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Vintage New Mexico Magazine: A Dated Cover Gallery, 1938–1962

By Josh Eldred · New Mexico Literacy Project ·

New Mexico Magazine is the one magazine I never treat like the rest of the stack. Ordinary old magazines — Life, Time, Look, the commemorative issues everyone saved — are so common that the honest answer about their value disappoints almost everyone who asks. The state magazine plays by different rules. It has been published continuously since 1923, longer than any other state magazine in the country; its early issues were printed in small numbers for a thinly populated state; and its pages are now a primary photographic record of a New Mexico that no longer exists — the trading posts, the ghost towns before final collapse, the two-lane highways before the interstates. Below is a run I photographed at my warehouse, issue by issue, spanning November 1938 to August 1962. If you are trying to date or evaluate copies of your own, the covers themselves do most of the talking.

Have a stack of these? Magazines ride along free with any book or media pickup in the Albuquerque metro — and issues like the ones on this page get pulled and flagged, never pulped. Text 505-250-3804 or use the pickup form.

The oldest state magazine in the country

The magazine started life in 1923 as the New Mexico Highway Journal, a state road-department bulletin that quickly discovered its readers cared as much about where the roads went as how they were built. In 1931 it absorbed the Game and Fish Department’s Conservationist and became simply New Mexico — the title you see on every cover below. The state published it to sell itself: to tourists, to health-seekers, to easterners with a romantic itch, and eventually to the whole country under the “Land of Enchantment” banner. Because the audience was small and the paper was cheap, survival rates for early issues are poor — which is exactly what separates this title from the national weeklies that printed in the millions.

Two things about the magazine’s content matter to anyone holding old copies. First, the writing was better than a state promotional organ had any right to be: the January 1942 number carried Ernie Pyle’s “Why Albuquerque?”, the much-reprinted essay in which the most-read newspaperman in America explained why, of all the places he had filed from, he built his one and only house on a dirt road on Albuquerque’s east mesa. Second, the magazine looked outward as much as inward — its long-running “One of Our Fifty Is Missing” department collected true stories of banks, agencies, and airline clerks who refused to believe New Mexico is a state, and it remains the funniest sustained argument for why the state needed a magazine at all.

What follows is the run as I photographed it, grouped the way the magazine itself changed: by price, by masthead, and by what the state was going through at the time.

Dating an issue at a glance

Every cover in this run carries its month and year, but plenty of surviving copies have lost covers, or turn up as bound years with the covers trimmed away. The masthead and the newsstand price will still get you close:

Years Masthead reads Newsstand price Quick tells
1923–1931 New Mexico Highway Journal — Road-department bulletin era. Genuinely scarce; handle as the prize of any lot.
1931 – c. 1947 New Mexico, script logo Fifteen cents Hand-tinted and duotone photographic covers; wartime issues run thinner.
1948 – mid-1950s New Mexico, script logo Twenty-five cents Full-color photographic covers; ski, fishing, and highway subjects multiply.
c. 1956 onward New Mexico Magazine / “The Land of Enchantment” Thirty-five cents “Magazine” joins the masthead; the state slogan appears as a cover subtitle.

The price transitions are bracketed by the issues photographed here — still fifteen cents in January 1947, twenty-five by February 1948, thirty-five by January 1957 — so the exact switchover months fall between the copies shown. If you have an issue that pins a transition tighter, I would genuinely like to hear about it.

Before the war: fifteen cents

The late-1930s issues are the scarcest in this run. Color photography was not yet practical for a state monthly, so the covers of this era are black-and-white photographs tinted by hand — a look collectors recognize across the room.

New Mexico Magazine November 1938 cover: hand-tinted portrait of a Pueblo man in a striped blanket, fifteen cents — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
November 1938, fifteen cents. A hand-tinted portrait cover — the tinting was applied by hand to a black-and-white photograph, the standard method before color film reached state monthlies.
New Mexico Magazine December 1940 cover: skier on a snow slope, stamped DUPLICATE, fifteen cents — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
December 1940. This copy is stamped DUPLICATE and carries a peeled-label scar and an old ink scribble — a file copy that did some traveling before it reached me. Markings like these are part of a copy’s story, and worth recording rather than hiding.
New Mexico Magazine June 1941 cover: two visitors inside Carlsbad Caverns among limestone formations — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
June 1941. Carlsbad Caverns, with two visitors dwarfed by the formations. The caverns were the state’s headline attraction in the years before the atomic laboratories existed.

