Capitán

Behind this panel the Capitan Mountains run east and west, about twenty miles long and six wide. They are one long body of granite that pushed up as molten rock and cooled underground, the largest Tertiary intrusion in New Mexico, and their highest point is an unnamed summit at 10,201 feet, 118 feet above Capitan Peak itself. The fire this panel's second side remembers blackened about 17,000 acres of these slopes in May 1950. The whole range lies inside the Lincoln National Forest, split from the Sacramento Mountains by the Rio Bonito valley.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Capitán Population 1400 Elevation 6350 Ft. Many incidents in the Lincoln County War, 1876-1879, occurred in the area around Capitán. The promoters Charles B. and John A. Eddy platted the townsite in 1900, after building a spur of the El Paso & Northeastern Railroad from Carrizozo in order to open the Salado coal fields. The mines were abandoned in 1901. Official Scenic Historic Marker Capitan In 1950, a little bear cub, his feet badly burned, was rescued from a forest fire near here. The cub was nursed back to health and flown to Washington, D.C. to be- come the living symbol of "Smokey Bear" in the U.S. Forest Service's fire prevention program.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Smokey Bear Historical Park — 1.4 mi
  The small park in Capitan where the living Smokey Bear is buried, a cub found clinging to a burned tree in the Capitan Mountains in 1950, six years after the cartoon was invented.
• Lincoln Historic Site — 13 mi
  One street of adobe in the Bonito valley kept much as it was in the 1870s, where the Lincoln County War was fought over who would supply Fort Stanton and the Mescalero agency.
• Three Rivers Petroglyph Site — 27 mi
  More than 21,000 petroglyphs on a basalt ridge above the Tularosa Basin, one of the few places in the Southwest set aside for its rock art alone, walked on a rough half-mile trail.

More markers nearby

• Capitán — 1.1 mi
• Smokey Bear Historical Park — 1.6 mi
• Capitán — 2.0 mi
• Fort Stanton — 5.8 mi