Jémez Mountains

The panel's line about geothermal energy points at Fenton Hill, on the caldera's western flank. In December 1974 Los Alamos scientists finished a borehole there nearly 9,600 feet into granite at 197 degrees Celsius, then fractured the rock and circulated water through it. The reservoir they made in June 1977 was flow-tested for 75 days in 1978 at four megawatts, the world's first hot dry rock geothermal system. Union Oil's separate effort at the caldera's natural steam aimed at a 50-megawatt plant. The panel also misprints beautiful.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Jémez Mountains On the skyline to the west are the Jémez Mountains where tremendous volcanic eruptions a million years ago created a huge caldera some 15 miles in diameter that now forms beutiful Valle Grande set amid a ring of volcanic peaks. Geothermal energy has been tapped from hot rock beneath the mountains. Official Scenic Historic Marker (cont' from front side) Flow and ash-fall deposits surrounding the volcanic range form the Pajarito Plateau, site of numerous, ancient cliff dwellings and the atomic city of Los Alamos. The Jemez Mountains are part of the Southern Rockies and form one of the western ranges of the Rockies in New Mexico. Elevations exceed 11,000 feet.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fuller Lodge — 11 mi
  The upright-log dining hall of a boys' ranch school, which fed and housed the Manhattan Project after the Army bought the school in 1942.
• Bandelier National Monument — 12 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.
• El Santuario de Chimayó — 12 mi
  A small adobe shrine on the High Road to Taos, built around 1816 over earth that pilgrims still carry away in hope of healing.
• Palace of the Governors — 17 mi
  The long adobe on the north side of the Santa Fe plaza, called the oldest public building in continuous use in the country, though its own founding date is in dispute.

More markers nearby

• Maria Montoya Martinez — 0.9 mi
• Pueblo of San Ildefonso — 0.9 mi
• Feliciana Tapia Viarrial (1904-1988) — 5.1 mi
• The St. Francis Women's Club — 7.3 mi