New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources Museum

The panel's C. T. Brown was Cony T. Brown, a benefactor of the School of Mines. The school had kept minerals since its founding in 1889, but that first collection was lost to fire in 1928. The museum has existed formally since 1927 and came under the state Bureau of Mines, now the Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, in 1960. In 2015 it moved into the bureau's new building at 801 Leroy Place, where the main hall groups specimens by mining district, Magdalena, Organ and Santa Rita among them, beside meteorites and uranium ores.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources Museum Based on personal collection willed to the New Mexico School of Mines by C.T. Brown in 1928, this museum displays thousands of mineral specimens from around the world with special emphasis on minerals found in New Mexico. Highlights include smithsonite from Kelly (Magdalena District), linarite from Bingham, Grants District uranium, Carlsbad potash, Silver City copper, Harding pegmatite minerals, and numerous fossils.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge — 18 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

• New Mexico Tech — 0.2 mi
• Socorro — 1.0 mi
• Jumbo — 1.1 mi
• The Garcia Opera House — 1.1 mi