Southwestern New Mexico
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Southwestern New Mexico
Southwestern New Mexico is a region of the U.S. state of New Mexico commonly defined by Hidalgo County, Grant County, Catron County, Luna County, Doña Ana County, Sierra County, and Socorro County. Some important towns there are Lordsburg, Silver City, Deming, Las Cruces, Truth or Consequences, Socorro, Reserve, and Rodeo. Natural attractions there include White Sands National Park, the Organ Mountains, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, and the Gila Wilderness surrounding the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. Southwestern New Mexico is also home to both the Very Large Array and White Sands Missile Range containing the Trinity Site Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert abo .... Regions of New Mexico {{NewMexico-geo-stub ...
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Region
In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and the environment (environmental geography). Geographic regions and sub-regions are mostly described by their imprecisely defined, and sometimes transitory boundaries, except in human geography, where Jurisdiction (area), jurisdiction areas such as national borders are defined in law. Apart from the Earth, global continental regions, there are also hydrosphere, hydrospheric and atmosphere, atmospheric regions that cover the oceans, and discrete climates above the land mass, land and water mass, water masses of the planet. The land and water global regions are divided into subregions geographically bounded by large geological features that influence large-scale ecologies, such as plains and features. As a way of describing spatial areas, the ...
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Las Cruces, New Mexico
Las Cruces (; "the crosses") is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New Mexico and the seat of Doña Ana County. As of the 2020 census the population was 111,385. Las Cruces is the largest city in both Doña Ana County and southern New Mexico. The Las Cruces metropolitan area had an estimated population of 213,849 in 2017. It is the principal city of a metropolitan statistical area which encompasses all of Doña Ana County and is part of the larger El Paso–Las Cruces combined statistical area. Las Cruces is the economic and geographic center of the Mesilla Valley, the agricultural region on the floodplain of the Rio Grande which extends from Hatch to the west side of El Paso, Texas. Las Cruces is the home of New Mexico State University (NMSU), New Mexico's only land-grant university. The city's major employer is the federal government on nearby White Sands Test Facility and White Sands Missile Range. The Organ Mountains, to the east, are dominant in the city's lands ...
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White Sands Missile Range
White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a United States Army military testing area and firing range located in the US state of New Mexico. The range was originally established as the White Sands Proving Ground on 9July 1945. White Sands National Park is located within the range. Significant events *The first atomic bomb (code named Trinity) was test detonated at Trinity Site near the northern boundary of the range on 16 July 1945, seven days after the White Sands Proving Ground was established. *After the conclusion of World War II, 100 long-range German V-2 rockets that were captured by U.S. military troops were brought to WSMR. Of these, 67 were test-fired between 1946 and 1951 from the White Sands V-2 Launching Site. (This was followed by the testing of American rockets, which continues to this day, along with testing other technologies.) *NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia landed on the Northrop Strip at WSMR on 30 March 1982 as the conclusion to mission STS-3. This was the only ti ...
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Very Large Array
The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is a centimeter-wavelength radio astronomy observatory located in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, ~ west of Socorro. The VLA comprises twenty-eight 25-meter radio telescopes (twenty-seven of which are operational while one is always rotating through maintenance) deployed in a Y-shaped array and all the equipment, instrumentation, and computing power to function as an interferometer. Each of the massive telescopes is mounted on double parallel railroad tracks, so the radius and density of the array can be transformed to adjust the balance between its angular resolution and its surface brightness sensitivity. Astronomers using the VLA have made key observations of black holes and protoplanetary disks around young stars, discovered magnetic filaments and traced complex gas motions at the Milky Way's center, probed the Universe's cosmological parameters, and provided new knowled ...
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Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument
Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is a U.S. National Monument created to protect Mogollon cliff dwellings in the Gila Wilderness on the headwaters of the Gila River in southwest New Mexico. The national monument was established by President Theodore Roosevelt through executive proclamation on November 16, 1907. It is located in the extreme southern portion of Catron County. Visitors can access the monument by traveling northbound from Silver City, New Mexico, on NM 15. Cliff dwellings in New Mexico Considered by archaeologists to be on the northernmost portion of the Mogollon people's sphere of influence, the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is home to two prominent ruins sites among a collection of smaller sites located within the Gila Wilderness inside the Gila National Forest. The landscape in the monument ranges in elevation from around above sea level and follows the West Fork and the Middle Fork of the Gila River. The terrain around the ruins is rugged a ...
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Gila Wilderness
Gila Wilderness was designated the world's first wilderness area on June 3, 1924. Along with Aldo Leopold Wilderness and Blue Range Wilderness, the 558,014 acre (225,820 ha) (872 sq. mi.) wilderness is part of New Mexico's Gila National Forest. The wilderness is approximately from north to south and east to west.Wilderness up close
at the National Park Service
U.S. Wilderness Areas do not allow motorized or mechanized vehicles, including bicycles.

Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge
The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge ( ) is located in southern New Mexico. It was founded in 1939 and is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It is a favorite spot to watch the migration of the sandhill cranes in the fall. The reserve is open year-round and provides safe harbor for its varied wildlife. Location The name of the refuge means "woods of the Apache" in Spanish, named for the Apache tribes that once camped in the forests along the Rio Grande. The heart of the refuge comprises approximately of Rio Grande floodplain and of irrigated farms and wetlands. In addition to this, the refuge contains of arid grasslands and foothills of the Chupadera and San Pascual Mountains. About of this is designated as wilderness. A twelve-mile-long (19 km) loop road divided by a cutoff into a "Farm Loop" and "Marsh Loop" allows automobile drivers excellent views of wetland wildlife and raptors, and there are several short (1.5 to 10 miles) walking t ...
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Organ Mountains
The Organ Mountains (also known as La Sierra de los Órganos) are a rugged mountain range in southern New Mexico in the Southwestern United States. Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks National Monument was declared a national monument on May 21, 2014. They lie east of the city of Las Cruces, in Doña Ana County. Geography The Organ Mountains are near the southern end of a long line of mountains on the east side of the Rio Grande's rift valley. The range is nearly contiguous with the San Andres Mountains to the north and the Franklin Mountains to the south, but is very different geologically. Whereas the San Andres and Franklin Mountains are both formed from west-dipping fault blocks of mostly sedimentary strata (with limestone most prominent), the Organ Mountains are made primarily of igneous rock (intrusive granite and extrusive rhyolite). Their name reflects their similarity in appearance (particularly the granite "needles" in the highest part of the range) with pipes that w ...
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White Sands National Park
White Sands National Park is an American national park located in the state of New Mexico and completely surrounded by the White Sands Missile Range. The park covers in the Tularosa Basin, including the southern 41% of a field of white sand dunes composed of gypsum crystals. This gypsum dunefield is the largest of its kind on Earth, with a depth of about , dunes as tall as , and about 4.5 billion short tons (4.1 billion metric tons) of gypsum sand. Approximately 12,000 years ago, the land within the Tularosa Basin featured large lakes, streams, grasslands, and Ice Age mammals. As the climate warmed, rain and snowmelt dissolved gypsum from the surrounding mountains and carried it into the basin. Further warming and drying caused the lakes to evaporate and form selenite crystals. Strong winds then broke up crystals and transported them eastward. A similar process continues to produce gypsum sand today. Thousands of species of animal inhabit the park, a large portion of which are ...
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Rodeo, New Mexico
Rodeo is a census-designated place (CDP) in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, United States, at . It lies less than from the border with Arizona on New Mexico State Road 80. As of the 2010 census, the population of Rodeo was 101. History Founded in 1902 as a rail stop on the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad line running from Bisbee, Arizona to El Paso, Texas, it became the center for cattle shipping in the San Simon Valley. Two views exist as to the source of Rodeo's name. One suggests it derives from the Spanish word ''rodeo'', meaning "roundup" or "enclosure", in reference to cattle shipping. However, the noun ''rodeo'' is derived from the Spanish verb ''rodear'' meaning "to surround" or "to go around". The El Paso and Southwestern railroad runs east across the southern part of the state and after passing through Antelope Pass turns south to Rodeo continuing to Douglas, Arizona, and then north to Bisbee, going around the Chiricahua Mountains. Geography Rodeo is in western Hidalgo ...
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Reserve, New Mexico
Reserve is a village in Catron County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 289 as of the 2010 census, down from 387 in 2000. It is the county seat of Catron County. Currently the village has two grocery stores, a hardware store, a bar, fairgrounds, and a health clinic. It is the site where Elfego Baca held off a gang of Texan cowboys who wanted to kill him for arresting cowboy Charles McCarty. History Catron became a county in 1921. It was named after an attorney and political leader from Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe, Thomas B. Catron. In the 1860s, Mexican-Americans established a string of villages along the San Francisco River (central Arizona), San Francisco River, naming them the Upper, Lower, and Middle San Francisco Plazas. In the late 1870s European American, Anglo settlers began arriving. They renamed Upper Frisco Plaza as Milligan's Plaza, naming it after a merchant and saloon owner. Milligan's Plaza was the site of the Frisco shootout of Elfego Baca. ...
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Socorro, New Mexico
Socorro (, '' sə-KOR-oh'') is a city in Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is in the Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of . In 2010 the population was 9,051. It is the county seat of Socorro County. Socorro is located south of Albuquerque and north of Las Cruces. History Founding In June 1598, Juan de Oñate led a group of Spanish settlers through the Jornada del Muerto, an inhospitable patch of desert that ends just south of the present-day city of Socorro. As the Spaniards emerged from the desert, Piro Indians of the pueblo of Teypana gave them food and water. Therefore, the Spaniards renamed this pueblo Socorro, which means "help" or "aid". Later, the name "Socorro" would be applied to the nearby Piro pueblo of Pilabó. Nuestra Señora de Perpetuo Socorro, the first Catholic mission in the area, was probably established c. 1626. Fray Agustín de Vetancurt would later write that around 600 people lived in the area during this period. Mines in the Socorr ...
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