The war years

The 1942 and 1943 issues were printed while the state’s National Guard was in Japanese prison camps after Bataan and while Los Alamos was being fenced off under a name nobody was allowed to say. None of that appears on the covers. The magazine kept selling New Mexico — dancers, cowboys, trout lakes — on thinner wartime paper, and the contrast is part of what makes these issues interesting to hold.

New Mexico Magazine February 1942 cover: hand-tinted photograph of a Navajo girl carrying a white lamb, wearing stamped-silver bracelets and a concho belt — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
February 1942, ten weeks after Pearl Harbor. A Navajo girl carrying a lamb, photographed in black and white and tinted by hand — stamped-silver bracelets, a concho belt, wind in her hair.
New Mexico Magazine June 1942 cover: Wilfred Stedman pictorial map of New Mexico with vignette border, signed in the plate at lower left — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
June 1942. Wilfred Stedman’s pictorial map of the state, signed in the plate at lower left — every town gets a little drawn scene, from Shiprock to Carlsbad, inside a border of woodcut-style vignettes. Stedman’s cover work is its own small collecting field, and map covers cross-collect with map and atlas collectors generally.
New Mexico Magazine July 1942 cover: hoop dancer balanced mid-step on bare rock, fifteen cents — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
July 1942. A hoop dancer mid-step on bare rock. The war was seven months old; the covers kept selling the Land of Enchantment anyway.
New Mexico Magazine August 1942 cover: cowboy in a white hat playing guitar, fifteen cents — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
August 1942. A singing cowboy, guitar and white hat, fifteen cents.
New Mexico Magazine November 1943 cover: mountain lake below a scree slope and pines, fifteen cents — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
November 1943. A trout lake under a scree slope, on noticeably thinner stock — paper went where the war needed it.
Interior spread from a war-years New Mexico Magazine: the feature Frontier Rations opposite One Man's Mountain — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
Inside a war-years issue: “Frontier Rations,” cooking advice for kitchens working under ration books, opposite “One Man’s Mountain.” The interiors are why researchers want whole runs, not just pretty covers.

Postwar color: twenty-five cents

After the war the magazine moved to true color covers, and by 1948 the newsstand price jumped from fifteen to twenty-five cents — the single most useful quick-dating clue on the whole run. Tourism was booming, the ski areas were building their first lifts, and the covers show it.

New Mexico Magazine March 1946 cover: sheer canyon cliffs, fifteen cents — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
March 1946, still fifteen cents. Canyon country filling the whole frame.
New Mexico Magazine May 1946 cover: couple with a saddle horse and stock dog at a log corral under a flowering tree — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
May 1946. A couple, a saddle horse, and a stock dog at a log corral — the dude-ranch New Mexico the magazine sold to the rest of the country.
New Mexico Magazine December 1946 cover: walker below timberline in a high mountain valley, old pencil price mark in the sky — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
December 1946. A walker below timberline. An old dealer’s pencil price sits faintly in the sky at upper right — part of the copy’s history now.
New Mexico Magazine January 1947 cover: red chile ristras drying on a rack in a farmyard, yellow border — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
January 1947. Chile ristras drying on a rack — the cover subject that says New Mexico faster than any other. The magazine’s food coverage runs deep enough that I cite it in my chile culture and agriculture guide.
New Mexico Magazine February 1948 cover: early chairlift with single chairs hanging from a timber log tower above a snowy slope, twenty-five cents — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
February 1948, twenty-five cents now. An early chairlift — single chairs hanging from a log-built tower — with the valley floor far below. Ski-history collectors chase covers like this one independently of the magazine itself.
New Mexico Magazine August 1948 cover: bride in a white gown holding flowers in a dahlia garden — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
August 1948. A bride among dahlias — a reminder the magazine’s range ran wider than scenery.
New Mexico Magazine December 1948 cover: fisherman in a red shirt working a meadow stream below forested hills — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
December 1948. A fisherman working a meadow stream in a red flannel shirt.
New Mexico Magazine January 1949 cover: horse-drawn wagon fording a shallow river, issue fanned on top of other issues from the run — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
January 1949, fanned over the rest of the run. A freight wagon fords a shallow river on the cover — and the fan underneath is what a survivor run actually looks like when it comes out of a garage.
New Mexico Magazine June 1950 cover: claret cup cactus in full red bloom against a blue sky, twenty-five cents — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
June 1950. Claret cup cactus in full bloom. The little price sticker at the corner is a bookshop’s, decades later — not the newsstand’s.
New Mexico Magazine December 1950 cover: Christmas still life of pinon cones, red candle, and greenery — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
December 1950. A Christmas still life of piñon cones and a red candle. Holiday numbers were kept and re-shelved every December, so they survive a little better than the rest.

