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by Thomas E. Williamson Walking alone over the uneven ground of the badlands of the San Juan Basin, David Baldwin tugged again at the bridle of his mule, leading it around a hoodoo—a tall pinnacle of banded rock. Baldwin could see his breath in the cold, crisp New Mexico winter air. It was 1879. Baldwin preferred to search for fossils in the winter.
Categories: Landscape and environment, Natural history
By Jason H. Shapiro If I could save time in a bottleThe first thing I'd like to do Is to save every day'Til eternity passes awayJust to spend them with you.Jim Croce The plasma laboratory at the Center for New Mexico Archaeology in Santa Fe is filled with the background hum of vacuum pumps. The gentle noise comes from an island of equipment: stainless steel piping and valves, glass chambers, wires and electrodes, gas cylinders, a radio frequency tuner, and some metal boxes with gauges, knobs, and switches.
Categories: Archaeology
By Nicolasa Chávez Prior to their arrival in the Americas, the Spanish people were already mestizo (mixed), and they brought varied age-old traditions with them to these lands. One such tradition is the reenactment and pageant known as Moros y Cristianos, which represents years of cohabitation, conflict, and cultural assimilation in Medieval Spain. Between 711 and 1492 ACE, the Arab and Berber cultures of Northern Africa ruled and controlled most of the Iberian Peninsula.
Categories: Southwestern history
By Alex La Pierre Photographs by Joy Godfrey In the early 2000s, a piece of pottery was uncovered during archaeological investigations at the Presidio San Agustín del Tucson, a Spanish Colonial and later Mexican adobe fortress founded in 1776 on the frontier edge of New Spain. Once used as table settings for meals, this sherd of polychrome majolica ware had been produced in the central Mexican state of Puebla and emulated an Iberian style of painted tin-glazed pottery originally from Al-Andalus, or Islamic Spain.
Categories: Southwestern history
By Cordelia T. Snow and Stephen S. Post “I rebuilt the Palace of the Governors at my own expense.” Versions of those same words have been spoken by Spanish, Mexican, and American governors—and several museum directors—for more than 400 years. Several centuries of remodeling and maintenance culminated in the Palace’s transformation into the centerpiece of the nascent Museum of New Mexico in 1909.
Categories: Archaeology, New Mexican history
By Frances Levine, Ph.D. Travel on the Santa Fe Trail was not restricted to the hale and hearty. Some travelers made the strenuous journey to try to reclaim their health. Many travelers—men and women—wrote diary entries remarking about their increasingly robust constitution that seemed to come from the pure air and sunshine of the best days on the trail and their connection with nature that came from sleeping under the stars.
Categories: Southwestern history
Kate Kingsbury met her fate on June 5, 1857, while riding with a wagon train carrying people and goods from Missouri to the old Spanish Capital. The trip was rough, but Kate had made it before. Her health was not good, but she was intrepid even up to her final passing. She could not have foreseen that death was not to be the end of the trail for her.
Categories: Southwestern history
By Elizabeth Jacobson At 92, Victor di Suvero is full of vitality, and his mind is swift. I had the pleasure of visiting with him recently in his cozy book-filled apartment at Brookdale, an assisted living facility in Santa Fe, with a view from the portico that opens onto a tree-filled courtyard. His family’s story is a fortunate one. Di Suvero’s father was a Sephardic Jew whose family converted to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition, but still maintained the knowledge of their Jewish ancestry.
Categories: Poetry
By Various Authors Did We Come Here? By Victor di Suvero How did we come here and to what end?What was it that drew us here?Was it the land calling, the piñon?The great shaped clouds blessing the blue of the sky?Was it the dawn’s quiet or the other one,The one that comes from the day of work, at duskIn summer, promising rest and respite and allThe other good things we dream of when we let ourselves do so?How did we come here?
Categories: Poetry
By Hugo Chapman with Charlotte Jusinski With the opening of The birth, death and resurrection of Christ: from Michelangelo to Tiepolo, a traveling exhibition of works on paper from the British Museum on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art through April 19, New Mexicans are offered a rare glimpse deep into one of the most prestigious collections of devotional art on the planet.
Categories: Visual art
![Person wearing outdoor gear and a backpack sits on a rocky slope, examining an object in their hands, under a partly cloudy sky in a barren landscape. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/mammals_2woTEXT-400x225.jpg)
![A glowing plasma is contained within a glass tube, surrounded by metal rings and scientific equipment in a dark laboratory setting. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/7large-400x225.jpg)
![A group of people in colorful attire sit on horseback in a row on a grassy field with trees and dramatic clouds in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/1-1-3-400x225.jpg)
![A bowl of red stew with chunks of meat and hominy, topped with fresh cilantro, with a spoon resting inside. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Converso_pozole-menudo397-400x225.jpg)
![Six people stand above and look down into a pit, framed by wooden beams and a rope pulley system, under a clear sky. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/1-2-2-400x225.jpg)
![Two figures stand on a rocky outcrop overlooking a vast canyon landscape with cliffs, mesas, and distant mountains under a hazy sky. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/OldSpanishTrail_Image_color-400x225.jpg)
![A weathered gravestone lies partially covered by grass, with two black, white, and red measuring rods placed alongside it for scale. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/8-7-400x225.jpg)
![An older man with white hair smiles at the camera, wearing a light plaid shirt and a turquoise bolo tie. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/VictordiSuvero-300dpi-CMYK-400x225.jpg)
![Dark clouds cover the sky as rays of sunlight break through, creating shafts of light and shadow across the cloudscape. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/iStock-1169372449-1-400x225.jpg)
![Etching of four men; one with a halo guides anothers hand toward a wound on his torso while two others observe, all with expressive gestures and intense expressions. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/AA397-400x225.jpg)