New Mexico built the first atomic bomb, then built the world’s first commercial spaceport
- Los Alamos National Laboratory: $5.28 billion budget, still active today
- Sandia National Laboratories: an even larger budget, next door in Albuquerque
- 1 in 5 adults in Los Alamos County holds a doctorate
- The Land of Enchantment, 47th to join the Union (1912)
How New Mexico’s digital economy grew
New Mexico becomes the 47th state
Admitted to the Union on January 6, 1912.
From secret mesa to a $5 billion research engine
Los Alamos was founded in 1943 as the secret home of the Manhattan Project; the Trinity test, 27 months later, was the world’s first nuclear detonation. Today the lab employs nearly 18,000 people on a $5.28 billion annual budget, with its mission broadened well past weapons work into nonproliferation, energy infrastructure and border security. Los Alamos County now has one of the highest concentrations of PhDs of any county in the US — roughly 1 in 5 adults — directly attributable to the lab’s research workforce.
Sandia National Laboratories, which spun off from Los Alamos in 1945 to engineer the non-nuclear components of the weapons Los Alamos designed, is headquartered on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque with an even larger budget, around $5.77 billion. Together the two labs represent roughly $11 billion a year and about 34,000 jobs concentrated in one state.
The same desert instincts, a new frontier
Spaceport America, 18,000 acres in the empty southern New Mexico desert, was sited for the same reasons the Manhattan Project chose an isolated northern mesa: seclusion, a dry climate, and government-controlled land. Virgin Galactic signed on as its 20-year anchor tenant in 2008 and flew its first human spaceflight in May 2021, followed by Richard Branson’s own flight two months later. The company has since paused commercial service to build a new generation of spacecraft, with a restart targeted for late 2026.
How New Mexico businesses buy websites
The national labs and the spaceport get the headlines, but most of New Mexico’s businesses are the trades and shops serving Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and towns across a vast, sparsely populated state.
Trades and home services
New Mexico is the 5th-largest state by land area — say plainly which towns you actually serve.
Professional and B2B services
A research and science economy rewards clarity about exactly what you do.
Tourism and hospitality
Santa Fe and the state’s natural sites draw visitors year-round — clear hours matter here.
How well do you know New Mexico’s digital economy?
3 quick questions. Get all 3 right and you win a 10% off discount code. Every answer is somewhere on this page.
New Mexico quiz · 1 of 3
In what year was Los Alamos National Laboratory founded as the secret home of the Manhattan Project?
Why FastSites works here
A state that has spent 80 years doing precise, high-stakes work in the middle of the desert understands the value of getting the fundamentals right the first time. A clear one-page site, live in days, at a published price, is that same discipline for a small business.