The Mogollon Mountains or Mogollon Range ( or ) are a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have aris ...

Grant County Grant County may refer to: Places ;Australia * County of Grant, Victoria ;United States * Grant County, Arkansas * Grant County, Indiana * Grant County, Kansas *Grant County, Kentucky Grant County is a county located in the northern pa ...

and Catron County of southwestern

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

, in the

Southwestern United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural list of regions of the United States, region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacen ...

. They are primarily protected within the

Gila National Forest The Gila National Forest is a United States national forest in New Mexico. Established in 1905, it now covers approximately , making it the sixth largest national forest in the continental United States. The Forest administration also manage ...

Geography

The Mogollon Mountains are located west of the

Gila River The Gila River (; O'odham ima Keli Akimel or simply Akimel, Quechan: Haa Siʼil, Maricopa language: Xiil) is a tributary of the Colorado River flowing through New Mexico and Arizona in the United States. The river drains an arid watershed of ...

and east of the San Francisco River, between the communities of Reserve and Silver City. They extend roughly north–south for about , and form part of the divide between the San Francisco and Gila Rivers. The crest of the range lies about east of U.S. Route 180, which traverses parallel to a section of the San Francisco River. The Sierra Aguilada, a lower altitude smaller range, borders to the west of Route 180. Most of the Mogollon Mountains range is protected within the Gila Wilderness, in the

. The highest point in the range is Whitewater Baldy which, at , is the highest point in southwestern New Mexico. The range also contains five other peaks over 10,000 feet, most notably Mogollon Baldy .

Geology

The Mogollon Mountains were formed between forty and twenty-five million years ago as part of the Datil-Mogollon

Volcanic A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often fo ...

Plateau.

Hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a Spring (hydrology), spring produced by the emergence of Geothermal activity, geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow ...

s existing in the area are a remnant of that volcanic activity.Butterfield, Mike, and Greene, Peter, ''Mike Butterfield's Guide to the Mountains of New Mexico'', New Mexico Magazine Press, 2006,

History

The Mogollon Mountains are named for

Juan Ignacio Flores Mogollón Juan Ignacio Flores Mogollon was a Spanish military officer who served as governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico between 1712 and 1715, replacing Jose Chacón Medina Salazar y Villaseñor. Life and career Mogollon joined the Spanish Army in his you ...

, governor of Spanish colonial

Nuevo Leon Nuevo is the Spanish word for "new". It may refer to: * Nuevology, California, a town in California, United States * Nuevo (band), featuring singer and musician Peter Godwin * Nuevo (Bayamón), a settlement in Puerto Rico * "Nuevo", Spanish-langu ...

from 1712 to 1715, in the

Viceroyalty of New Spain New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( ; Nahuatl: ''Yankwik Kaxtillan Birreiyotl''), originally the Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain. It was one of several ...

.Calloway, Colin G, ''One Vast Winter Count'', University of Nebraska Press, 2003, Early inhabitants of the range include the Mimbres Culture, from 300 BCE to 1300 CE. Later peoples included the Chiricahua and Mimbres bands 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 ...

Geronimo Gerónimo (, ; June 16, 1829 – February 17, 1909) was a military leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Ndendahe Apache people. From 1850 to 1886, Geronimo joined with members of three other Central Apache bands the Tchihen ...

is said to have been born in the area around 1829. Mining occurred in the area beginning in the 1890s and continuing for some decades when the natural grizzly bear population was destroyed.''Geology and Ore Deposits of the Mogollon Mining District, New Mexico''. Henry G. Ferguson. United States Geological Survey Bulletin 787. Washington Government Printing Office, 1927. The Mogollon Mountains should not be confused with the

Mogollon Rim The Mogollon Rim ( or or ) is a topography, topographical and geological feature cutting across Northern Arizona, the northern half of the U.S. state of Arizona. It extends approximately , starting in northern Yavapai County, Arizona, Yavapa ...

, a large

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. Due to the similarity, the term '' scarp'' may mistakenly be incorrectly used inte ...

in Arizona, about to the northwest.

References

Mountain ranges of New Mexico Landforms of Catron County, New Mexico Mountain ranges of Grant County, New Mexico Gila National Forest {{NewMexico-geo-stub