Magdalena Fault

The summit the panel names carries a laboratory. New Mexico Tech built Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research near South Baldy in 1963, with National Science Foundation money, to study the clouds that make lightning, hail and rain; summer storms here tend to form isolated and stay put over the range. It honors Irving Langmuir, the Nobel laureate who joined the school's cloud research in 1947, and its first director was Marvin Wilkening. In 1980 Congress set aside 31,000 acres of the Cibola National Forest around it as a research site, now shared with an optical observatory.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Magdalena Fault The Magdalena Mountains to the west are topped by South Baldy at 10,783 feet. La Jencia plain to the east is bisected by Water Canyon three miles below this marker. The bench along the edge of the mountains is the Magdalena Fault, dividing the uplifted mountains from the plains below.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge — 22 mi
  A Rio Grande refuge south of Socorro where cranes and geese winter by the tens of thousands on wetlands and fields kept by people, because the river no longer floods to make them.

More markers nearby

• Kelly — 9.3 mi
• Riley — 9.5 mi
• Magdalena — 10.0 mi
• New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources Museum — 10 mi