Highlights

Map of the CDT in New Mexico (Click to enlarge)

Highlights Along or Near the Trail

Chama
Time stands still in the Village of Chama at the base of scenic 10,000 foot Cumbres Pass. Boom times came to the town when the narrow-gauge railroad arrived in 1881, and Chama became a mining, logging and transportation hub for much of the New Mexico Territory.

Ghost Ranch Living Museum
The Ghost Ranch Living Museum near Abiquiu is the only Forest Service facility to feature live, native wildlife from bears to porcupines to horned owls. In addition, Ghost Ranch contains exhibits of northern New Mexico plant life and environmental and archaeological displays.

Cerro Pedernal
This chisel shaped 9,862-foot peak, conspicuous from Forest Road 151, was well known to ancient people for both its appearance and even more for its composition. Its name is Spanish and means Flint Mountain. Bernardo Miera y Pancheco labeled it Serra Pedernal and even drew its distinctive shape on his map of 1779.

Cuba
The area currently called Cuba has a long and interesting history. Native Americans have occupied the area near the village for hundreds of years. In the 1700s Spanish ranchers and farmers settled the area. There are many large ranches and farms in Cuba and the surrounding areas. Cattle, sheep, and goats are the primary livestock raised. There are several stories that explain how Cuba got its name. One story claims that the name comes from the Spanish word for water tank/trough; Cubeta. Cuba was once surrounded by a great deal of water. Another popular story claims that the name came from soldiers who had visited the island of Cuba and felt the landscape resembled that of the island.

The Cuba area is known for its wildlife and beautiful views. Cuba, and indeed all of New Mexico, is known for spectacular sunsets. If one were to look at the nearby mountains during a particularly good evening they would think they were afire from the red glow of the setting sun. Cuba is also an ideal area for hunting, or wildlife spotting. Heards of elk and deer roam the nearby foothills.

Mount Taylor
All Native American peoples living within Mt. Taylor’s compass consider the mountain sacred. From their ancient mesa-top pueblo called Sky City, the residents of Acoma Pueblo look north toward the huge cone and tell tourists of when almost 400 years ago their men carried huge ponderosa pine logs from the mountain’s slopes to make beams that still support the seventeenth – century mission church. Acoma elders tell children the mountain is the Rainmaker of the North.

At Zuni Pueblo far to the southwest of Mount Taylor, the tribe’s lore masters speak of the Lightning Hole, a pit still extant on the mountain’s summit. Should the hole become blocked, they believe, drought will ensue. Zuni’s once made summer pilgrimages to the summit to keep it open.

Viewing Mount Taylor from the west and northwest, Navajos explain one of its ceremonial names, Turquoise Mountain, by telling how the peak was fastened from the sky to the earth with a great flint knife decorated with turquoise. They tell of the mountain’s being the home of Turquoise Boy and Yellow Corn Girl. Of the Navajos’ four sacred mountains, Mount Taylor is the Mountain of the South.

Early Spanish – speaking explorers and settlers called the mountain Cebolleta, little onion, for the little wild onions (genus Allium), a name still used in Hispanic villages around the mountain. Their oral history recalls battles with Navajos at places like Seboyeta, on Mount Taylor’s south side.

The name Mount Taylor was given in September 1849 by Lt. James H. Simpson, a member of Lt. Col. John Washington’s military expedition into Navajo country. Simpson called it, “One of the finest mountain peaks I have seen in this country,” and in his journal he wrote: “This peak I have, in honor of the President of the United States, called Mount Taylor. Erecting itself high above the plain below, an object of vision at a remote distance, standing within the domain which has been so recently the theater of his sagacity and prowess, it exists, not inappropriately, an ever-enduring monument to his patriotism and integrity.”

Grants

The history of Grants is the stuff Wild West legends are made of. Three brothers, Angus, Lewis, and John Grant were contracted to build the railroad through this vast area. Base camps were established during the work westward. First, the area became known as Grant’s Camp, then Grant’s Stations, and eventually just Grants.

Although the town of Grants was founded in the late 1870s, people had been making this area their home since the 12th century. Native Americans established pueblos and small villages throughout western New Mexico.

El Malpais National Monument

El Malpais Natonal Monument, which the Continental Divide Trail encounters, charms visitors with its strangeness. The volcanic features such as lava flows, cinder cones, lava tubes and ice caves, have always attracted attention.

The Malpais lava flows extend about 40 miles south of Grants, filling a valley at least 5 miles wide. The youngest lava, which oozed forth from cracks and vents rather than cones, scars the valley’s east and south sides. The oldest flows, along with numerous cinder cones, dominate the west and north sides. When you hike on the lava, you will encounter a wilderness like no other.

Interesting as the lava flows may be, other aspects of El Malpais National Monument prove to be just as fascinating. Dramatic orange and tan sandstone bluffs flank the lava on the east, their origins dating back 290 million years. In their color and texture, as well as their geologic history, they contrast vividly with the lava. Prehistoric Indians carved petroglyphs of unknown meaning on rock panels on these bluffs and built small dwellings in sandstone alcoves. Indians with connections to the great Chaco Canyon civilization to the north traveled here and built a small outlier settlement.

When the Spaniards arrived in 1540, they crossed the lava and called it el malpais, the badland, a term that has since become generic for lava flows.

Zuni Acoma Trail
This ancient Puebloan trail within the El Malpais National Monument follows a prehistoric trade route between Zuni and Acoma Pueblos. This is a 7+ mile one-way hike across 4 of the major lava flows in this region.

