New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs

Geography Exploration Toolkit – Your Town

Back to Quarterly Educational Activities

1. Mapping the past

  1. Find your town or region on a map from the 1700s era, like the Map of central New Mexico in 1770’s, by Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco following the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition
    1. 1688 Map of ‘Mexico Nouveau’
    2. 1719 Map
    3. 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition
    4. The Spanish Archives of New Mexico 1779 Map p 264
    5. 1786 Map
    6. 1786 MAP 2
    7. Indigenous New Mexico Map – New Mexico History Museum
    8. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase – 1820 Map
  2. What was your current location like in 1776?
    1. Did it exist? If it existed, what documents demonstrate that? Who lived there?
    2. If not, what was the landscape like in 1776? When was it founded, and who lived there? ]
    3. What’s the oldest map that shows your town?

2. Lived realities

  1. What kinds of dwellings did people live in? Which one do you think was the most pleasant?
    1. What kinds of plants and animals lived there? Do they still live there now?
    2. What did people eat?
    3. What did people do if they were sick or injured?

3. Activity ideas:

  1. Draw what the view from your bedroom window might have been like in 1776
  2. Compare the 1786 map with the map of 1719. What are some differences you notice between the two? What places are not on either map?
  3. Plan a walking tour of your neighborhood or downtown

4. Resources

  1. Note: Check with NM History museum about what is already in existence
  2. Involve Librarians