E201. Why did the State Fair end?
State Fairs were held from 1881 to 1918, when they succumbed to World War I and the Great Depression. The fair returned in 1938 to new buildings at the current location. 

E202. What were the first national retailers to open in Albuquerque?
In 1915 F.W. Woolworth Department Store opened at 317-319 W. Central Avenue. In 1916 J. C. Penney's opened at 410 West Central.  

E203. When did Albuquerque have its first auto show?
In 1918 the first automobile show was held in Albuquerque. 

E204. What was the first radio station in Albuquerque?
In 1928 KGGM, Albuquerque's first radio station, went on the air. On April 7, 1932 KOB became the city’s second radio station.   

E205. What was Albuquerque’s first skyscraper?
In 1922 the nine-story First National Bank Building at Third and Central became the city’s first skyscraper. Designed by Trost & Trost of El Paso, the building was then described as “the tallest and most grand in the city” with decorative exterior masonry, arched windows and cornices.  

E206. When did tourism begin in Albuquerque?
Tourists began arriving by rail in the 1920s. In 1925 Santa Fe Railway began its "Indian Detours," which used Albuquerque as a hub for tours to various pueblos. 

E207. Why were the 1930s important for the arts in Albuquerque?
On February 10, 1930 the Albuquerque Little Theater opened, and on March 11 the New Mexico Art League organized. In 1932 the Albuquerque Civic Symphony was organized and led by Grace Thompson. 

E208. What woman was ahead of her time in Albuquerque?
In 1932 Grace Thompson, one of the few female conductors of a major city orchestra, led the Albuquerque Civic Symphony, the forerunner of the New Mexico Symphony. 

E209. When was a UFO sighted over Albuquerque?
In June and July 1947 the Albuquerque Journal reported UFO sightings repeatedly. Residents were said to watch “space ship” maneuvers from their front lawns. 

E210. What was the first TV station?
On November 29, 1948 KOB-TV began broadcasting. 

E211. What was Albuquerque’s first FM station?
In 1950 KANW began broadcasting educational programming, one of the first in the nation operated by a public school district. In 1954 KHFM became Albuquerque's first commercial FM station. 

E212. When did TVI begin?
Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute opened in 1965 as part of APS. Its first classes were in surplus barracks and a vacated elementary school.  There were 155 students in nine classes. TVI became independent in 1979. 

E213. Was Albuquerque part of the Wild West?
Albuquerque’s racy past compares with Dodge City or Tombstone. The railroad brought new consumer goods – and undesirables, including gamblers and the first prostitutes. In the late 1800s the city had 20 saloons, multiple gambling houses and brothels. The red-light district flourished along Third and Fourth streets between Copper and Tijeras. Train robberies and gunfights were not uncommon, and most citizens carried pistols. Vigilantes hanged many an outlaw and horse thief.  

E214. When did the city’s drug problem begin?
In the 1880s Albuquerque had seven opium dens. 

E215. How were sheriffs chosen in the 1880s?
Perfecto Armijo and Santiago Baca took turns serving as peace officer. When it was time to “elect” a sheriff, they would collect their toughest friends, meet in a vacant lot and do battle with sticks, rocks, gun butts and fists. Judge William Heacock was referee. A crowd gathered to watch, and they voted for the winner. 

E216. How did Albuquerque benefit from the Works Progress Administration?
Thanks to Gov. Clyde Tingley’s friendship with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, WPA funds built the first airport terminal, the State Fairgrounds, schools, UNM’s library and administration building, Monte Vista Fire Station, Roosevelt Park, and more. 

E217. Who was the first woman doctor?
In 1911 Dr. Evelyn Fisher Frisbie joined 25 male physicians serving Albuquerque. Five years later, she became the nation’s first woman to head a state medical society. 

E218. Where was the first McDonald’s?
In 1959 Albuquerque's first McDonald's began serving hamburgers at 5900 Menaul NE. Hamburgers then sold for 15 cents. The chain began in 1955.

E219. When did Albuquerque get its first shopping center?
In 1947 R.B. Weigelmann completed the Nob Hill Business Center, the city’s first shopping center. Highland and Hoffmantown shopping centers went up in 1951. 

E220. What was the first “regional” shopping center?
Former UNM president Tom Popejoy convinced financier Winthrop Rockefeller to lease university property in the Northeast Heights, where he built Winrock Shopping Center. Rockefeller called it the first “regional shopping center,” when it opened on March 1, 1961. Coronado followed in 1965, built by Sears subsidiary Homart Development. 

