Magdalena

The railhead made Magdalena the end of a cattle trail. When the branch from Socorro opened in January 1885, ranchers in western New Mexico and eastern Arizona began trailing stock more than 120 miles to its pens, and in 1916 the route was set aside by law as a stock driveway. Civilian Conservation Corps crews fenced it and drilled wells about every ten miles, a day's drive for cattle, between 1935 and 1941. The peak came in 1919, about 150,000 sheep and more than 21,000 cattle, and the last drives came around 1970, ending as trucks took over.

What the plaque says

Magdalena Named for Magdalena Peak, Magdalena is located in a mineral-rich area which became a center for silver and zinc mining in the 1860s. In 1884, a railroad spur was built from the smelter in Socorro, and Magdalena became an important railhead for cattle, sheep, and ore. In protohistoric times the Navajo and Apache people moved into the area. The Alamo Navajo Reservation, a noncontiguous section of the much larger Navajo Nation, is nearby.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Very Large Array — 21 mi
  Twenty-seven radio dishes, each 82 feet across and 230 tons, spread in a Y across an Ice Age lakebed on the Plains of San Agustin and moved on rails to change how sharply they see.
• Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge — 30 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

• Riley — 0.6 mi
• Kelly — 0.8 mi
• Magdalena Fault — 10.0 mi
• Sabino y Lemitar — 20 mi