San Augustin Pass

The mines the panel lists lie on the slope below. A Mexican miner's silver-lead strike on the west side of the Organ Mountains, which the Mesilla merchant Hugh Stephenson took over, opened the district around 1849; a copper boom came after the Spanish-American War with the Torpedo mine. The camp of Organ had its own school, hotel, post office and two smelting furnaces, and the district produced about $2.5 million in metals by 1952. Mining stopped in the Depression, and most of the range is now within Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker San Augustin Pass Divide between Tularosa Basin to east and Jornada del Muerto to west, cut between Organ Mountains to south and San Augustin-San Andrés Mountains to north. White gypsum sands glisten to northeast. Roadcuts in Tertiary monzonite. Organ mines yielded copper, lead, silver, gold, zinc and fluorite. Elevation 5,710 feet.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mesilla Plaza — 17 mi
  A plaza laid out in 1848 by people who meant to stay in Mexico, American six years later, a stage stop and Civil War headquarters, and scene of a deadly political riot in 1871.
• White Sands National Park — 34 mi
  The largest gypsum dunefield on Earth, a national park since 2019, surrounded on all sides by military ground whose missile tests close its only road for hours at a time.

More markers nearby

• Site of San Agustín Springs — 1.2 mi
• Pat Garrett Murder Site — 10 mi
• Disappearance of Albert J. Fountain and his son Henry — 13 mi
• Doña Ana (1604-1680) — 14 mi