The Land of Enchantment

A History of New Mexico

A Sweeping History of the Great State of New Mexico

For centuries, New Mexico has been a place where cultures collide, adapt, and endure. From the ancient cliff dwellings of Chaco Canyon to the secret laboratories of Los Alamos, from the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 to the meth epidemic of the twenty-first century, this sweeping history reveals a state unlike any other in America.

Here, nineteen pueblo communities maintain languages and ceremonies that predate European contact. Spanish colonial settlements still dot the landscape, their residents descended from conquistadors and settlers who arrived four hundred years ago. Anglo newcomers continue to discover and reshape a place that has been discovered and reshaped many times before. These cultures have fought, exploited, borrowed from, and occasionally understood one another, creating something distinctive and irreducible.

The Land of Enchantment tells the story of a place where beauty and hardship coexist, where ancient traditions confront modern pressures, where the question of what it means to belong is never fully settled. It is a history of resilience and violence, of stunning landscapes and persistent poverty, of a state that remains, in fundamental ways, unlike anywhere else in America—complicated, troubled, and profoundly enchanting.