1879 First passenger train (Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway) arrives in Las Vegas, NM

1881 Billy the Kid killed near Fort Sumner, NM

1883–86 Joseph Sharp, Charles Lummis, Frederic Remington first visit New Mexico

1889 University of New Mexico created at Albuquerque

1890 Taos Pueblo census: 401; US Santa Fe Indian School established; Gerald Cassidy moves to Albuquerque and then moves to Santa Fe in 1912

1892 AT&SF Railway sends Thomas Moran to Arizona and New Mexico

1893 Joseph Sharp sent to Taos by Harper's Weekly

1897 Blumenschein sent by McClure's to New Mexico

1898 Blumenschein and Phillips first visit Taos; Phillips stays

1899 O.E. Berninghaus first visits Taos

1902 E. Irving Couse first visits New Mexico; Sunmount Sanitorium established in Santa Fe

1903 Edward S. Curtis photographs Indians in New Mexico

1904 Carlos Vierra becomes Santa Fe's first resident artist

1907 Headquarters of School of American Archeology (later the School of American Research) established in Santa Fe

1909 Museum of New Mexico established in old Palace of the Governors

1910 Taos Pueblo census: 515

1912 New Mexico becomes 47th state of the Union

1915 First official meeting of the Taos Society of Artists; Willa Cather visits NM; Victor Higgins moves to NM

1916 Robert Henri and J. Rolshoven first visit NM; Theodore VanSoelen, Alice Corbin, William Penhallow Henderson, Mabel Dodge Sterne (Luhan) move to NM; Leon Gaspard moves to Taos

1917 Georgia O'Keeffe first visits NM; spent her first summer at Ghost Ranch in 1934; established residence in 1949; dies in Santa Fe 1986

1918 Gustave Baumann, Andrew Dasburg, Marsden Hartley, Mary Austin come to NM; Maria and Julian Marinez make first black-on-black pottery at San Ildefonso Pueblo

1919–20 B.J.O. Nordfeldt, John Sloan, Willard Nash, Will Shuster, Jozef Bakos come to Santa Fe; Blumenschein establishes residence in Taos

1921 Los Cinco Pintores founded in Santa Fe Hennings establishes residence in Taos

1922 First Annual Southwest Indian Fair; NM Association on Indian Affairs (parent of SWAIA) formed; Raymond Jonson visits Santa Fe; 1934 Jonson began teaching at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque; 1950 Jonson Gallery opened

1923 Laura Gilpin begins photographing in NM; Mabel Dodge marries Tony Luhan

1924 New Mexico Painters show at Montross Gallery, New York Kenneth Adams arrives in New Mexico; The Spanish Colonial Arts Society created

1925 Indian Art Fund established to preserve heritage of Pueblo Indians

1926 Nicolai Fechin first visits Taos

1927 Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop is published; Ansel Adams first visits NM

1929 Laboratory of Anthropology established in SF with grant from John D. Rockefeller; Stock market crashes October 29

1932 Emil Bisttram founds Heptagon Gallery, first commercial gallery in Taos; Cady Wells and Ernest Knee move to NM; Dorothy Dunn teaches first art classes at the SF Indian School

1938 Emil Bisttram and Raymond Jonson found New Mexico Transcendental Artists group

1942 Los Alamos selected as national center for nuclear research—the end of an era and the beginning of a new, smaller world

1990 Taos Pueblo census: 4,681

Originally appeared in
The Collector’s Guide to Santa Fe and Taos - Volume 5