Albuquerque: It's a Trip

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Nearly half of all New Mexicans live in the counties that make up the Albuquerque metropolitan area contributing to the diversity behind the city slogan, " It's a Trip. "  Within a short drive mountains become desert, golf yields to skiing, historic culture stands beside modern science and quiet farms go about their business removed from the bright lights and pulsing beats of urban entertainments.

Albuquerque dates its founding to 1706 and still maintains the Old Town plaza just off old Route 66 near its crossing of the Rio Grande. Generations of pastoral life began to change with the arrival of the railroad and the founding of New Town a few miles away with the two communities linked by a horse-drawn streetcar running down the middle of what would become Central Avenue. The railroad brought jobs, industry, access to distant markets and steady growth.

World War Two saw the beginnings of modern Albuquerque with the establishment of what would become Kirtland Air Force Base and two national laboratories, one in Los Alamos and the other in Albuquerque. The Sunbelt migration that followed coupled with Albuquerque's historic roots put the city on course to its appearance among the top cities in the country for business, entrepreneurs, retirement and places to live. Also recognized is the creative environment for artists and their venues which now includes a major motion picture studio and an expanding film industry.  Each October the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta draws tens of thousands of visitors to the city along with hundreds of balloons and their pilots and crews.

Today 450,000 people live in the city proper in a metropolitan area of nearly 900,000 spread into three counties. Contributing the city's reputation for lifestyle is an ever-lengthening system of walking and biking trails, a climate that in winter allows for golf in the morning and skiing in the afternoon, and a system of parks and open space that includes a former land grant protecting the western face of the Sandia Mountains which rise as a dramatic backdrop for the community.