Today’s question: If Arizona and New Mexico were both settled by the Spanish, why does New Mexico seem to have a much stronger Hispanic heritage than we do?

That’s a good one. For help on this I turned to good old Marshall Trimble, author, singer, teacher, Arizona state historian and all-around swell guy.

The answer in a nutshell is because the early Spanish settlers and explorers weren’t completely stupid.

It starts in 1540 with Coronado, who wandered around the Southwest and up into Kansas for a couple of years looking for the fabled cities of gold, which, of course, he did not find. So he went home, where, according to legend, he found out his wife had been fooling around with another guy while he was out traipsing around, and eventually he died.

Then nothing much happened for 40 years or so because the Spanish had plenty to do in Mexico and, since there weren’t any cities of gold here, they decided to stay home. They had to wait to forget, as Trimble put it.

So 40 years later a new generation of the Spanish got the exploring bug and headed north looking for treasure and settlement opportunities and even the Northwest Passage. The thought was it was someplace in northern New Mexico or southern Colorado. Those wacky Spaniards.