The Land of Enchantment years: thirty-five cents

By the late 1950s the masthead had grown a “Magazine” and the price a dime. The state was selling itself harder than ever, and the August 1962 cover below is practically a syllabus of it: the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, running every summer since 1922; Will Shuster’s Zozobra, the groaning effigy Santa Fe has burned at Fiesta since 1924; a Billy the Kid pageant; and a centennial for a fort. Issues built around these events are the ones that leave the magazine-collecting world entirely — Fiesta collectors, Ceremonial collectors, and outlaw-history people all bid on the same copy.

New Mexico Magazine January 1957 cover: adobe mission ruins under a summer sky with two women in traditional dress, thirty-five cents — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
January 1957, thirty-five cents, and the masthead now reads New Mexico Magazine. Adobe mission ruins under a towering summer sky.
New Mexico Magazine August 1962 cover: riders on horseback below a sandstone formation, cover lines for Fort Wingate Centennial, Billy the Kid Pageant, Gallup Indian Ceremonial, and Saga of Zozobra — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
August 1962 — “August is pageant month in New Mexico.” The cover lines date it exactly: the Fort Wingate Centennial (1862–1962), the Billy the Kid Pageant, the Gallup Indian Ceremonial, and the Saga of Zozobra. Zozobra and Ceremonial material cross-collects far beyond magazine circles.

The advertising is part of the record

Back cover of a vintage New Mexico Magazine: First National Bank in Albuquerque advertisement with a photograph of oil refinery works, promoting the state oil and gas industry — photographed at New Mexico Literacy Project
A back cover from the run: First National Bank in Albuquerque, celebrating the state’s young oil and gas industry with a refinery photograph. Period bank and petroleum advertising is collected on its own, and ghost-town researchers mine these pages too — see the mining and ghost-town guide for why.

Do not skip the ads when you evaluate a run. Regional advertising — banks, railroads, trading posts, motor courts, curio shops — is often the only surviving visual record of businesses that left no other paper behind, and it is a real part of why researchers buy bound years of this magazine.

Reading a copy in hand

Mid-century monthlies like this one are saddle-stitched — folded sheets driven through with two wire staples — and the staples are where a copy’s condition story starts. Look for rust blooming at the wire (it stains the gutter of every leaf it touches), covers starting to detach at the staples, and spine roll from decades of being read flat. Then check completeness the way a bookseller would: flip for razored-out recipes and pictures (the chile and Christmas numbers suffered most), confirm any foldout or insert is still attached, and note whether the copy is a clean newsstand example or carries a subscription mailing label. None of these flaws kills a scarce early issue — the December 1940 copy above wears a DUPLICATE stamp and I photographed it anyway — but each one belongs in an honest description.

Storage is the other half. Old pulp paper is acidic and brittle at the edges; the kindest treatment for a run like this is upright storage in magazine files, or flat stacking in shallow piles, out of the sun that fades those tinted covers. The same handling rules in my preservation and storage guide apply, just more urgently, because magazine paper was never meant to live eighty years.

What actually matters when you find a stack

Date first. The price is the fastest clue — fifteen cents runs through the mid-1940s, twenty-five cents from 1948, thirty-five cents by the late 1950s — and the masthead style narrows it further, as the gallery above shows. Anything from the 1920s Highway Journal era is genuinely scarce and should be handled as such.

Subject covers cross-collect. A ski-lift cover sells to ski-history people, a Zozobra issue to Fiesta collectors, a Stedman map cover to map people, a Carlsbad cover to caverns ephemera collectors. The buyer is often not a magazine collector at all — which is the healthiest kind of demand a paper item can have.

