Las Cruces
| Las Cruces | |
|---|---|
| Nickname : The City of the Crosses | |
 View of Las Cruces |
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| Location in New Mexico | |
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| Basic data | |
| Foundation : | 1849 |
| State : | United States |
| State : | New Mexico |
| County : | Doña Ana County |
| Coordinates : | 32 ° 19 ′ N , 106 ° 46 ′ W |
| Time zone : | Mountain ( UTC − 7 / −6 ) |
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Inhabitants : - Metropolitan Area : |
101,759 (as of 2016) 214,207 (as of 2016) |
| Population density : | 754.3 inhabitants per km 2 |
| Area : | 135.2 km 2 (approx. 52 mi 2 ) of which 134.9 km 2 (approx. 52 mi 2 ) is land |
| Height : | 1219 m |
| Postal code : | 88001 |
| Area code : | +1 505, 575 |
| FIPS : | 35-39380 |
| GNIS ID : | 0899715 |
| Website : | www.las-cruces.org |
| Mayor : | Ken Miyagishima |
 Doña Ana County Courthouse |
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Las Cruces (from Spanish Die Kreuz ) is the second largest city in the US state of New Mexico (after Albuquerque and even before the capital Santa Fe ) with around 97,000 inhabitants . It is not far from the Mexican border in Doña Ana County and is the seat of the county administration ( County Seat ).
location
Las Cruces is located in the south of the state of New Mexico in the Mesilla Valley of the Chihuahua Desert, just under 1200 meters above sea level. The Rio Grande flows south through the western districts towards El Paso (Texas) . The landscape is dominated by the Organ Mountains, which are over 2000 meters high, about 15 kilometers to the east. The geologically important White Sands National Park is about 60 kilometers east of Las Cruces in the direction of Alamogordo .
history
Led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado , the first Spanish expedition came to what would later become Las Cruces in the early 1500s . The first settlers arrived in 1598; however, the enormous heat and drought as well as attacks by Apaches defending their territory cost many of them their lives. The name of the city is said to be based on one of the attacks by the Indians: After this attack, the surviving settlers marked the graves of the dead with crosses. This place, La Placita de Las Cruces ( English The Place of The Crosses ), later (1849) became the first settlement of today's Las Cruces.
In the decades after the first battle, the rulers of the surrounding valley of the Rio Grande changed several times. The Pueblo Indians defeated the Spanish settlers again in 1680 until they were finally repulsed in 1692. Over a hundred years later, Mexican revolutionaries overthrew Spanish rulers. With the establishment of the Republic of Mexico, Las Cruces was also under Mexican control. Due to the Mexican-American War in the late 1840s and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico again lost large parts of its northern territories, including what is now Las Cruces, which was founded in 1849 by the incoming United States Army .
Around 1878, Billy the Kid stayed temporarily in Las Cruces , who was later shot by the Sheriff of Doña Ana County, Pat Garrett .
When the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway reached the area, the landowners of the then larger settlement of Mesilla refused to give the railway company the land it needed, while the residents of Las Cruces readily granted it and the city became a stopping point. As a result, it grew faster after the opening of the railway line in 1881, although not as rapidly as other places. With the founding of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces in 1888, the city continued to grow. In the last years of the 19th century the place gained importance as a base for supplying mine operators and soldiers of the nearby Fort Selden .
Las Cruces was declared a city in 1946. With the establishment of military bases in the area, including the White Sands Missile Range missile site in 1944, the city experienced a further boom and population growth.
Population development
| year | Residents |
|---|---|
| 1980 | 45,086 |
| 1990 | 62,360 |
| 2000 | 74,267 |
| 2005 | 82,671 |
| 2010 | 97,618 |
| 2016 | 101,759 |
Education and economy
The New Mexico State University (NMSU) is based in Las Cruces . Agriculture in the area is characterized by the cultivation of hot chillies . At the NMSU is the Chile Pepper Institute , which is engaged in the breeding of hot chillies of the genus Capsicum chinense and thus creates the basis for regional Chilli cultivation, which, for example, make the neighboring small town of Hatch (New Mexico) a chilli stronghold.
About 30 kilometers east of Las Cruces is the White Sands Missile Range , the city's largest employer.
Las Cruces is the headquarters of Virgin Galactic , the first commercial provider of tourist suborbital space flights .
traffic
With Las Cruces International Airport, the city has an international airport with three runways, which has not been served by scheduled flights since 2005. It's located off Interstate 10 , about eight miles west of downtown. Interstate 25 begins near the city .
Twin cities
Las Cruces has agreed a town partnership with Nienburg / Weser in Lower Saxony . Another is at Ciudad Lerdo in the Mexican state of Durango .
religion
The diocese of Las Cruces has its seat in Las Cruces.
Trivia
The German thriller Fleisch from 1979 with Jutta Speidel and Wolf Roth is partly set in Las Cruces. The pictures at the motel "Honeymoon Inn" were taken at the address "3995 West Picacho Avenue", on the western edge of the city.
sons and daughters of the town
- Jerry Apodaca (* 1934), Governor of New Mexico from 1975 to 1979
- Pamela Burford (* 1954), writer
- Patricia Ryan (born 1954), writer
- Anwar al-Awlaki (1971–2011), Islamist activist
- Edgar Castillo (* 1986), football player
- Austin Trout (* 1985), professional boxer
- André Roberson (* 1991), basketball player
- Shawnacy Barber (* 1994), pole vaulter
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Detailed Tables - American FactFinder. Factfinder.census.gov, accessed February 10, 2011.
- ↑ a b c d e History of Las Cruces. (No longer available online.) Www.las-cruces.com, archived from the original on June 15, 2009 ; accessed on June 8, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Linda G. Harris: Las Cruces. An Illustrated History. Arroyo Press, Las Cruces 1993, ISBN 0-9623682-5-3 , pp. 58-62.
- ↑ 1980–2000: census results; 2005: Update of the US Census Bureau; 2010: census result
- ^ Las Cruces International Airport. ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Las-Cruces.org (English).
