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The History of New Mexico
was first recorded by the
Spanish who encountered Native American
Pueblos when they explored the
area in the 1500s. Since
that time, the area has been under the control of
Spain, Mexico,
and the United States,
respectively.
Native
American settlements
Human occupation of
New Mexico stretches back 10,000
years or more to the Clovis
culture of hunter-gatherers
who left evidence of their campsites and stone tools. After
the invention of agriculture the
land was inhabited by the
Ancient Pueblo Peoples who built houses out of stone or
adobe brisks. They experienced a
Golden Age around AD
1000 but climate change led
to migration and cultural evolution into the modern
Pueblo peoples who lived
primarily along the few major rivers of the region. The semi
nomadic Athabaskan moved to areas
not occupied by Pueblo people by 1200 AD.
Pueblos
Prehistoric
Amerindian ruins indicate a presence at modern Santa Fe.
Caves in the Sandia Mountains
near Albuquerque contain the remains of some of the earliest
inhabitants of the New World. The
Pueblo people built a flourishing sedentary culture in
the 1200s, constructing small towns in the valley of the
Rio Grande and pueblos nearby.
The Spanish
encountered Pueblo civilization and elements of the
Athabaskans in the 1500s. Cabeza
de Vaca in 1535, one of only four survivors of the
Panfilo de Narvaez
expedition of 1527, tells of hearing Indians talk about
fabulous cities somewhere in New Mexico.
Fray Marcos de Niza
enthusiastically identified these as the fabulously rich
Seven Cities of Cíbola,
the mythical seven cities of gold.
Francisco Vásquez
de Coronado led a massive expedition to find these
cities in 1540–1542. Coronado camped near an excavated
pueblo today preserved as
Coronado National
Memorial in 1541. The Spanish maltreatment of the Pueblo
and Athabaskan people that started
with their explorations of the upper Rio Grande valley led
to hostility that impeded the Spanish conquest of New Mexico
for centuries.
The three largest pueblos of New
Mexico are Zuni, Santo Domingo, and Laguna.
Athabaskans-Apachean
The major Southern Athabaskans (historically
better called Apachean) groups today
are generally called Navajo and
Apache but they were not unified
tribes in the modern sense. Early histories tended to call
the different groups of Apaches and Navajos by various names
that were not consistent from 1500s to the 1800s.
Some experts estimate that the semi
nomadic Apachean were in this New
Mexico in the 1200s AD. Spanish records indicated they
traded with the Pueblos and various bands or tribes
participated in the Southwestern Revolt against the Spanish
in the 1680s. By the early 1700 the Spanish had to build a
series of over 25 forts to protect themselves and
subjuctated populations from traditional raiding parties of
Athabaskans.
Colonial
Period
Spanish
Exploration and Colonization
Francisco Vasquez
de Coronado assembled an enormous expedition at
Compostela, Mexico in 1540–1542 to explore and find the
mystical Seven
Golden Cities of Cibola as described by
Cabeza de Vaca who had just
arrived from his eight-year ordeal traveling from Florida to
Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca and three companions were the only
survivors of the Panfilo de
Narvaez expedition of June 17, 1527 to Florida, losing
80 horses and all the rest of the explorers. These four
survivors had spent eight arduous years getting to Sinoloa,
Mexico on the Pacific coast and had visited many Indian
tribes. Coronado and his supporters sank a fortune in this
ill-fated enterprise taking 1300 horses and mules for riding
and packing and 100s of head of sheep and cattle as a
portable food supply. Coronado's men found several mud baked
pueblos in 1541 but found no rich cities of gold. Further
wide spread expeditions found no fabulous cities anywhere in
the Southwest or Great Plains. A dispirited and now poor
Coronado and his men began their journey back to Mexico
leaving New Mexico behind. Probably Coronado's greatest
legacy was his loss of several horses and cattle into the
plains of America. Doubling in number about every five years
these animals grew well in the wild and soon became the
precursors of nearly all the horses rode by the Indians
100-150 years later as well as wild herds of Spanish cattle.
Over 50 years after Coronado,
Juan de Oñate founded the
San Juan colony on the
Rio Grande in 1598, the first permanent European settlement
in the future state of New Mexico. Oñate pioneered the
grandly named El Camino Real,
"The Royal Road" as a 700 mile (1,100 km) trail from the
rest of New Spain to his remote
colony. Oñate was made the first governor of the new
Province of New Mexico.
