Kearny in 1846.The Palace changed, as interior room walls were built and rebuilt Rooms were used to house governors and their families, the territorial legislature, courts, a library, a post office, jail, U.S. Depository, and perhaps as early as 1844, a printing office.

During the Mexican period two governmental newspapers were issued—La Verdad (1844) and El Payo del Neuvo Mejico (1845). Both were printed on New Mexico's only press and likely in an office set up in the Palace of the Governors. A little more than a year after the appearance of El Payo,soldiers under General Kearny used the press and printing office to begin work on the Kearny Code, a set of laws established by the Americans to guide the newly conquered population. A governmental newspaper, The Santa Fe Republican, was published here through 1848.

In 1909, the legislature established the Museum of New Mexico and turned over responsibility for the Palace of the Governors to this organization. Since that time, the Palace has served as a showcase for the state's history.

The Print Shop and Bindery, established in 1972, echoes a long history of printing ventures in the Palace of the Governors.

Said to be the oldest continually occupied public building in the United States, the Palace grew under Spanish rule. Construction on the building began in 1610, directed by Pedro de Peralta, newly appointed governor charged with establishing a northern New Spain outpost. In the years following, authority over the Palace would change as New Mexico moved through the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, the Spanish Reconquest from 1693-1694, Mexican independence in 1821, and the takeover by American forces under General Stephen Watts