The entire area north of Santa Fe, then, is alive with history. In every village, in every canyon, there is something that will add to the romance of Spanish-Indian New Mexico. In our Southwest, the heritage handed down by these two great cultures is held dear by the people. To the traveler will come a greater appreciation and a greater understanding of New Mexico and the Southwest if these are but understood.
Northeast New Mexico
The section designated as northeast New Mexico is an area of mountains and plains, and its historical mosaic shows elements of both: the rugged Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque and the southernmost parts of the extensive Sangre de Cristo range, which thrusts north from U.S. Highway 85 far into Colorado, and part of the famed buffalo plains. The area is drained by two main river systems; the Canadian River flows east to join the Arkansas and the Mississippi and the Pecos River flows south to join the Rio Grande.
Through this vast area ran one of Americas greatest highways, the Santa Fe Trail. Beginning in Missouri communities, the Trail hurled itself into the intricate patterns of the Great Plains with all of their dangers—Indians, boredom, violent storms, treacherous rivers, and prairie grass fires. Then on into the foothills of the mighty Rocky Mountains and the steep and backbreaking approaches to Raton Pass in New Mexico. The new highway across this pass (U.S. 85) and the nature of our vehicles have made this an easy passage. But the traveler should pause at some high point, or perhaps leave the main highway for a moment, and try to imagine crossing this rugged land in Conestoga wagons. From Raton, the Santa Fe Trail continued south to Las Vegas and thence into Santa Fe via Glorieta Pass (current route of U.S. 85). Over this trail passed the goods of the world. In part, these were intended for the people of New Mexico, but over other trails they also found markets in Mexico and in California. For the curious and adventurous, sections of the Santa Fe Trail can still be seen. Local inquiry will elicit directions to remaining parts of the wide rutted Trail, scene of so much of the American westward movement.
(Forest Service, U.S.D.A.)
How To see the Rio Grande Valley—from Sandia Crest
While passing through the mountains between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, the traveler should be aware that a critical Civil War battle was waged in the fastness of these passes. In 1862, Confederate forces, which came up the Rio Grande from Texas and won a series of victories over Union troops, met a combined force of Colorado Volunteers and New Mexico Union troops in a decisive contest over the control of the American Southwest. The Union troops were successful, preserving New Mexico and the West for the Union.
These, then, are some of the things to look for in this region of plains and mountains. Picture buffalo by the tens of thousands pushing up the Canadian River, or long lines of wagons winding their way along the Santa Fe Trail carrying goods and people into new lands, or the Blue and the Gray locked in deadly combat far from the thunder of the main Civil War battles. The mosaic here is sharp and vividly different.
Northwest New Mexico
Northwest New Mexico is typified as ancient Indian country. While seemingly a harsh land, it is only this to the uninitiated, to those who lock their minds to beauties of history and lands unlike their own. The Indian found this country good and productive. Some of the finest ruins of Indian antiquity are in this region—Chaco Canyon and Aztec, both National Monuments, and hundreds more that remain unnamed. The Indians of the Four Corners area (named thus because New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona meet here, the only place in the United States where the lines of four states intersect) created levels of culture unsurpassed in what is the continental United States; only the Indians of Mexico and Peru claim a higher culture. This is a land whose ancient people reached their great peak at the same time as the later Romans, as Charlemagne in ancient Frankish Europe, and as Mohammed and his successors in the Middle East.