The Native Americans at Acoma
revolted against this Spanish encroachment but faced severe
suppression. In battles with the Acomas, who refused
subordination, he lost 11 soldiers and two servants, killed
hundreds of Indians and punished 24 with amputation of a
foot. The Franciscans found the pueblo people increasingly
unwilling to consent to baptism by newcomers who continued
to demand food, clothing and labor.
In 1609,
Pedro de Peralta,
a later governor
of the Province of New Mexico, established the
settlement of Santa Fe
at the foot of the
Sangre de Cristo Mountains. As the seat of government of
New Mexico since its founding, Santa Fe is the oldest
capital city in the United States. Peralta built the
Palace of the Governors
in 1610. Although the colony failed to prosper, some
missions survived. Spanish settlers arrived at the site of
Albuquerque in the mid-1600s. Missionaries attempted to
convert the natives to Christianity but had little success.
Pueblo
Revolt
Many of the Pueblo people harbored a
latent hostility toward the Spanish, primarily due to their
denigration and prohibition of the traditional religion. The
traditional economies of the pueblos were likewise disrupted,
the people having been forced to labor on the
encomiendas of the colonists. Some
Pueblo people may have been forced to labor in the mines of
Chihuahua. However, the Spanish had
introduced new farming implements and provided some measure
of security against Navajo and
Apache raiding parties. As a result,
they lived in relative peace with the Spanish since the
founding of the Northern New Mexican colony in 1598.
In the 1670s, drought swept the
region, which not only caused famine among the Pueblo, but
also provoked increased attacks from neighboring nomadic
tribes--attacks against which Spanish soldiers were unable
to defend. At the same time, European-introduced diseases
were ravaging the natives, greatly decreasing their numbers.
Unsatisfied with the protective powers of the
Spanish crown and the god of
the church it imposed,
the people turned to their old gods. This provoked a wave of
repression on the part of Franciscan
missionaries.
Popé
Following his is arrest on a charge
of witchcraft and subsequent release, Popé
(or Po-pay) planned and orchestrated the Pueblo Revolt.
While a fugitive from the Spanish authorities for complicity
in several murders, Popé sought refuge at
Taos Pueblo. Popé dispatched
runners to all the Pueblos carrying knotted cords, the knots
signifying the number of days remaining until the appointed
day for them to rise against the Spaniards in unison.
The day for the attack had been
fixed for the August 18,
1680 but the Spaniards learned of the
revolt after capturing two Tesuque
Pueblo youths entrusted with carrying the message to the
pueblos. Popé then ordered the execution of the plot on the
feast day of
Saint Lawrence (San Lorenzo),
August 10, before the uprising could be put down.
The attack was commenced by the Taos,
Picuris, and
Tewa Indians in their respective pueblos.
Eighteen Franciscan priests, three lay brothers, and three
hundred and eighty Spaniards, counting men, women and
children, were killed. Spanish settlers fled to
Santa Fe, the only
Spanish city, and Isleta
Pueblo, one of the few pueblos that didn't participate
in the rebellion. Believing themselves the only survivors,
the refugees at Isleta left for El
Paso on September 15.
Meanwhile Popé's insurgents besieged Santa Fe, surrounding
the city and cutting off its water supply. New Mexico
Governor Antonio de Otermín,
barricaded in the
Governor’s Palace, called for a general retreat, and on
September 21 the Spanish
settlers streamed out of the capital city headed for El Paso
del Norte.
The Piro
Pueblo, along with the Isleta, accompanied the Spanish
to El Paso, presumably because they would be seen as Spanish
sympathizers. The people of Isleta founded the settlement of
Ysleta, Texas, and live there
to this day.
Popé's
kingdom
The retreat of the Spaniards left
New Mexico in the power of the Indians. Popé ordered the
Indians, under penalty of death, to burn or destroy crosses
and other religious imagery, as well as any other vestige of
the Roman Catholic religion and Spanish culture, including
Spanish livestock and fruit trees. He also forbade the
planting of wheat and barley. Popé went so far as to command
those Indians who had been married according to the rites of
the Catholic church to dismiss their wives and to take
others after the old native tradition. Popé set himself up
in the Governor’s Palace as ruler of the Pueblos and
collected tribute from the each Pueblo until his death in
approximately 1688.
