The visitor and the native may be well acquainted with the more famous scenic places in New Mexico. Most of these are National or State Parks or Monuments—glistening dunes of White Sands, sandstone cliffs of El Morro, canyons eroded in volcanic rocks of Bandelier, the recent volcano of Capulin Mountain, multicolored sinkholes at Bottomless Lakes, grotesque carvings of volcanic rocks at City of Rocks, and the black tongues of cooled lava in the Valley of Fires State Park near Carrizozo.
Many of the lesser-known spectacular scenic areas are off the beaten path, far from the seventy-mile-an-hour Interstate highways. Even a brief description of all would fill a thick book. But near the most traveled routes are numerous enchanting landscapes. The traveler from the midwest or east, driving U.S. Highway 66 (Interstate 40) breaks over the edge of the “caprock” a few miles east of the New Mexico—Texas line. Atop the caprock is Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains, a level surface stretching along the southeast edge of New Mexico eastward into Texas. As seen south of Tucumcari near Ragland, east of Fort Sumner near Taiban, or east of Roswell near Kenna and Caprock, the bluffs of the Llano Estacado are topped by caprock, a cliff of white caliche-limestone as much as forty feet thick in places. Below, on gentle to steep slopes reaching northward toward Tucumcari or westward toward Fort Sumner and Roswell, are the varicolored red, purple, green, and gray shales and sandstones of Triassic age. Red Lake near Taiban on U.S. Highway 60-84 lies in the red muds of these Triassic rocks.
South of Tucumcari, rising boldly from the red-earth lowlands draining to the Canadian River, are Tucumcari Mountain and Mesa Redonda, and to the northwest the long buff cliffs of Mesa Rica. The latter mesa lies north of Interstate 40 as far west as Newkirk. Patches of the white caprock caliche-limestone cap these eastern New Mexico sentinels, whereas in other localities, the brown Dakota Sandstone tops the buttes and is underlain by pink Jurassic sandstones, with the mesa bases made up of the Triassic redbeds.
Near Santa Rosa, Interstate 40 dips down into the narrow green valley of Rio Pecos. Roadcuts lining the steep hills into the city show the red and brown sandstones and shales of the Triassic beds.
Driving westward from Santa Rosa, one crosses rolling hills near Clines Corners, then dips gently down into the northern part of the Estancia Basin near Moriarty. To the north on the horizon are the snow-capped peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. From Moriarty, Interstate 40 pulls slowly upward toward Edgewood into the eastern foothills of the Sandia Mountains, the grassy plains giving way to juniper and piñon groves.
From the downgrade into Tijeras Canyon, State Highway 10 leads north to San Antonito and the turnoff to Sandia Crest. The crest road winds up canyon walls, on sloping limestone mesas, up through thick stands of ponderosa pine, aspen, and, near the top, Engelmann spruce and corkbark fir. Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep may be seen off the road on the high crags. From Sandia Crest, 10,678 feet above sea level, much of north-central New Mexico is visible; Mount Taylor to the west, the Nacimiento and Jemez mountains to the northwest, the mighty Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the northeast, and countless ranges to the south and southwest. The city of Albuquerque is spread out at the base of the Sandias, and the twisting north-south channel of the Rio Grande stretches, glistening, as far left and right as one can see.
From Tijeras, Interstate 40 plunges into Tijeras Canyon, slicing through vertical roadcuts in Pennsylvanian limestones and shales, then through the ancient Precambrian granite. At the canyons mouth, the road levels off on the broad alluvial plain on which much of east Albuquerque is built, although the “downtown” is really down, in the valley of the Rio Grande.
Westward, Interstate 40 rolls up out of the valley, crosses windswept plains spotted with black volcanic cones, in and out of the shallow brown valley of Rio Puerco, and then to the red-cliff-bordered valley of Rio San Jose. Cliffs are of brown, buff, and light-gray Jurassic sandstones, with the valley carved in Triassic redbeds. Near Laguna, on the north side of the valley, white gypsum of the Todilto Formation crops out. Then through the pink Jurassic cliffs the canyon winds, and near New Laguna, the highway is bordered by the varicolored, uranium-bearing Morrison beds, which are overlain by brown sandstones and black shales of Cretaceous age.
But as Interstate 40 approaches Grants, the dominant feature is black frozen lava. The mesas surrounding Mount Taylor are capped by black basalt, built up in many layers, each individual flows, and loose blocks tumble down on the hillsides. Young basalt, twisted and wrinkled as if it were still hot, winds along the valley; just east of Grants, a huge “field” of this recent basalt stretches southward beyond the horizon. And above all looms Mount Taylor, remnant of an ancient volcano, snow-capped in winter, towering 11,389 feet above sea level.
At Casa Blanca, southeast of Mount Taylor, State Road 23 leads south to Acoma Pueblo. Eleven miles to the southwest, Enchanted Mesa, Katsim as it is called by the Acomas, towers 450 feet above the surrounding valley floor. This sheer-cliffed rock is built by layers of (from the base to the top) pink and white Entrada Sandstone, gray Todilto limestone, pink and green Summerville beds, a massive cliff of light-tan Zuni Sandstone, and a cap of yellow-brown Dakota Sandstone.