The doors of the newly created New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe will open to the public for the first time May 24, 2009, during Memorial Day weekend. The state-of-the-art, immersive, interactive exhibition about New Mexico’s complex and colorful stories will forever banish the notion of history as boring and un-engaging.
The museum’s multi-media environment explores the early history of indigenous people, 400 years of Spanish colonization, the Mexican Period, and travel and commerce on the Santa Fe Trail. The exhibition also details the flourishing of New Mexico’s world-renowned arts communities and the coming of the Atomic Age.
“The New Mexico History Museum will be the starting place for the New Mexico cultural experience,” says New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
The new museum is located directly behind the Palace of the Governors, the oldest continuously occupied public building in the U.S., right on the Santa Fe Plaza. [Click to read more]
Fort Union was established in 1851 as the guardian of the Santa Fe Trail. During it’s forty-year history, three different 
forts were constructed close together. The third Fort Union was the largest in the American Southwest, and functioned as a military garrison, territorial arsenal, and military supply depot for the southwest.
The largest visible network of Santa Fe Trail ruts can be seen here.
Fort Union served both military and logistical functions. During the first few years, Fort Union’s mounted troops patrolled the trail. Later, the fort provided escorts for mail stages. Until the Civil War period, wagon trains usually provided their own defense. Then the combination of Indian uprisings and raids by Texas-based Confederates forced a new regime of patrols, escorts, and subposts to protect all travelers and keep open the critical link between the Southwest and the States.
The Fort Union Depot came under command of the District Quartermaster. It was a separate and distinct operation from the military post. Its job was to supply the network of southwestern forts and encampments strung along travel routes or located at reservations and trouble-spots. [Click to read more]
