Rio Grande Gorge Bridge

Exceptional importance, the panel's last phrase, is a term of art. The National Register normally waits fifty years; the bridge was entered on July 15, 1997, at thirty-two, under the exception for younger properties, as one of a statewide set of historic highway bridges. Its nomination files it under the road's old number, NM 111, and credits its design to Charles E. Reed. This panel stands not at the bridge but about eighteen miles northwest of it, at the US-285 junction at Tres Piedras, where traffic from Colorado and Ojo Caliente meets the road east to the gorge.

What the plaque says

Rio Grande Gorge Bridge The Rio Grande Gorge and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains form a spectacular setting for the seventh highest bridge in the U.S. The deck sits 650 feet above the river. Completed in 1965 under the leadership of Gov. Jack M. Campbell, it established an east-west shipping and transportation corridor in northern New Mexico and is the only major bridge crossing the Rio Grande for over 100 miles. Spanning 1,272 feet, this elegantly designed deck truss bridge is in the National Register of Historic Places for its exceptional importance in transportation and engineering.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rio Grande Gorge Bridge — 17 mi
  A steel truss strung across a slot in the basalt west of Taos, 565 feet above the river by the careful measure and 650 by the signs, built when the road beyond it did not yet exist.
• Taos Pueblo — 27 mi
  Two terraced adobe houses facing each other across Red Willow Creek, lived in for something like a thousand years, with no electricity or running water inside the old walls.
• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — 28 mi
  The adobe church at Ranchos de Taos that artists always paint from behind, kept standing by the mud its parish spreads over it every June.

More markers nearby

• Lawrence Ranch — 17 mi
• Rio Grande Gorge State Park — 17 mi
• Jack M. Campbell — 18 mi
• Taos — 26 mi