Following their success, the
different Pueblo tribes, separated by hundreds of miles and
six different languages, quarreled as to who would occupy
Santa Fe and rule over the country. These power struggles,
combined with raids from nomadic tribes and a seven year
drought, weakened the Pueblo resolve and set the stage for a
Spanish reconquest.
"Bloodless"
reconquest
In July of 1692,
Diego de Vargas returned to
Santa Fe. De Vargas surrounded the city before dawn and
called on the Indians to surrender, promising clemency if
they would swear allegiance to the King of Spain and return
to the Christian faith. The Indian leaders gathered in Santa
Fe, met with De Vargas, and agreed to peace. On
September 14,
1692, de Vargas proclaimed a formal act of repossession.
While developing Santa Fe as a trade
center, the returning settlers founded the old town of
Albuquerque in 1706, naming for
the viceroy of New Spain, the Duke of Albuquerque. Prior to
its founding, Albuquerque consisted of several haciendas and
communities along the lower Rio Grande. They constructed the
Church of San Felipe de Nerí (1706). The thorough
development of ranching and some farming in the 1700s laid
the foundations for the state's still-flourishing Hispanic
culture.
De Vargas’ repossession of New
Mexico is often called a "bloodless reconquest." However, de
Vargas mounted several military campaigns against the Pueblo
peoples in the years that followed in an attempt to maintain
the peace. For instance, a Second Pueblo Revolt was
attempted in 1696, resulting in the death of five
missionaries and twenty-one Spaniards, but was effectively
thwarted. By the end of the century, the Spanish reconquest
was essentially complete.
While their independence from the
Spaniards was short-lived, the Pueblo Revolt granted the
Pueblo Indians a measure of freedom from future Spanish
efforts to eradicate their culture and religion following
the reconquest. Moreover, the Spanish issued substantial
land grants to each Pueblo and appointed a public defender
to protect the rights of the Indians and argue their legal
cases in the Spanish courts.
The southwestern Indians as they
gradually became mounted on Spanish horses by catching feral
horses in the beginning started raiding Spanish ranches and
stealing horses from Spanish missions in New Mexico. By
trade and raid the Indian horse culture quickly spread
throughout all of western America. The
Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was the
beginning of another large numbers of horses falling into
Indian hands. By mid-1700, a few Indians as far away as
Canada were making forays deep into the Spanish southwest,
stealing horses and driving them back to Canada. In this
manner the Spanish horse was gradually dispersed from tribe
to tribe by trade or theft until nearly all the Indian
tribes west of the Mississippi river in North America that
could support horses were mounted on horses brought to the
New World by the Spaniards. The
Lewis and Clark expedition traded with the Indians for
some of the offspring of these horses in 1803 and 1804. The
geographically isolated tribes in California would not see
horses or cattle until introduced by the Spanish settlers
and missionaries in the 1780s.
U.S.
exploration
Following
Lewis and Clark many men started exploring and trapping
in the Southwest and western parts
of the U.S.
In 1807 Lt.
Zebulon Pike, exploring for the U.S. government the
Louisiana Purchase led an
expedition to Santa Fe where he was briefly detained before
returning through Texas.
A number of fur traders, including
Manuel Lisa,
Anthony Glass and
James McLanahan, explored the
American southwest starting about 1810.
[1]
Jedediah
Smith was a mountain man and explorer starting in 1822.
He probably explored more of the West and Southwest than any
other man. He mapped out most of the so called
Old Spanish Trail.
He is believed to be the first white man to cross Nevada's
Great Basin, the first to
traverse Utah from north to south and from west to east; the
first American to enter California by one overland route and
leave by still another.
Kit Carson
left home in 1826 by joining a wagon train heading west to
Santa Fe. Between 1828 and 1840, Carson used Taos as a base
camp for many fur-trapping expeditions throughout the
mountains of the West, from California's
Sierra
Nevadas to the Colorado Rockies. He gained renown for
his honesty, courage and unassuming manner. According to one
acquaintance, his "word was as sure as the sun comin' up."
