C101. Who was the first Hispanic Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives?
In 1968 Manuel Lujan Jr. became the first Hispanic Republican in the U.S. House. He served 10 terms in Congress and was appointed in 1989 by President Bush to serve as Secretary of the Interior. 

C102. Where did the name Albuquerque come from?
The name Alburquerque (with an r) dates from the time of Romans in Spain.
Albaquercus, from the Latin albus quercus, or “white oak” was the name of a town. This is why the Alburquerque coat of arms displays a single white oak on a crimson background. 

C103. Why is Albuquerque called the Duke City?
In 1464, King Henry IV created the Dukedom of Alburquerque (with an r). The first duke was Don Beltrán de la Cueva and the line has continued to the present day with Don Beltrán Alfonso Osorio y Diez. The tenth Duke of Alburquerque, Francisco Fernández de la Cueva Enríquez served as viceroy to New Spain from 1701 to 1708. The governor of New Spain, Francisco Cuervo y Valdés, named the city Villa de Alburquerque de San Xavier in honor of the Duque de Alburquerque in 1706. After all, the viceroy had recommended Cuervo y Valdés for the governorship of New Mexico. 

C104. What was Albuquerque’s patron saint?
The founding Spanish governor chose San Francisco, but the viceroy after whom Albuquerque was named wanted San Felipe in honor of King Felipe V’s coronation. The viceroy got his wishes. 

C105. When was Albuquerque founded?
On April 23, 1706, Gov. Francisco Cuervo y Valdés of the Spanish province of New Mexico founded the Villa de San Xavier de Alburquerque. 

C106. When did Albuquerque experience its first politicking?
In 1706 Gov. Francisco Cuervo y Valdés assured the king and viceroy that the villa he had founded included 35 families and a spacious church. He also said settlers had finished their houses. An investigation six years later revealed 19 original families living in houses abandoned in 1680 and a simple church. The governor apparently was trying to impress his superiors. However, it wasn’t a simple matter to start a villa in those days, and such irregularities weren’t uncommon. 

C107. Who identified the site for the community of Albuquerque?
General Juan de Ulibarrí scouted the area and found a spot with tillable land, water, pasture and firewood, as Spanish law dictated. And it was along the Camino Real. The place was called the Bosque de Doña Luisa. 

C108. What are Albuquerque’s military roots?
The original settlers would not have moved from Bernalillo in 1706 without the promise of protection because the area was the frequent target of raids by Apaches and Navajos. As a result, founders included 10 soldiers. 

C109. What community was here before Albuquerque?
Atrisco was founded as a land grant in 1692, and in 1703 settlers from the Bernalillo area moved there. Atrisco celebrated its tricentennial in 2003. 

C110. When was the San Felipe de Neri Church founded?
The church was founded in 1706. The first recorded baptism was June 21, 1706.  

C111. Who was Elena Gallegos?
In 1712 the governor gave 70,000 acres to Captain Diego Montoya, who then gave it to Elena Gallegos, widow of Santiago Gurule. Unlike other European nations, Spain allowed women to own land without consent or control of their husbands. The Elena Gallegos Land grant included much of the northeastern portion of Albuquerque. 

C112. How was Albuquerque involved in trade?
From its founding, Albuquerque was a meeting place for trade caravans traveling the Camino Real from Santa Fe to Mexico City, along with neighboring villages. 

C113. What was the Chihuahua Trail?
The segment of Camino Real from Albuquerque to Ciudad Chihuahua, founded in 1709, became known as the Chihuahua Trail. 

C114. What was the economy in early Albuquerque?
By the mid-1700s Albuquerque was a popular gathering place on the Camino Real, but there was little hard money. The barter economy was based on livestock, and sheep were a medium of exchange. Weaving was an important early occupation. By 1790 Albuquerque was the territory’s largest textile center. The census that year listed 47 weavers, 25 carders, and 15 spinners. 

C115. When did Albuquerque get its first suburbs?
By 1750 Albuquerque had such satellite communities as Corrales, Los Griegos, Los Montoyas, Los Poblanos, and Los Gallegos.  In 1763 Albuquerque's assistant alcalde helped establish San Miguel de Carnué east of Albuquerque. 

C116. When was Corrales settled?
In 1748 Corrales settlement began with Santa Rosalia de Corrales, or Upper Corrales, and San Ysidro de Corrales, or Lower Corrales. 

C117. How did Martineztown begin?
Old Town families in the 1800s drove their herds east to the sandhills for summer grazing and camped. The area had a large acequia. Around 1850, Manuel Martín and his wife Anna María decided to settle permanently, and the area came to be known as Los Martínes. The acequia became Edith Blvd. In the 1880s they broke with the Catholic Church and became Presbyterians, which is why the first church in Martineztown, in 1889, was the Second Presbyterian Church. 

C118. When did West Side development begin?
In 1951 homebuilder Leon Watson bought land from Florencio Baca, who had lived there since 1936. The development became Los Altos.

