexico Press) and the co-authored The Lore of New Mexico (University of New Mexico Press).