In 1842 Carson happened to meet
John C. Fremont on a Missouri riverboat. Fremont hired
Carson as guide for his first expedition to map and describe
Western trails to the Pacific Ocean. After returning to Taos
from California in 1843, Carson married his third wife,
Maria Josefa Jaramillothen.
Over the next few years, Carson's
service guiding Fremont across the deserts and mountains of
the American West -- documented in Fremont's widely-read
reports of his expeditions -- made Kit Carson a national
hero.
Mexican
province
Napoleon Bonaparte of France sold
the vast unsettled and undeveloped
Louisiana Purchase, which
extended into the northeastern corner of New Mexico, to the
United States in 1803. As a part of New
Spain, the claims for the remainder of the province of
New Mexico passed to independent Mexico following the
1810-1821 Mexican War
of Independence. During the brief 26 year period of
nominal Mexican control Mexican authority and investment in
New Mexico were weak as their often conflicted government
had little time or interest in a New Mexico that had been
poor since the Spanish settlements started. Some Mexican
officials, saying they were wary of encroachments by the
growing United States, and wanting to reward themselves and
their friends began issuing enormous
land grants (usually free) to groups of Mexican families
as an incentive to populate the province.
Small trapping parties from the
United States had previously reached and stayed in Santa Fe,
but the Spanish authorities officially forbade them to trade.
Trader William Becknell
returned to the United States in November 1821 with news
that independent Mexico now welcomed trade through Santa Fe.
William
Becknell left
Independence, Missouri, for Santa Fe early in 1822 with
the first party of traders. The
Santa Fe Trail trading company headed by the brothers
Charles Bent and
William Bent and
Ceran St. Vrain, was one of
the most successful in the West. They had their first
trading post in the area in 1826 and by 1833 they had built
their adobe fort and trading post called
Bent's Fort on the
Arkansas River. This fort and
trading post, located about 200 miles east of Taos New
Mexico, was the only place settled by Whites along the Santa
Fe trail before it hit Taos. Ceran St. Vrain run branches of
their business in Taos and Santa Fe. Wagon caravans of up to
400+ wagons, grouped for protection, thereafter made the 40
to 60-day annual trek along the 780 mile (1,260 km)
Santa Fe Trail, usually
leaving in early spring and returning after a 4 to 5 week
stay in New Mexico. The trail divided into Mountain and
Cimarron Divisions southwest of
Dodge City, Kansas. The
rugged Mountain Division passed over
Raton Pass and rejoined the more direct Cimarron
Division near
Fort Union, New Mexico. The dry southern Cimarron route
offered poor short grass and little wildlife. The
Santa Fe
National Historic Trail follows the route of the old
trail, with many sites marked or restored.
The
Spanish Trail
from Los Angeles California to
Santa Fe, New Mexico was
primarily used by Hispanos, white traders and ex-trappers
living part of the year in or near Santa Fe. Started in
about 1829 the trail was an arduous 2400 mile round trip
pack train sojourn that extended into Colorado, Utah, Nevada
and California and back allowing only one hard round trip
per year. The trade consisted primarily of blankets and some
trade goods from Santa Fe being traded for horses in
California. Since the horses grew nearly wild in California
and had almost no market there they were cheaply traded. The
trail had many parts where water could not be obtained for
several days and was littered in many sections with the
bones of animals that had died along the way. Mountain men
like Peg Leg Smith drove thousands of Spanish horses and
mules (often rustled) over the Spanish Trail to Santa Fe,
Taos and Bents Fort.
The
Republic of Texas claimed the mostly vacant territory
north and east of the Rio Grande
when it successfully seceded from Mexico in 1836. New Mexico
authorities captured a group of Texans who embarked an
expedition to
assert their claim to the province in 1841.
United
States control
Mexican-American War
American General
Stephen W. Kearny and his
army of 300 cavalry men of the First Dragoons, about 1600
Missouri volunteers in the First and Second Regiments of
Missouri Mounted Cavalry and the 500 man
Mormon Battalion marched
down the Santa Fe Trail and entered
Santa Fe without
opposition in 1846 during the
Mexican-American War.
