Why So Many Americans Move To Arizona And Not New Mexico

New Mexico is a beautiful state the land of enchantment as it turns out is quite enchanting but while New Mexico has grown fairly consistently over the last hundred years its neighboring state Arizona has grown multiple times more over the same time period here's why so many Americans move to Arizona and not New Mexico [Music] hello and welcome to geography by Jeff today we're off to the Great Southwest to look at two states in particular and how they've grown over the last century New Mexico and Arizona have quite the entangled history as it turns out but while Arizona has grown by an incredible amount New Mexico simply hasn't which is crazy because New Mexico is simply beautiful and this is to take nothing away from Arizona but the discrepancy between the two states is actually pretty jarring but of course as usual if you enjoy my videos be sure to check out my podcast geography is everything each week myself and Professor Hunter shobi tackle wildly different topic and look at them through a geographic lens this week we're going to explore the humble potato you can listen to that podcast right here on YouTube substack where there's exclusive content or whatever app you use [Music] thank you from the very beginning the histories of Arizona and New Mexico have been intertwined and much like its name suggests New Mexico was once part of Mexico proper in fact Not only was New Mexico part of the current country of Mexico but so too were the modern day states of Texas Arizona Utah Nevada California much of Colorado and a sliver of Wyoming the vast majority of this territory was won by the United States during the Mexican-American war with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. the remainder of what would become the contiguous United States was purchased from Mexico in 1854 in order to build a southern transcontinental rail this entire region in between the newly minted states of California and Texas would become the New Mexico territory now as with many states and territories during this period of time the New Mexico territory would get wrapped up in the U.S Civil War where it was constantly debated on whether it would be entered into the Union as a slave state or as a free state in fact both the union and Confederates claimed the territory under their respective banners the union would eventually win the territory but the Confederates based in Texas would continue to claim the southern part of the territory and March under a different flag and name entirely Arizona and despite the current incarnation of the two states the Confederates actually cut the territory into a northern half and a southern half of which they claimed the southern half for which they believed would become the Confederate State of Arizona of course Arizona and New Mexico don't look like this today shortly after the war ended in 1865 the reunited U.S government would sort out the territory into the New Mexico territory in the East and the Arizona territory in the west the Northwest portion of the New Mexico territory would also be given to Nevada which was admitted into the Union in 1864. and Colorado would take the Northeast portion it would be another 47 years before New Mexico or Arizona would be admitted into the Union as a full state but the original intent was that New Mexico would be entered into the full State much sooner than 1912. in 1888 president Grover Cleveland proposed admitting the territory into the country along with Washington Montana and Dakota but would lose that battle due to shifting political wins but even in 1888 New Mexico wasn't a place to be considered for Statehood for many years prior Nevada for example was it entered into the union with less than ten thousand people living in it at that time New Mexico had nearly 100 000 people but most of those people were former Mexican citizens and U.S politicians had no intention of regarding them on an equal level as American settlers to Nevada Arizona it should be pointed out would be excluded from statehood for similar reasons New Mexico would ultimately be admitted to the state on January 6 1912 and Arizona would be admitted shortly after on February 14 1912. and during this time of admittance New Mexico would have nearly 330 000 people living in it while Arizona would have just over 200 000 people this is a far cry from where the two states are today New Mexico and Arizona share a unified history even after they were split up as separate territories they remained linked for a long time but beginning in the mid-1900s something started happening Arizona began pulling away from New Mexico and there's a reason for that but before we get into why so many Americans moved to Arizona and not New Mexico if you're enjoying this video now would be a great time to subscribe more fun geography videos are just a single click away [Music] as already mentioned New Mexico would start out its life as a state with far more people than Arizona but it wouldn't take too long before this starts to change by 1950 Arizona begins to outpace New Mexico handily with over 750 000 people to New Mexico's six hundred and eighty