Condition and markings. Mailing labels, DUPLICATE stamps, dealer pencil, chips and scribbles all matter, but for a state monthly with modest survival rates they are not disqualifying the way they are for the national weeklies — a marked early issue still beats no issue at all. Record the markings honestly and let the buyer decide.

Runs beat strays. Bound years and long unbroken runs are worth more than the sum of their issues, because researchers use them as a photographic archive — of ghost towns before collapse, trading posts, pre-interstate highways, and roadside businesses that survive nowhere else on paper. If you have inherited a long run, please do not break it up or recycle it before someone who knows the title has looked at it.

Most of the stacks I meet on pickups are the common national titles, and I am honest with people about those: they are wonderful and they are not valuable. But when a box turns out to hold the state magazine going back before the war — like the run on this page — that is a box I am glad somebody did not recycle. In the Albuquerque metro I pick up free: books, magazines, and all media in one stop, any quantity, no sorting, with a 24/7 drop box at the warehouse for small loads. Early and notable issues get pulled, flagged, and found a proper home. Text 505-250-3804 and tell me what you have.

Old New Mexico Magazines to clear out?

Free pickup across the Albuquerque metro, any quantity, no sorting. Early issues get flagged, never pulped.

Call or Text 505-250-3804

Frequently asked questions

Are old New Mexico Magazine issues worth anything?
They are the regional exception to the usual old-magazine rule, but a modest one. Prewar and wartime issues, striking subject covers (skiing, Zozobra, the Gallup Ceremonial, pictorial maps), and long unbroken runs find steady buyers among researchers, decorators, and New Mexico collectors, while common postwar strays in rough shape are plentiful. Condition, date, and completeness decide it. No single issue is a windfall, but a clean early run deserves better than the recycling bin.
Which issues do collectors and researchers actually want?
The 1920s New Mexico Highway Journal era, the hand-tinted covers of the 1930s and early 1940s, artist covers such as Wilfred Stedman’s pictorial maps, wartime issues, subject covers that cross into other collecting fields (ski history, Zozobra and the Santa Fe Fiesta, the Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial, Carlsbad Caverns), and bound or complete years. Researchers use long runs as a photographic archive of ghost towns, pre-interstate highways, and trading posts that no longer exist.
Do you pick up old magazines along with books?
Yes. Magazines ride along free with any book or media pickup across the Albuquerque metro, any quantity, no sorting, and there is a 24/7 drop box at the warehouse. Anything genuinely early or notable — like the issues on this page — gets pulled and flagged rather than pulped. Text 505-250-3804 or use the pickup form.
How do I date a New Mexico Magazine issue with no visible date?
Use the masthead and the newsstand price together, as in the dating table above. A script New Mexico logo at fifteen cents is 1930s to mid-1940s; the same logo at twenty-five cents is 1948 to the mid-1950s; once the masthead reads New Mexico Magazine with the Land of Enchantment subtitle at thirty-five cents, you are in the late 1950s or 1960s. Hand-tinted cover photography pushes you earlier; full-color photography later. Inside, dated advertisements and event coverage will usually pin the month.
Should I break up a bound run or sell issues one at a time?
Keep runs together. The strongest demand for this title comes from researchers and institutions that want continuous years — they are buying the magazine as a photographic archive of ghost towns, trading posts, and pre-interstate New Mexico, and a gap-free run is worth more than the same issues scattered. The exception is a standout subject cover (Zozobra, an early ski lift, a Stedman map) that cross-collects on its own; even then, sell the stray only if the run is already broken.

Related on this site

Cite This Guide

Eldred, J. (August 2026). Vintage New Mexico Magazine: A Dated Cover Gallery, 1938–1962. New Mexico Literacy Project.

https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/vintage-new-mexico-magazine-back-issues-collecting

Content and photography are original documentation by Josh Eldred. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Cite with attribution.

Request Your Free Pickup

Got these to clear out? Tell me what you have and where it is. I’m the only person who shows up — I do the lifting, any condition, no sorting. Tell me your timeline and I’ll do my best to work with it. Texts go straight to my phone at 505-250-3804.