C119. What was going on in Albuquerque during the American Revolution?
While colonists in the East fought the English in 1776, Albuquerque residents continued to farm. That year the village had 24 houses. The big development here at the time was the expedition of two priests, Father Silvestre Vélez de Escalante and Father Francisco Atanasio Dominguez who that year explored a route to Monterey from New Mexico. They passed through Albuquerque on their return later that year.

C120. How did Albuquerque grow in its first century?
Despite smallpox epidemics and attacks by Comanches, by 1789 1,347 people were living in Albuquerque, one third of them children. The 1790 census listed 57 farmers, 4 ranchers, 47 weavers, 25 carders, and 15 spinners. In 1822 the population had grown to 2,302 in Albuquerque proper. Three of these people were teachers.

C121. Is the church on the plaza the original church?
No. In the winter of 1792-1793, the original church collapsed as a result of neglect. Governor Fernando de la Concho declared the church’s condition a public disgrace and ordered every Albuquerque family to donate either money or labor to rebuild it. In 1793 they began building San Felipe de Neri Church on the north side of the plaza.

C122. What famous American explorer was apprehended in New Mexico?
In 1806 Lt. Zebulon Pike entered New Mexico illegally during a reconnaissance of the Southwest. He was detained by Spanish soldiers and taken to Santa Fe for an interview with the governor who then sent him to Chihuahua. Passing through Albuquerque under guard, he stayed at the residence of Father Ambrosio Guerra, who observed that Pike had an eye for the ladies.

C123. When was Albuquerque’s first election?
Thanks to liberal reforms, Albuquerque in 1814 first elected an ayuntamiento, or municipal council. But a year later the council was dissolved when the king of Spain reasserted his power. Governance returned to the alcalde mayor system. 

C124. How did Albuquerque settlers defend against raids by Apaches and Navajos?
Able-bodied men served in volunteer militias. In 1819, the muster showed 362 officers and soldiers, divided into three cavalry companies and one large infantry company. Sometimes the militias were the aggressors. In 1823 the Albuquerque militia took part with other northern New Mexico militias in a sweep through western New Mexico, killing 32 Navajos.

C125. How did Mexican independence from Spain in 1821 affect New Mexico?
New Mexicans operated with relative independence. The governing council, elected in 1814 and eliminated by the king a year later, was reinstated. Albuquerque named its plaza Plaza de la Constitución. And New Mexico had greater freedom to trade.

C126. How did the United States’ war against Mexico in 1846 affect New Mexico?
The U.S. Army entered New Mexico. When Stephen Watt Kearny reached Albuquerque, the Quartermaster’s Department established a supply depot that remained until 1867. Its central location and access to produce made it an ideal post to supply troops. The army leased or built shops, stables, warehouses a hospital, an officers quarters and a barracks.  

C127. When was Albuquerque first dependent on government support?
The army operated a supply depot here from 1846 to 1867. Soldiers made up nearly a third of the population, and early Albuquerque relied on the cash economy of soldiers’ pay and army contracts. When the army withdrew the post in 1867 it triggered a local downturn that lasted 11 years. 

C128. What document formally ended the Mexican-American War and made New Mexico part of the United States?
Commonly called the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the actual title was the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement Between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic. It was signed on February 2, 1848. 

C129. After the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded all or portions of land that later became which states?
New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.  

C130. When did the first U.S. post office open in Albuquerque?
Albuquerque got its first post office in April 17, 1851. 

C131. Who was the most successful early merchant?
In 1857, Franz Huning opened his first store in Albuquerque. In 1864 Franz and Charles Huning began building their new store on the west side of the plaza.  

C132. When did Albuquerque have a castle?
In 1883 merchant Franz Huning built the 14-room mansion called Castle Huning of sod bricks sheathed in wood and carved to look like brick. The castle at Railroad Avenue (Central) and Fifteenth Street was torn down in 1955. 

C133. Besides San Felipe de Neri Church in Old Town, what were other early places of worship in Albuquerque?
The first Protestant church was the First Baptist Church, organized on October 10, 1853. On October 23, 1926, the church broke ground at its current location.
In 1879 Central United Methodist Church, originally called the Central Avenue Methodist Church, began in a rented room. The church completed a handsome structure at Arno and Central in 1912 and moved to its current location in 1951.  In 1880 St. John’s Episcopal Church began in a room converted into a chapel at the Exchange Hotel. In 1881 the First Presbyterian Church was founded.  The African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded in 1882, is now called Grant Chapel.  In 1897 Congregation Albert, organized by German Jews, became Albuquerque’s first Jewish congregation. On September 14, 1900 the first synagogue, Temple Albert, was dedicated on the corner of Seventh and Gold downtown. In 1951 a new temple opened on Lead Ave. It moved to its current location in 1984. 

C134. How did Albuquerque become an island?
On May 28, 1874, the Rio Grande overflowed its banks and surrounded Old Town, making Albuquerque an island. 

