The Bear Mountains lie just north of the village of Magdalena and north of the

Magdalena Mountains The Magdalena Mountains are a regionally high, mountain range in Socorro County, New Mexico, Socorro County, in west-central New Mexico in the southwestern United States. The highest point in the range is South Baldy (New Mexico), South Baldy, at ...

in New Mexico. The Bear Mountains are located within the Magdalena Ranger District of the

Cibola National Forest The Cibola National Forest (pronounced SEE-bo-lah) is a 1,633,783 acre (6,611.7 km2) United States National Forest in New Mexico, US. The name Cibola is thought to be the original Zuni Indian name for their pueblos or tribal lands. The name wa ...

. There are two Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRA) within the Bear Mountains: the Scott Mesa IRA (39,534 acres) and the Goat Spring IRA (5,757 acres). The

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...

’s Sierra Ladrones Wilderness Study Area (45,308 acres) stretches to the northeast of the Bear Mountains and connects the Bear Mountains with the 230,000-acre

Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge The Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge is a protected area of New Mexico managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. It is located in the far northern fringes of the Chihuahuan Desert, 2 ...

to the east. The world-renowned

Very Large Array The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is a centimeter-wavelength radio astronomy observatory in the southwestern United States built in the 1970s. It lies in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena, Ne ...

lies to the southwest of the Bear Mountains. Robert Julyan's ''The Place Names of New Mexico'' notes that "bear" names throughout New Mexico frequently come from a particular incident with a bear rather than a general abundance of bears because "any encounter with a bear likely would have been memorable." Even so, the range is currently home to black bears, and grizzly bears were once found the area as well.

History & Culture

Basham noted in his report documenting the archeological history of the Cibola's Magdalena Ranger District that “ e heritage resources on the district are diverse and representative of nearly every prominent human evolutionary event known to anthropology. Evidence for human use of district lands date back 14,000 years to the

Paleoindian Paleo-Indians were the first peoples who entered and subsequently inhabited the Americas towards the end of the Late Pleistocene period. The prefix ''paleo-'' comes from . The term ''Paleo-Indians'' applies specifically to the lithic period in ...

period providing glimpses into the peopling of the

New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...

and megafaunal extinction.“ Much of the now Magdalena Ranger District was a province of the

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

. Bands of Apache effectively controlled the Magdalena-Datil region from the seventeenth century until they were defeated in the

Apache Wars The Apache Wars were a series of armed conflicts between the United States Army and various Apache tribal confederations fought in the Southwestern United States, southwest between 1849 and 1886, though minor hostilities continued until as l ...

in the late nineteenth century.

Recreation

Due to the absence of major light pollution, the Bear Mountains provide outstanding stargazing opportunities. The area also offers phenomenal hiking, backpacking, camping, hunting, and horseback-riding. As Robert Juylan points out in ''The Mountains of New Mexico'', the range is rather popular among birdwatchers because of the various springs in the region.

Ecology

As with other mountain ranges in west-central New Mexico, the variations in elevation result in diverse vegetative types. Scrubland, pinyon-juniper woodland, Gambel oak, mountain mahogany and grassland areas are all represented. Grasses include black and sideoats grama, poverty threeawn, fluffgrass, burrograss, and galleta grass. Shrubs that are mixed in the grasslands include sotol, cholla, yucca, and Apache plume. Wildlife includes mountain lion, pronghorn, mule deer, black bear, and coyote as well as numerous bird species.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Cibola National Forest official website

New Mexico Game and Fish

Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge

Socorro County InfoNet
Cibola National Forest Magdalena Ranger District Mountain ranges of New Mexico

History & Culture

Recreation

Ecology

See also

References

External links