THE CE:nTRAL RIO GRANDE VALLEY 



31 



spirited and the city is advancing with surprising rapidity both in wealth, 

 extent and importance of its business interests and in population. The 

 recent completion of the Santa Fe's new transcontinental line from Belen 

 to Texico on the Texas border has opened to Albuquerque the most 

 rapidly advancing section of Eastern New Mexico ; while since the found- 

 ing of the city its trade relations with the districts north, south and west 

 have been close. The population now within the city limits does not 

 exceed 15,000; but within a radius of five miles of the center of the city 

 lives a population of not less than 25,000. So rapidly is this population 

 increasing that the census of 1910 will show not less than 30,000 people 

 within this area. Its location has made Albuquerque the "Chief City of 

 a New Empire in the Great Southwest", and that same location and the 

 enterprise and hustle of its people will keep it so. 



Albuquerque is the central market for the Rio Grande valley and the 

 rapidly developing farming interests of this region alone, would suffice 

 to buiid up a city. It is the central wool and live stock market of New 

 Mexico. Approximately 7,000,000 pounds of wool are scoured each 

 year at the Albuquerque mills and as much more handled by merchants 

 and commission men from Albuquerque, while hundreds of thousands of 

 sheep and lambs pass through the Albuquerque stock yards with each 

 shipping season. It is the central lumber manufacturing point in the 

 Southwest, the huge mills 

 of the American Lumber 

 Company employing 2,000 

 men in mills and forests and 

 having a capacity per day of 

 350,000 feet of sawed lum- 

 ber, turning out also 100,- 

 000 feet of mouldings, 

 100,000 feet of box shook, 

 1,500 doors, 2,000 windows, 

 60,000 shingles and 70,000 

 laths. Woolen mills with 

 capacity to handle a large 

 portion of New Mexico's 

 great wool crop are located 

 at Albuquerque, as are 

 flouring mills, artificial 

 stone, brick, tile and cement 

 manufacturing plants, iron 

 works, the principal ma- 

 chine and repair and car 

 shops of the coast line sys- 

 tem of the Santa Fe rail- 

 road, the Santa Fe's enor- 

 mous tie and timber treat- 

 ing plant, and numerous BemalUlo county court House 



