Postcards from the Field

The Society of Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc. (SME) held their annual conference the week before last in Phoenix, AZ. SME is the international professional society for the mining industry. This year, New Mexico Tech sent 28 students and six professors and staff, many of whom work on NMBGMR-sponsored projects.

Outcrops of metamorphosed sedimentary rocks are exposed in the Picuris Mountains, north of NM Highway 75 and west of Dixon. Protoliths originate from the Yavapai accreted terrane from approximately 1.7 billion years ago.

I volunteered to lead one day of the 2024 NMGS field trip, which will be based out of Bernalillo and focusing on the “nexus” of three physiographic provinces: the Rio Grande rift, southern Rocky Mountains (i.e., Nacimiento Mtns), and the southeastern Colorado Plateau. The day I am leading, we will go down the middle Rio Puerco Valley near Cabezon. Larry Crumpler (NM Museum of Natural History) will lead two stops focusing on the Rio Puerco volcanic necks near Cabezon Peak. My stops pertain to Cretaceous sedimentary rocks, Holocene geomorphic processes, and how climate change and geomorphic processes, namely arroyo cutting, have affected the groups of people that lived along the Rio Puerco in the past (i.e., Hispanic farmers and Ancestral Puebloans).

Many people have heard of the Nacimiento sedimentary-hosted copper mine, in the Nacimiento Mountains east of Cuba, but another copper mine found high on the cliff (approximately 9000 ft elevation) east and above the Nacimiento mine is the Eureka mine. It is challenging to find and requires a 4-wheel drive vehicle and hiking.

Located in the Lemitar Mountains 5 miles west of the village of Lemitar, 7,292-feet-high Polvadera Peak is neither the highest nor most isolated mountain in Socorro County. However, its location in the central Rio Grande Rift gives anyone standing on its summit an incredible view of many geologic features of the rift and surrounding provinces, including the Rocky Mountains, High Plains, Colorado Plateau, and Mogollon-Datil Volcanic Field.