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Albuquerque, New Mexico, Is the Most Exotic American Big City


 From Forbes Magazine

New Mexico has always embodied the exotic: deep multiculturalism, the mythology of the American West (and a truckload of cinematic Westerns) and epically enormous landscapes. The state has one of the longest histories of European settlement in the United States. It was the birthplace of the atomic bomb and the setting for an untold number of spiritual awakenings.

With international travel still in limbo, New Mexico is now the accessible-exotic. Can’t commit to that African safari? The wildlife spotting at Ted Turner’s vast and highly luxurious Vermejo reserve is superb. Missing a dose of European art culture? There’s the world-class gallery scene in Santa Fe and Taos, not to mention the Santa Fe Opera. Curious about past civilizations? There are the impressive structures built by the Ancestral Puebloan people in Chaco Canyon between 850 and 1250 AD.

Also here for a long time is the city’s Old Town, which dates from the early 18th century. (Although trade between Native American groups had already been going on for centuries before Europeans arrived, the city was was formally founded in 1706 as part of the provincial kingdom of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, a Spanish colony. And yes, a reckoning with that history is under way.) Some of those early adobe structures still stand, including the San Felipe de Neri church, from 1793; the lively High Noon Saloon, from 1785; and the Church Street Café, from sometime in the early 1700s.

The oldest natural landscape within the city is the forested waterfront alongside the Rio Grande, in what locals call the Bosque (Spanish for “forest”), a green area of gnarled old cottonwood and graceful coyote willow trees and small urban farms. It’s now a 4,300-acre state park with a 16-mile bike trail.


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