E221. How long has Sandia Peak Tramway been here?
On May 6, 1966 Bob Nordhaus and Ben Abruzzo completed the Sandia Peak Tramway, which took two years to build at a cost of nearly $2 million. It’s the longest single-section tram in the world.  

E222. When did the Frontier Restaurant, a UNM institution, begin?
The Frontier started serving its famous sweet rolls to customers in 1971. 

E223. When did Albuquerque get freeways?
In 1966 I-25 and 1-40 were completed through Albuquerque. 

E224. How old is the convention center?
On October 7, 1972 the Albuquerque Convention Center opened. 

E225. When did Albuquerque get its first bike trail?
In 1976 the first segment of the Paseo del Bosque was built. It now stretches 16 miles from north to south along the Rio Grande. 

E226. How did businesses promote the city before the Chamber of Commerce organized?
In 1892, the Albuquerque Commercial Club, organized to attract residents and promote investment, built a handsome, brownstone building at Fourth and Gold. It featured plush meeting rooms, a ballroom, parlors and offices. It was demolished in 1953 for construction of the Simms Building. One wall of the old club was incorporated into the Simms design. 

E227. What media agreement was the first of its kind in the nation?
In 1933 the Albuquerque Journal and the Albuquerque Tribune forged a joint operating agreement that has preserved two competing newspapers at a time when most cities have just one. They have separate ownership and newsrooms but combine printing, advertising and other functions. It became a model for similar agreements in other cities.   

E228. How did the Sandia Mountains get their name?
The usual story is that early settlers named the mountains, which glow pink in the sunset, “sandia,” Spanish for watermelon. However, the range actually got its name from Sandia Pueblo. As early as 1611 Spanish frontiersmen and missionaries referred to it as “La Sierra de Sandia,” or Sandia’s mountain.  

E229. In what arts program was Albuquerque a national leader?
In 1978 the City of Albuquerque passed an ordinance that required setting aside 1 percent of funds from bond projects for the program 1 Percent for the Arts. It was one of the first programs of its kind. Since then the city has purchased 361 pieces of public art valued at $8 million.   

E230. When was the first Albuquerque telegraph operational?  
The talking wire, as Indian people called it, began here in February 12, 1876. 

E231. Where was the world's first solar office building?
In 1956 Frank Bridgers, an Albuquerque engineer, designed and built the Solar Building at 213 Truman SE, the first commercial structure to use solar energy as its primary heating source. The building was featured in Life Magazine in 1956, and is a historic landmark. 

E232. What immigrant groups arrived in the 1880s and 1890s to work for the railroad?
Railroad workers included African-Americans, Chinese and Italians. In 1880 Albuquerque had two Chinese immigrants, both working as laundrymen. Five years later there were 27 laundrymen and one servant. Italians would prosper as businessmen in Albuquerque. 

E233. When did the Gathering of Nations begin?
The first year of the Gathering of Nations pow-wow in Albuquerque was 1983. 

E234. How has city governance changed?
When Albuquerque incorporated as a city in 1891, it chose to govern with a mayor and board of aldermen. In 1917 it changed to a city manager and city council and later to a city commission. In 1974 Albuquerque returned to a mayor-city council type of government. 

E235. Was Albuquerque involved in the Civil War?
In 1862 Confederate forces failed to take Fort Craig, south of Socorro. In need of supplies, they pushed on to Albuquerque. Union soldiers, meanwhile, had moved everything possible from their Albuquerque post and burned everything remaining. Days later the Confederates occupied Albuquerque and raised their flag on Old Town Plaza. Following their defeat at Glorieta, rebels retreated. On April 8 Union cannons shelled Confederates near the present Central and Laguna. Confederates buried several captured cannons in Old Town Plaza. The following year 20 residents were tried on charges of aiding and abetting the Southern Rebellion. 

E236. When was the first balloon flown in Albuquerque?
On July 4, 1882 Park Van Tassel, owner of the Elite Saloon, made the first balloon ascension in Albuquerque. The gas balloon, named ”City of Albuquerque,” launched from a vacant lot near Second and Gold and landed in a corn field near Old Town.   

E237. What downtown building was an advertisement for its occupant?
Built in 1915, the Albuquerque Gas and Electric Building at Fifth and Central blazed with light at night to show off electric lighting. Light bulbs ran along the cornice, surrounded the round windows and ran down between the windows on the second story.  All the light sockets still exist. 