Kearny established a joint civil and military government
with Charles Bent, a Santa Fe trail trader living in Taos,
as acting civil governor. He then divided his forces into
four commands: one, under Colonel
Sterling Price, appointed military governor, was to
occupy and maintain order in New Mexico with his approximate
800 men; a second group under Colonel
Alexander William
Doniphan, with a little over 800 men was ordered to
capture El Paso,
Chihuahua Mexico and then join up
with General Wool ; the third of about 300 dragoons mounted
on mules, under his own command, headed for California. The
Mormon Battalion, mostly
marching on foot, under Lt. Col. Phillip St. George Cooke
was instructed to follow Kearny with wagons to establish a
new southern route to California. Almost 200 of Kearney's
dragoons were sent back to New Mexico when Kearny
encountered Kit Carson, traveling East, who was bearing
messages that California had already been subdued. In
California about 400 men of the California Battalion under
John C. Fremont and another
400 men under Commodore Robert
Stockton of the U.S. Navy and Marines were in control of
the approximate 7,000 Californios from
San Diego to
Sacramento. New Mexico territory, which then included
present-day Arizona, was under undisputed United States
control. The exact boundary with Texas was uncertain. Texas
initially claimed all land North of the Rio Grande; but
later agreed to the present boundaries. Kearny also
protected citizens under a form of martial law called the
Kearny Code, essentially Kearny
and the U.S. army's promise that religious and legal claims
would be respected by the United States and law and order
maintained. The Kearny Code became one of the bases of New
Mexico's legal code during its territorial period, one of
the longest in United States history.
Kearny's entrance into New Mexico
was essentially without conflict as the Mexican authorities
took all the money they could find and retreated into
southern Mexico. After Kearny's departure, a skirmish called
the rebellion broke out in the
pueblo of Taos. The Taos rebels, nearly all Peublo Indians,
ambushed and killed acting Governor Charles Bent and about
ten other Americans or so living in the town on January 19,
1847. Reacting quickly, a U.S. detachment under Colonel
Sterling Price marched on Taos
and attacked the rebels who retreated to a strongly built
church. Concentrated cannon fire upon the church killed
about 150 rebels and led to the capture of 400 more. Six
rebel leaders were arraigned, tried and, on February 9, 1847
hanged for their role in the Taos
Revolt. Price fought two more engagements with rebels,
which included many Pueblo Indians, and by mid-February had
the revolt well under control. President Polk promoted Price
to a brevet rank of Brigadier General for his sterling
service. Casualties totaled more than 300 rebels killed and
about thirty "Anglos," as American troops and settlers were
often called.
Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo
Under the
Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo of 1848, Mexico ceded much of its mostly
unsettled northern holdings, today known as the
American Southwest and
California to the United States of
America in exchange for an end to hostilities, the
evacuation of Mexico City and many other areas under
American control. Mexico also received $15 million cash,
plus the assumption of slightly more than $3 million in
outstanding Mexican debts. New Mexico, the name given to the
territory between Texas and California, technically met the
population criteria to become a state. But congress declined
to make them a state. The Senate also struck out Article X
of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which said that vast
land grants in New Mexico (nearly always gifts by the local
authorities to their friends) would all be recognized. The
decision to strike down Article X remains an unpopular one,
especially in some of the region's Hispanic communities, as
it eventually led to millions of acres of land, timber, and
water being removed from Mexican-issued land grants and
placed back in the public domain. Spanish-issued land grants,
including those made to the Pueblos, have nearly all been
respected as legitimate.
American
Territory
The Congressional
Compromise of 1850 halted
a bid for statehood under a proposed antislavery
constitution. Texas transferred eastern New Mexico to the
federal government, settling a lengthy boundary dispute.
Under the compromise, the American government established
the New Mexico Territory
on September 9,
1850. The territory, which included all of
Arizona, New
Mexico and parts of Colorado,
officially established its capital at
Santa Fe in 1851. The
U.S. territorial New Mexico census of 1850 found 61,547
people living in all the territory of New Mexico. The people
of New Mexico would determine whether to permit slavery
under a proposed constitution at statehood, but the status
of slavery during the territorial period provoked
considerable debate. The granting of statehood was up to a
Congress sharply divided on the slavery issue. Some (including
Stephen A. Douglas)
maintained that the territory could not restrict slavery, as
under the earlier Missouri
Compromise, while others (including
Abraham Lincoln) insisted
that older Mexican legal traditions, which forbade slavery,
took precedence. Regardless of its official status, slavery
was rarely seen in New Mexico. Statehood was finally granted
to New Mexico on January 6,
1912.
