Answer: People came to the area that’s now New Mexico more than 12,000 years ago. Experts think they migrated from what’s now Russia across a land bridge called the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age. (When the Ice Age ended, water levels rose, covering this bridge.) Thousands of years later Native American tribes including the Apache, Zuni, Navajo, and Pueblos lived on the land.
In 1540 Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado came to the area in search of cities made of gold that were rumored to exist in the Americas. He didn’t discover treasure, but over the next century the Spanish colonized the land. Then in 1821 Mexico declared its independence from Spain, and the area became part of Mexico. But after the United States won the Mexican-American War in 1848, New Mexico became a U.S. territory. In 1912 it was declared the 47th state.
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