El Morro National Monument (Inscription Rock)

Rising 200 feet above the valley floor, this massive sandstone bluff was a welcome landmark for weary travelers. A reliable waterhole hidden at its base made El Morro (or Inscription Rock) a popular campsite. Beginning in the late 1550s Spanish, and later, Americans passed by El Morro. While they rested in its shade and drank from the pool, many carved their signatures, dates, and messages. Before the Spanish, Ancestral Puebloans living on top of the bluff over 700 years ago inscribed petroglyphs. Today, El Morro National Monument protects over 2,000 inscriptions and petroglyphs, as well as Ancestral Puebloan ruins.

Pie Town

Southwest on the Continental Divide is the town of Pie Town, NM. In the early 1920s Mr. Clyde Norman a tall Texan and a WWI veteran who liked to bake began making dried apple pies and began making them at his upstart business on a piece of ground that lay along a little rocky ridge and the Coast to Coast Highway later to become US-60. The word got around that the best pies anywhere were to be found at Pie Town.

A slice of American pie is what CDT hikers find when they visit Pie Town’s Daily Pie Cafe . In a town of less than 60 people, the Daily Pie has become a social epicenter and full service restaurant. Thru hikers can not only refuel on homemade food, but also pick up their personal supply packages.

Pie-O-Neer Cafe Owned by “Trail Angel” Kathy Knapp. Website offers trail and town information.

Pie Town Community Council

Annual Pie Festival

Pelona Mountain
Pelona Mountain and the surrounding plains are part of the vast Datil-Mogollon Volcanic Plateau physiographic region. The widespread and cataclysmic volcanism that occurred here 40 to 25 million years ago produced a varied and interesting landscape, but it also produced one whose soils and rocks don’t retain water on the surface.

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument offers a glimpse of the homes and lives of the people of the Mogollon culture who lived in the Gila Wilderness from the 1280s through the early 1300s. The surroundings today probably look very much like they did when the cliff dwellings were inhabited. The monument is surrounded by the Gila National Forest and lies in the middle of the Gila Wilderness, the nation’s first designated wilderness area.

Aldo Leopold Wilderness
Aldo Leopold Wilderness is located astride the crest of the Black Range of southwestern New Mexico and is a portion of the original Gila Wilderness fostered by Aldo Leopold. Rising from hot, dry desert and semi-desert the Black Range stands as a prominent land feature from nearly all directions. Aldo Leopold Wilderness is 202,016 acres in size and contains the most rugged and wild portion of this mountain range. The deep canyons and precipitous timbered ridges typical of this area extend to the east, south, and west and support a natural blending of resources making the area outstanding as a wilderness. The mark of man and evidence of his activities are relatively obscure. Over a wide range in elevation, a network of deep canyons, rincons, timbered benches and many high vista points offer solitude and an opportunity for the visitor to escape the clutches of a mechanistic civilization. The superlative beauty of this wild and broken country is a natural setting for spiritual refreshment through self-evaluation.

Pinos Altos
Historic Pinos Altos (tall Pines) is located just six miles north of Silver City on NM 15 at an elevation of 7040 feet. Nestled into the Gila National Forest, the town began in 1860 when three frustrated 49-ers, Thomas Birch, Colonel Snively and another guy named Hicks, stopped to take a drink in Bear Creek and discovered gold. The Main Street of this charming old gold-mining town is like an old western movie set. Many of the old buildings date back to the 1800s and have been restored and decorated with original memorabilia and artifacts.

Silver City
The Town of Silver City was established in 1870 and became the second incorporated community in New Mexico in 1878. The first public school in New Mexico opened in Silver City in 1882, the railroad arrived in 1883, and New Mexico Territorial Normal School (today’s Western New Mexico University) was founded in 1893. The town continued to grow as the hub of business for the agriculture, health, mining and natural resource related industries in Grant County.

Shakespeare
Before it was Shakespeare, it was Ralston. Before it was Ralston, it was Grant. Before it was Grant, it was Mexican Springs. The site had a storied carrier beginning in the late 1850s when the Butterfield Overland Stage Company established an alternate route south of its main line that passed the town of Shakespeare, at that time known as Mexican Springs. Because good water was abundant at Mexican Springs, The National Mail and Transportation Company established a mail stop at the site and renamed it Grant after Ulysses S. Grant of Civil War fame. Soon thereafter, William C. Ralston, founder of the Bank of California, became interested in the property and formed the New Mexico Mining Company to mine silver that had been discovered a short time before. The Ralston mining venture was short lived as claims has been hastily staked and improperly recorded. During the late 1870s, the Shakespeare Mining Company staked some silver claims and decided to change the name of the town from Ralston to Shakespeare. Mining operations continued until the depression of 1929 when mining operations ceased. Today, this site is a privately owned ranch.

Diamond Peak
According to a ranger who knows the area well, the knoll just north of the summit of Diamond Peak is a great place to rest “and to gaze off to the east across that spectacular, eternal landscape of south-central New Mexico.”

Big Hatchet Mountains
Remoteness, difficult access, forbidding terrain, and paucity to trails make the Big Hatchet Mountains seldom visited by hikers, and these few hike primarily to Big Hatchet Peak. Despite all this, the Big Hatchets are scenic, and the desert vegetation and wildlife are interesting: hikers accepting the mountains’ challenges will be well rewarded.