The Duke City of the high desert — where Old Town's 300-year-old adobe buildings surround a Spanish colonial plaza still used for farmer's markets, the International Balloon Fiesta launches 500 hot-air balloons at dawn every October in the largest ballooning event on earth, the Rio Grande divides the city between the East Mesa's Sandia Mountains (rising 5,000 feet directly above the city) and the West Mesa's volcanic escarpment, and Route 66 still runs through Nob Hill's neon-signed diners
Albuquerque (565,000; metro 940,000) is New Mexico's largest city, sitting at 5,312 feet elevation on the upper Rio Grande — a high-altitude desert city where the sky is luminously blue 310 days a year, the air is so dry that centuries-old adobe structures survive intact, and the Sandia Mountains (Sandia Crest, 10,678 feet) change from pale pink to salmon to deep purple at sunset with a visual drama unique to the American Southwest. The city's Old Town (founded 1706 by Governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdés, eight decades before the United States existed) is a genuine colonial plaza surrounded by…
The Tiwa-speaking Pueblo people (Sandia Pueblo, Isleta Pueblo, and others) occupied the middle Rio Grande valley for centuries before Spanish contact — the area's Pueblo peoples built multi-story apartment complexes in the 13th century, 300 years before Albuquerque was founded. Governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdés founded Villa de Alburquerque (the first 'r' was dropped over time) in 1706 on a traditional Tiwa-speaking Pueblo site, naming it for the Duke of Alburquerque, the Spanish viceroy of New Mexico. The Camino Real (Royal Road of the Interior) connected Albuquerque to Mexico City through…