E238. How did aviation begin in Albuquerque?
When aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in 1927, Frank Speakman, working the graveyard shift at the railroad depot that night, decided he would fly. He and W. Langford Franklin, a friend who worked in the baggage room, leased 140 acres on the East Mesa, bought a tractor and in 1928 graded two runways on East Mesa. Mayor Clyde Tingley, always the visionary, loaned them city equipment after hours. Entrepreneur James Oxnard bought Franklin’s interest and expanded the facility, which they named it Oxnard Field. 

E239. How did Kirtland Air Force Base begin?
In 1939 war broke out in Europe. Albuquerque sent two representatives to Washington to propose an air base here. That year the Army Air Corps leased land east of the city’s new airport to build a flight training base. By 1941 it had dozens of new buildings. On April 1, 1941the first military aircraft to land was a B-18 bomber. That began Albuquerque’s Army Air Field. The first troops arrived that summer, including the 19th Bombardment Group commanded by Lt. Col. Eugene L. Eubank. Activity picked up with the arrival of trainees for the new B-17 Flying Fortress. 

E240. How was Kirtland named?
Within days of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1942, Albuquerque’s air base was named Kirtland Army Air Field, after Col. Roy C. Kirtland, an aviation pioneer and first commander of Langley Field, who had died a year earlier. 

E241. What secret role did Kirtland play in World War II?
In 1943 scientists developed and tested the Variable Time Proximity Fuze, considered the second most important project after the atom bomb. The weapon was deployed in the siege of Okinawa and in the Battle of the Bulge. 

E242. What were Kirtland’s contributions to World War II?
The base’s three schools trained thousands of pilots, bombardiers and mechanics. In 1945 it trained combat crews for the B-29 Super Fortress, eventually used to drop the first atomic bombs. 

E243. What did Kirtland do after the war?
In 1946 Kirtland began testing and evaluating new weapons. 

E244. What does Kirtland Air Force Base do today?
At 80 square miles and more than 25,000 employees, Kirtland is one of the largest and most complex installations of the U.S. Air Force, with three scientific laboratories, multiple training facilities, two flying organizations, a major weapons depot, the Air Force’s safety and inspection headquarters, the Air Force’s systems testing center, an astronomical observatory, and the Department of Energy’s biggest field office. 

E245. What is Kirtland’s economic impact?
With 25,000 employees, the base’s impact totals $4 billion. 

E246. Which Indian curio stores, within walking distance of the train station in the early 1900s, are still in business?
Charles Wright in 1907 opened Wright’s Trading Post & Curios at 4th and Gold. (Wright’s moved from downtown in 1988.) In 1923 Maurice Maisel bought a jewelry and music shop across from the Alvarado Hotel and focused on the Indian curio trade. He began merchandising nationally in 1928. Maisel's Indian Shop moved to its current location on Central in 1939. The façade was designed by John Gaw Meem.  

E247. Who painted the murals outside Maisel’s?
In 1939 Maurice Maisel commissioned artist Olive Rush to paint murals on his new store. She decided to share the 40 yards of panels with Indian student artists, some of whom became famous in their own right: Joe Herrera, Tom Martinez, Harrison Begay, Wilson Dewey, Pablita Velarde, Theodore Suina, Ha-So-De, Ben Quintana, Pop Chalee, Ignatius Palmer and Awa Tsireh. 

E248. How did Sandia National Laboratories begin?
In 1945 Los Alamos National Laboratory moved its Z Division to Albuquerque’s Sandia Base, an aircraft maintenance training site established in 1942 adjacent to Kirtland. By 1945 it had become the Armed Forces Special Weapons Command. In 1948 the division was renamed Sandia Laboratory. In 1949 President Harry Truman asked AT&T (then Western Electric) to take over management of Sandia Laboratory, saying the company had “an opportunity to render an exceptional service in the national interest.” AT&T began managing the lab and its 1,742 employees on November 1. 

E249. What is Sandia National Laboratories’ economic impact?
The lab’s direct and indirect economic impact in 2004 was $6.6 billion. The lab employs 8,586 people. 

E250. What Albuquerque resident inspired a TV series?
Elfego Baca, a Socorro candidate for sheriff who survived a one-man stand against 80 Texas cowboys in 1884, became a lawyer and district attorney. In 1907 he moved his law practice to Albuquerque and had his combined office and home on Gold St., where he died in 1945. Even as an old man, he always wore a gun. Walt Disney Studios created “The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca,” which showed from 1958 to 1960.