Llano Estacado

The fossil water on this panel is fossil in a plain sense: it went into the ground long ago, and little replaces it. The sand and gravel the mountains shed eastward hold the Ogallala, or High Plains, aquifer, and on the New Mexico plains rain recharges it only slightly. Pumping for irrigation took hold from the 1930s, and under Curry and Roosevelt counties water levels have since fallen more than a hundred feet. State geologists now map how many years of pumping the aquifer has left.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Llano Estacado Sediments shed from the rising mountains to the west formed the Llano Estacado, later to be bypas- sed by streams such as the Pecos and Canadian Rivers and left standing in bold relief with a rela- tively level, uneroded caprock surface. Croplands on the plain are irrigated using "fossil" water pumped from underground aquifers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blue Swallow Motel — 22 mi
  A twelve-room tourist court on Tucumcari's stretch of Route 66, built in 1939, run for four decades by one woman, and lit by one of the most photographed motel signs on the road.

More markers nearby

• Ute Lake State Park — 19 mi
• Tucumcari — 21 mi
• Tucumcari Mountain — 21 mi
• Tucumcari — 21 mi