Navajo and Apache raids and
plundering led Kit Carson to
abandon his intent to retire to a sheep ranch near
Taos after the Mexican
American War. Carson accepted an 1853 appointment as U.S.
Indian agent with a headquarters at Taos, and fought the
Indians with notable success.
The United States acquired the
southwestern boot heel of the state and southern
Arizona below the Gila river in the
mostly desert Gadsden Purchase
of 1853. This purchase was desired when it was found that a
much easier route for a proposed transcontinental railroad
was located slightly south of the Gila river. This territory
had not been explored or mapped when the
Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo was negotiated in 1848. The ever present Santa
Anna was in power again in 1853 and needed the money from
the Gadsden Purchase to fill his coffers and to pay the
Mexican Army for that year. The Southern Pacific built the
second transcontinental railroad though this purchased land
in 1881.
During the
American Civil War,
Confederate troops from Texas briefly occupied southern New
Mexico. Union troops re-captured the territory in early
1862. During the Civil War as Union troops were withdrawn to
fight elsewhere Kit Carson helped
to organize and command the 1st
New Mexican
Volunteers to engage in campaigns against the
Apache,
Navajo, and Comanche in New
Mexico and Texas as well as participating in the Battle of
Valverde against the confederates. Confederate troops
withdrew after the Battle
of Glorieta Pass where Union
regulars, Colorado Volunteers (The Pikes Peakers), and New
Mexican Volunteers defeated them. The
Arizona Territory was split
off as a separate territory in 1863.
The
Roman Catholic Church established an archbishopric
center in Santa Fe in 1875. The
Santa Fe Railroad reached
Lamy, New Mexico, 16 miles (26 km) from Santa Fe in 1879
and Santa Fe itself in 1880, replacing the storied
Santa Fe Trail. The new town
of Albuquerque, platted in 1880 as the Santa Fe Railroad
extended westward, quickly enveloped the old town.
The railway encouraged the great
cattle boom of the 1880s and the development of accompanying
cow towns. Cattlemen feuded between each other and with
authorities, most notably in the
Lincoln County War.
Outlaws included Billy the Kid.
The cattle barons could not keep out sheepherders, and
eventually homesteaders and squatters overwhelmed the
cattlemen by fencing in and plowing under the "sea of grass"
on which the cattle fed. Conflicting land claims led to
bitter quarrels among the original Spanish inhabitants,
cattle ranchers, and newer homesteaders. Despite destructive
overgrazing, ranching survived as a mainstay of the New
Mexican economy.
Centuries of continued conflict with
the Apache and the
Navajo plagued the territory.
The Long Walk of the
Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo in
1860-61 harshly repressed the Navajo but did put an end to
their raiding. The Navajo returned to most of their lands in
1868. Sporadic Apache raiding continued until Apache chief
Geronimo finally surrendered in
1886.
Albuquerque, on the upper Rio
Grande, was incorporated in 1889.
Statehood
The
United States Congress
admitted New Mexico as the 47th state in the Union on
January 6, 1912.
The admission of the neighboring State of
Arizona on February 14,
1912 completed the contiguous 48 states.
The United States government built
the Los Alamos
Research Center in 1943 amid the
Second World War. Top-secret
personnel there developed the atomic
bomb, first detonated at Trinity
site in the desert on the
White Sands Proving
Grounds vaguely near
Alamogordo on July 16,
1945.
Albuquerque expanded rapidly after
the war. High-altitude experiments near
Roswell in 1947 reputedly
led to persistent (unproven) claims by a few that the
government captured and concealed extraterrestrial corpses
and equipment. The state quickly emerged as a leader in
nuclear, solar, and geothermal energy research and
development. The
Sandia National Laboratories, founded in 1949, carried
out nuclear research and special weapons development at
Kirtland Air Force Base
south of Albuquerque and at
Livermore, California.
Located in the remote Chihuahuan
Desert the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is located 26 miles
southeast of Carlsbad.
Here nuclear wastes are buried deep in carved out salt
formation disposal rooms mined 2,150 feet underground in a
2,000-foot thick salt formation that has been stable for
more than 200 million years. WIPP began operations on
March 26, 1999.
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