thousand and from there the Gap just gets wider and this is interesting because from the outside the two states look pretty similar mostly because both are predominantly dry arid deserts aside from specific areas and this leads us to our likely number one reason for the two's relative growth water it might seem odd that too mostly desert States would have a huge difference in the amount of water available but that is actually the case here you see Arizona is fed by multiple different water sources but a large part of its water comes from the Colorado River a river that also feeds the states of Colorado Nevada Wyoming California and New Mexico but just a smidge and in this equation Arizona gets a sizable portion of the Colorado River delivered by an extensive aqueduct meanwhile New Mexico's largest river that goes through it is the Rio Grande but the Rio Grande is much smaller than the Colorado River and New Mexico doesn't get it all in fact New Mexico and Texas had been locked in a legal battle over who has access to the majority of the river's water until very recently but also these two rivers are not equal the Colorado River has an average discharge of about 22 500 cubic feet of water per second and the Rio Grande has an average discharge of about 2 400 cubic feet per second which means that there is flatly less water for New Mexico to use for things like Agriculture and especially in the early part of the 20th century agriculture was a huge economic generator if your state wasn't able to grow as much fewer people would move there overall this of course is no longer the case today but it had knock-on effects as Arizona was able to grow its agricultural industry it attracted additional people to support the increase in population this would directly lead to the City of Phoenix outpacing New Mexico's largest city Albuquerque in almost every industry but there's also another thing at play here [Music] as we've already mentioned Arizona and New Mexico share a mostly dry arid climate throughout the state but despite this similarity the two states weather systems are actually quite different you see New Mexico exists at an average elevation of around 5000 feet above sea level in its largest city Albuquerque is at 5 300 feet above sea level if we contrast this to Arizona the differences start to emerge while Arizona's average elevation is still a relatively High 4000 feet above the sea level Phoenix has managed to grow in a valley that's much lower Phoenix home to millions of arizonans is just over 1200 feet of elevation and this has had a huge impact on the relative comfort for people living there what this basically boils down to is that while both Phoenix and Albuquerque get quite hot in the summer in the winter Albuquerque gets much colder the average low during the fall and winter months can range anywhere between the low 40s all the way down to the low teens Phoenix meanwhile stays at a relatively comfortable temperature throughout winter and this means that people who are fleeing from the colder Northern cities also called snowbirds have inevitably chosen Phoenix and Arizona as their destination rather than Albuquerque or New Mexico at Large [Music] today New Mexico has a population just over 2.1 million people making it the 36th largest state overall meanwhile Arizona has over 7.3 million people making it the 14th largest state that's nearly three and a half times the size of New Mexico and this has trickled down throughout both States Phoenix has nearly 5 million people in its metro area and has attracted an industry and economy to match as well as major league sports teams in four of the five major leagues in the U.S meanwhile Albuquerque has a relatively small 900 000 people in its Metro region a smaller economy and no major league sports teams and this isn't to say that New Mexico and Albuquerque aren't growing they definitely are between 1970 and 2010 New Mexico grew by double digits every single decade that's pretty phenomenal growth that many states would envy but compared to its neighbor Arizona it's peanuts New Mexico is a phenomenal state that has a lot going for it today but it's had a unique set of challenges that's led to some rather anemic growth over the 20th century challenges its neighbor Arizona didn't have quite as much of and because of those challenges so many more people continue to move to Arizona over New Mexico today I hope you enjoyed learning about why so many Americans choose to move to Arizona over New Mexico if you did please subscribe to my channel and if you want to watch more of my videos you can do so here thanks for watching see you next time

Channel: Geography By Geoff

Views: 2,155,115

Keywords: geography, geography by geoff, geography youtube, youtube videos about geography, real life lore, geography now, geography quiz, geography facts, united states geography, world geography, us population distribution, usa best state, usa most important state, arizona, new mexico, why arizona is the best state, why arizona so hot, why arizona has grown so much, why people don't move to new mexico

Id: 6iCRn_b7Amc

Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 13 2023