Albuquerque, A Confluence Of Cultures A Great Place To Begin If You Want To Understand The Southwest Before Traveling Through It

Oh no, here comes another one.

Don’t they know I’m from the East Coast? Can’t they sense my ingrained discomfort with such people?

He’s getting closer. He’s locked on.

He speaks!

“Hi,” says the man with the face of a kind grandpa and the badge of a volunteer guide at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History. “Have you been here before? Would you like me to show you around?”

Well, sure I would. I guess. If people here are going to be so friendly to outsiders - like purring cats nuzzling the person with allergies - I’ll just have to learn to live with it.

It was like this at the Pueblo Indian center. At the Old Town Plaza. At the natural history museum.

Albuquerque’s like that. Maybe it has to be.

This is one of those cities that doesn’t quite glitter as a tourist destination. Very often, people come here on the way to someplace else, although the city’s convention trade is picking up.

Skiers whip past in the winter en route to Taos and Angel Fire. It’s just a place to land for jet-set Texans and Californians seeking the concha-belt crowd in Santa Fe. For others, Albuquerque is where they rent the car that will take them to the Indian pueblos or the beauty of the Four Corners area.

Albuquerque is best known for a hot-air balloon festival and a dramatic tram ride to the top of Sandia Peak. That’s OK, but not much. Too bad. Most people would probably be surprised if they slowed down and took time to appreciate the place.

Scratch the surface and you’ll find a friendly, navigable city that can teach you what makes New Mexico and the Southwest special: friendliness, history and a confluence - sometimes a collision - of cultures.

In Albuquerque, this is embodied in several museums, many of which will appeal to kids as well as adults. They cover everything from inland seas to prehistoric camels, Native American civilizations to Spanish conquest, atomic weaponry to rattlesnakes.

First, the lay of the land: Albuquerque, with nearly half a million people and expanding fast, is where the Rio Grande wanders past the Sandia Mountains.

From the river, near Old Town and downtown, the city gradually climbs eastward from 4,500 feet - past the University of New Mexico, residential areas and new malls and office towers - to 6,500 feet, at the edge of the mountains capped by 10,600-foot Sandia Peak.

The city has grown at the meeting of two legendary thoroughfares: El Camino Real, the old Spanish route from Santa Fe to Mexico; and Route 66 (now Central Avenue), romanticized in television and song (“Route 66,” written by Bobby Troup, who in 1946 hit the road from Harrisburg, Pa., in a green 1941 Buick convertible).

You wouldn’t call Albuquerque vibrant. Downtown empties out at night. Typical of Southwestern cities, it sprawls (the local tourist board calls it a “horizontal” city) and it’s studded with fast-food joints.

But it’s a great place to begin if you want to understand the Southwest before traveling through it. That’s where the museums come in.

To begin at the beginning - with the formation of Earth - hit the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science first. Here, and at several other stops, volunteers probably will approach you and offer advice about what to see.

Local dinosaur skeletons on display including the Pentaceratops, unique to this area. This part of the world, now high and dry, was flooded hundreds of millions of years ago, leaving swamps that became coal fields. Where Albuquerque now sits, sharks once swam.

This museum sets the scene for the people of New Mexico. The first were the predecessors of the Pueblo Indians, who still inhabit the area. For their story, the next stop is the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, a few miles away at the University of New Mexico.

The Maxwell is the only museum on the list that is unappealing to children. Still, its more academic approach offers insight into the area. The museum includes a recreated archeological excavation of ancient dwellings and pottery from as far back as A.D. 500, roughly the time of the first permanent architecture in the region.

To learn about modern Native American life, move on to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. Close to Old Town, the center’s museum includes information on each pueblo and a history of Indians in the area.

The museum also describes the Pueblo revolt of 1680, when the pueblos, which were autonomous, organized and drove out the Spanish. Santa Fe was sacked, there were massacres all around, and 400 or so Spaniards were killed.

Today, unlike most Indian tribes, the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico live on their ancestral land in communities that, in some cases, predate Columbus.

Their presence is seen every day in New Mexico; The Zia Pueblo’s sun sign is the symbol on the state flag. (Many of the 19 pueblos are easily accessible from Albuquerque. They vary in the warmth with which they welcome visitors but some, such as the Taos and Acoma Pueblos, encourage guests. There also are Apache and Navajo reservations in New Mexico, most fairly far from Albuquerque.)

Now for the Spanish viewpoint. The Albuquerque Museum of Art, History and Science, near the natural-history museum, picks up with Cortez, who arrived in 1540 and encountered the already advanced native civilizations.

The exhibits recall how the Spanish, intent on finding treasure, were captivated by stories of the “seven cities of Cibola,” a legendary stash of gold somewhere to the north. A treasure-hunting expedition commanded by Coronado and led by Indian guides passed through what would become Albuquerque, and wandered northeast.

Instead of gold they found Kansas. Irked, Coronado had his guides killed on the spot.

The Spanish settled in in Albuquerque, bringing their architecture, religion and also cattle, herded by “vaqueros,” the first cowboys. Albuquerque was named for a Spanish nobleman, whose title is retained by the local minor-league baseball team, the Dukes.

From the museum, it’s a block or two to Old Town, the original heart of Albuquerque. It’s a nice stroll with an ancient church and many shops, but, as a cultural experience, it’s more like “el Disneyland.”

Two other stops reveal a great deal about the area.

One is the American International Rattlesnake Museum. In it are - surprise - rattlesnakes, maybe 80 of them. Proprietor Bob Myers says this is the largest live-rattler collection anywhere, and it’s easier to believe him than to go around counting.

And for the modern age, there is the National Atomic Museum, a paean to the atomic era in which New Mexico played such a key part.

Operated by the Department of Energy, on a corner of Kirtland Air Force Base, the museum focuses on the Manhattan Project, the New Mexico-based effort to build the first atomic bomb. It also traces the development of nuclear weapons from the A-bombs dropped on Japan to today’s arsenal. Parked outside the museum is a huge B-52 “Stratofortress” bomber.

MEMO: This is a sidebar which appeared with story:

IF YOU GO

STAYING THERE: For information on hotels or other tourist attractions, contact the Albuquerque Convention and Visitors Bureau, (800) 284-2282. THE MUSEUMS: For directions or times of operation, contact the following: New Mexico Museum of Natural History, (505) 841-8837; Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, (505) 277-4404; Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, (505) 843-7270; Albuquerque Museum, (505) 243-7255; National Atomic Museum, (505) 845-6670 THE BIG EVENT: Each year in the first two weekends of October, Albuquerque hosts what is often described as the largest hot-air balloon festival in the world. Many hotels fill up many months in advance for that period; for more information, contact the Visitors Bureau.