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New Mexico

Chama

Time stands still in the Village of Chama at the base of scenic 10,000 foot Cumbres Pass. Boom times came to the town when the narrow-gauge railroad arrived in 1881, and Chama became a mining, logging and transportation hub for much of the New Mexico Territory.

Ghost Ranch Living Museum

The Ghost Ranch Living Museum near Abiquiu is the only Forest Service facility to feature live, native wildlife from bears to porcupines to horned owls. In addition, Ghost Ranch contains exhibits of northern New Mexico plant life and environmental and archaeological displays.

Cerro Pedernal

This chisel shaped 9,862-foot peak, conspicuous from Forest Road 151, was well known to ancient people for both its appearance and even more for its composition. Its name is Spanish and means Flint Mountain. Bernardo Miera y Pancheco labeled it Serra Pedernal and even drew its distinctive shape on his map of 1779.

Cuba

The area currently called Cuba has a long and interesting history. Native Americans have occupied the area near the village for hundreds of years. In the 1700s Spanish ranchers and farmers settled the area.

The Cuba area is known for its wildlife and beautiful views. Cuba, and indeed all of New Mexico, is known for spectacular sunsets. If one were to look at the nearby mountains during a particularly good evening they would think they were afire from the red glow of the setting sun. Cuba is also an ideal area for wildlife spotting. Heards of elk and deer roam the nearby foothills.

Mount Taylor

All Native American peoples living within Mt. Taylor's compass consider the mountain sacred. From their ancient mesa-top pueblo called Sky City, the residents of Acoma Pueblo look north toward the huge cone and tell tourists of when almost 400 years ago their men carried huge ponderosa pine logs from the mountain's slopes to make beams that still support the seventeenth - century mission church. Acoma elders tell children the mountain is the Rainmaker of the North.

At Zuni Pueblo far to the southwest of Mount Taylor, the tribe's lore masters speak of the Lightning Hole, a pit still extant on the mountain's summit. Should the hole become blocked, they believe, drought will ensue. Zuni's once made summer pilgrimages to the summit to keep it open.

Viewing Mount Taylor from the west and northwest, Navajos explain one of its ceremonial names, Turquoise Mountain, by telling how the peak was fastened from the sky to the earth with a great flint knife decorated with turquoise. They tell of the mountain's being the home of Turquoise Boy and Yellow Corn Girl. Of the Navajos' four sacred mountains, Mount Taylor is the Mountain of the South.

Early Spanish - speaking explorers and settlers called the mountain Cebolleta, little onion, for the little wild onions (genus Allium), a name still used in Hispanic villages around the mountain. Their oral history recalls battles with Navajos at places like Seboyeta, on Mount Taylor's south side.

Grants

The history of Grants is the stuff Wild West legends are made of. Three brothers, Angus, Lewis, and John Grant were contracted to build the railroad through this vast area. Base camps were established during the work westward. First, the area became known as Grant's Camp, then Grant's Stations, and eventually just Grants.

Although the town of Grants was founded in the late 1870s, people had been making this area their home since the 12th century. Native Americans established pueblos and small villages throughout western New Mexico.

El Malpais National Monument

El Malpais Natonal Monument, which the Continental Divide Trail encounters, charms visitors with its strangeness. The volcanic features such as lava flows, cinder cones, lava tubes and ice caves, have always attracted attention.

The Malpais lava flows extend about 40 miles south of Grants, filling a valley at least 5 miles wide. The youngest lava, which oozed forth from cracks and vents rather than cones, scars the valley's east and south sides. The oldest flows, along with numerous cinder cones, dominate the west and north sides. When you hike on the lava, you will encounter a wilderness like no other.

Interesting as the lava flows may be, other aspects of El Malpais National Monument prove to be just as fascinating. Dramatic orange and tan sandstone bluffs flank the lava on the east, their origins dating back 290 million years. In their color and texture, as well as their geologic history, they contrast vividly with the lava. Prehistoric Indians carved petroglyphs of unknown meaning on rock panels on these bluffs and built small dwellings in sandstone alcoves. Indians with connections to the great Chaco Canyon civilization to the north traveled here and built a small outlier settlement.

Zuni Acoma Trail

This ancient Puebloan trail within the El Malpais National Monument follows a prehistoric trade route between Zuni and Acoma Pueblos. This is a 7 + mile one-way hike across 4 of the major lava flows in this region.

El Morro National Monument (Inscription Rock)

Rising 200 feet above the valley floor, this massive sandstone bluff was a welcome landmark for weary travelers. A reliable waterhole hidden at its base made El Morro (or Inscription Rock) a popular campsite. Beginning in the late 1550s Spanish, and later, Americans passed by El Morro. While they rested in its shade and drank from the pool, many carved their signatures, dates, and messages. Before the Spanish, Ancestral Puebloans living on top of the bluff over 700 years ago inscribed petroglyphs. Today, El Morro National Monument protects over 2,000 inscriptions and petroglyphs, as well as Ancestral Puebloan ruins.

Pelona Mountain

Pelona Mountain and the surrounding plains are part of the vast Datil-Mogollon Volcanic Plateau physiographic region. The widespread and cataclysmic volcanism that occurred here 40 to 25 million years ago produced a varied and interesting landscape, but it also produced one whose soils and rocks don't retain water on the surface.

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument offers a glimpse of the homes and lives of the people of the Mogollon culture who lived in the Gila Wilderness from the 1280s through the early 1300s. The surroundings today probably look very much like they did when the cliff dwellings were inhabited. The monument is surrounded by the Gila National Forest and lies in the middle of the Gila Wilderness, the nation's first designated wilderness area.

Aldo Leopold Wilderness

Aldo Leopold Wilderness is located astride the crest of the Black Range of southwestern New Mexico and is a portion of the original Gila Wilderness fostered by Aldo Leopold. Rising from hot, dry desert and semi-desert the Black Range stands as a prominent land feature from nearly all directions. Aldo Leopold Wilderness is 202,016 acres in size and contains the most rugged and wild portion of this mountain range. The deep canyons and precipitous timbered ridges typical of this area extend to the east, south, and west and support a natural blending of resources making the area outstanding as a wilderness.

Pinos Altos

Historic Pinos Altos (tall Pines) is located just six miles north of Silver City on NM 15 at an elevation of 7040 feet. Nestled into the Gila National Forest, the town began in 1860 when three frustrated 49-ers, Thomas Birch, Colonel Snively and another guy named Hicks, stopped to take a drink in Bear Creek and discovered gold. The Main Street of this charming old gold-mining town is like an old western movie set. Many of the old buildings date back to the 1800s and have been restored and decorated with original memorabilia and artifacts.

Silver City

The Town of Silver City was established in 1870 and became the second incorporated community in New Mexico in 1878. The first public school in New Mexico opened in Silver City in 1882, the railroad arrived in 1883, and New Mexico Territorial Normal School (today's Western New Mexico University) was founded in 1893. The town continued to grow as the hub of business for the agriculture, health, mining and natural resource related industries in Grant County.

Diamond Peak

According to a ranger who knows the area well, the knoll just north of the summit of Diamond Peak is a great place to rest "and to gaze off to the east across that spectacular, eternal landscape of south-central New Mexico."

Big Hatchet Mountains

Remoteness, difficult access, forbidding terrain, and paucity to trails make the Big Hatchet Mountains seldom visited by hikers, and these few hike primarily to Big Hatchet Peak. Despite all this, the Big Hatchets are scenic, and the desert vegetation and wildlife are interesting: hikers accepting the mountains' challenges will be well rewarded.