C135. When did Albuquerque get a telegraph?
It was February 12, 1876. 

C136. Where was the first bridge?
In 1876, Tom Post built the first bridge, a pontoon structure, connecting Albuquerque to Atrisco across the Rio Grande at the site of the current Central Avenue bridge. It washed away in 1891. The first permanent bridge opened on December 12, 1882.  Made of wood, it cost a nickel to cross. It too was destroyed by floods in May 1891. Not until 1910 did Albuquerque get its first permanent steel bridge, the Barelas Bridge. 

C137. What was the first bank?
In 1878 Central Bank was the first financial institution. Three years later First National Bank of Albuquerque was chartered. It merged with Central Bank in 1884 and with the Bank of Commerce in 1912. In 1933, a casualty of the Great Depression, First National Bank closed. 

C138. What was Albuquerque’s first planned suburb?
In 1880 Franz Huning’s Highland Addition, east of the railroad between Copper and Iron, became Albuquerque's first residential development. The Perea Addition, better known as the Downtown Neighborhood District west of New Town, followed in 1881. 

C139. When did Albuquerque have a Main Street?
In 1876 Rio Grande Boulevard was called Main Street. 

C140. When did “sprawl” begin in Albuquerque?
In 1906 D.K.B. Sellars envisioned  a “coming aristocratic section of Albuquerque” and began developing the University Heights Addition south of Central from Yale to Girard. The next subdivision was the Valley View Addition in 1911. Both were well outside city limits on the East Mesa. Promoters offered clean air (“Escape the Coal Smoke of Downtown”) and rural life, and the automobile made commuting possible.  

C141. When were golfing greens not green?
In 1922 the Albuquerque Country Club, which started in 1916 east of the present Spruce Park neighborhood, offered a nine-hole golf course of oiled sand, rolled hard. The club moved to its current site near Old Town in 1928.  

C142. When was the first housing boom?
In 1922 the Country Club Addition started, named for the club to the east. It would later be known as Spruce Park. Development began in 1925 on Grenada Heights on the East Mesa. Parkland Hills, Knob Heights, Monte Vista and College View followed in 1926. Seventeen subdivisions sprouted in quick succession. 

C143. When did the railroad arrive in Albuquerque?
On April 15, 1880, the first Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway train arrived in Albuquerque. The first depot was a boxcar set on pilings. Construction began on the depot and railroad complex in 1901. The depot burned in 1993. 

C144. What is the log building visible from I-25 south of Central?
Architect Charles F. Whittlesey designed and built the log home for himself in 1903. He designed a number of railroad hotels, including Albuquerque’s Alvarado, and El Tovar at the Grand Canyon. Soon after moving in the architect’s 11-year-old son shot a rattlesnake that was eating eggs from a nest on the porch beams. 

C145. How did Albuquerque become two towns?
The railroad spawned a second town. Tracks were laid east of Albuquerque to accommodate north-south track alignment and to avoid washouts when the Rio Grande flooded. The commercial area that sprouted along Railroad Avenue (Central) near the tracks became New Town, and the original community became Old Town. The two towns squabbled for years over the right to postmark their mail Albuquerque. From Washington, the post office decreed that they would use Old Albuquerque and New Albuquerque. Old Town wasn’t formally incorporated into Albuquerque until 1949.  

C146. How has Old Town changed in the last 50 years?
Originally a quiet village, Old Town was once more Victorian and less New Mexican. After being joined to Albuquerque in the 1950s, it became a tourist magnet. Merchants altered facades, added second stories, built new buildings and pueblo-ized existing buildings to conform to visitors’ expectations. 

C147. How did public transportation begin?
In 1880 Old Town had housing and New Town had jobs, so a trolley system was needed to link the two. The Street Railway Co. began running mule-drawn trolley cars along Railroad Avenue (Central) from the train station to Old Town. 

C148. When did Albuquerque get electric street cars?
In 1904 Albuquerque got its first electric street cars, which operated until Dec. 31, 1927. The next morning they were replaced by a fleet of five buses with eight miles of routes. 

C149. What were some of the earliest stores in Albuquerque?
In 1880 Lyman Beecher Putney opened the first store in New Town at First and Railroad (now Central). In 1909 Robert Kistler, George Kaseman and James Collister started a dry-goods store downtown on Central. (Kistler Collister opened a second store in Coronado Center in 1976.) In 1932 Knadjian's Carpets opened. And in 1936 Mannie Blaugrund opened American Furniture downtown. It moved to its present location in 1968. 

C150. What was Albuquerque’s first baseball team?
In 1880 Albuquerque's first baseball team was the Albuquerque Browns, playing at the territorial fairgrounds. In 1931 the Albuquerque Dons became the first professional team. In 1937 the Albuquerque Cardinals began playing in Tingley Field, which was renovated with WPA funding. There the team stayed until 1968 when the current stadium opened.