Geologic Tour of New Mexico

This recreation area in the Lincoln National Forest has spectacular cliffs and features a year-round spring-fed stream, waterfalls (the largest of which has a 150-foot drop), and many refreshing clear-water wading pools. There are picnic areas and several hiking trails, including T–68 and T–68A that lead to the spring source of the waterfalls. The Apache name for the area was “gostahanagunti,” which means hidden gulch, and the presence of flakes of worked chert, grinding holes (bedrock mortars), and nearby pictographs testify to long-standing Native American use of this wildlife-rich oasis in the desert.

Pancho Villa State Park in Columbus, New Mexico, was established in 1959 “in interest of preservation of the memory of the unique, historical occasion of the last hostile action by foreign troops within the continental United States”. It became the only park in the United States to be named after a foreign invader. The creation of the 60-acre park was a gesture of good will between the United States and Mexico. The town of Columbus has been designated a National Historic Site. Across the street from the park is the privately owned Pancho Villa Museum.

Angel Peak, a 7000-foot pinnacle capped by sandstone, is a prominent landmark near Bloomfield in northwestern New Mexico. It is in the northern part of the San Juan Basin, a large structural depression that formed starting about 75 million years ago during compressional Laramide deformation. The San Juan Basin was surrounded by mountainous uplifts to the north (now buried by the 35 to 20 Ma San Juan volcanic field in southwestern Colorado) and to the east that also formed by Laramide-related compression. The sediments that can be seen at Angel Peak National Recreation area were eroded off of the old Laramide highlands and deposited in the basin 50 to 65 million years ago. More recently, over the course of the last 5 million years (or less), the westward-draining San Juan River, a tributary to the Colorado River, has eroded the rocks of the San Juan Basin. Drainages feeding into the San Juan River have carved the scenic landscape we see today.

This is a virtual field trip to the classic Permian reef complex and other geologic features of the Guadalupe Mountains, including those in Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Guadalupe National Park in Texas. It contains an introduction to the geology of the Permian reef complex plus several roadlogs with diagrams and photographs, as well as an extensive bibliography in order to provide a balanced presentation for a geology student audience.

Monument Rock is located west of Socorro and north of U.S. Highway 60 in the eastern Sawtooth Mountains of Catron County, New Mexico. The area can be reached from Datil by traveling west along Highway 60, 12.3 miles to Forest Road 6A. Turn right on Forest Road 6A and drive north 3.7 miles to the prominent spire of Monument Rock.

The area can also be accessed from Pie Town by driving east along U.S. Highway 60 to Forest Road 316. Turn left onto Forest Road 316 and drive northeast 3.5 miles to Forest Road 6A. Turn left and drive 1.1 miles to Monument Rock.

A spectacular, eroded anticline and syncline pair lies between the Ojito Wilderness and the village of San Ysidro in north-central New Mexico. The San Ysidro area lies near the intersection of four significant geologic features, including the mildly deformed Colorado Plateau to the west, the Laramide-age (75 to 55 million years old) Sierra Nacimiento uplift to the north, and the late Oligocene to Miocene Rio Grande rift to east. The northeast-trending Jemez lineament, characterized by young volcanism, cuts across all three geologic provinces. The <15 million year old Jemez volcanic field is visible to the northeast, the 2 to 3 million year old Puerco Necks, including Cabezon Peak, are located just to the west, and the 1.5 to 3.3 million year old Mount Taylor volcano can be seen on the skyline to the west.

The Prehistoric Trackways National Monument is located in the Robledo Mountains just northwest of Las Cruces in Dona Ana County, south-central New Mexico. It contains rocks of Permian age, from the Late Paleozoic Era. They are composed of sediments deposited about 280 million years ago, before the age of the dinosaurs. These rocks contain major deposits of fossilized footprints made by numerous amphibians, reptiles, insects, and crustaceans, as well as plants and petrified wood. Some scientists have called these features the most scientifically significant Permian tracksites in the world. These fossils provide important information about animal behavior in this ancient tropical environment on the edge of the supercontinent Pangea.

Heron Lake State Park is located approximately 9 miles west of Tierra Amarilla. Heron Dam was built on Willow Creek near its confluence with the Rio Chama in 1971. This earth fill dam, which is 276 feet tall and 1221 feet long, is designed to create a reservoir to store and deliver San Juan-Chama Project water. The water is used to maintain the recreation pool at Cochiti Lake, some 120 miles downstream on the Rio Grande. The San Juan-Chama Project, managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, takes water from tributaries of the San Juan River, which lies to the west of the Continental Divide, to augment the natural flow of the Rio Grande, which is east of the Continental Divide. The water flows through the Azotea Tunnel under the Continental Divide to Willow Creek, then to Heron Reservoir and the Rio Chama, a tributary of the Rio Grande. The diversions began in 1970, delivering an annual average of 94,200 acre-feet of water to the Rio Grande. Water users include the City of Albuquerque, the City of Santa Fe, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, and the U.S. Department of Energy. The lake can hold 399,980 acre-feet at a crest elevation of 7,192 feet. Heron Lake State Park has been designated a "quiet lake", where boats travel at "no-wake" speeds.

Spectacular exposures of Permian Yeso Group overlain by tilted and faulted late Oligocene to Pleistocene sedimentary and volcanic rocks are preserved at the head of Church Canyon to the east of Jemez Springs in Cañon de San Diego in the southwestern Jemez Mountains. This area is on private land owned by the Catholic Church; therefore, permission must be obtained from the church offices in Jemez Springs before visiting these outcrops.

Ute Lake State Park was established in 1964 at a cost of approximately $5 million and was named after Ute Creek, one of the tributaries of the Canadian River that is impounded by a dam. The small town of Logan is on the east side of the lake, and the lake extends upstream in both the Ute and Canadian Rivers. It is 25 miles northeast of Tucumcari on US–54, NM–39, and NM–540 and is approximately 20 miles west of the Texas–New Mexico state line. Most of the land surrounding Ute Lake is private. All the water is open to the public. The park is in the Pecos Valley section of the Great Plains physiographic province. It lies on the north edge of the Llano Estacado or “staked plains.”