Southern Rockies / Galisteo Basin

The transportation route the Galisteo side names is in view at Lamy, a few miles off. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe found the grades around the capital too steep for its main line and ran it through the basin instead, at a stop first called Galisteo Junction and later renamed for Archbishop Lamy. An eighteen-mile branch carried the first train into Santa Fe on February 9, 1880. Amtrak's Southwest Chief still stops at Lamy, and travelers bound for Santa Fe still ride the last miles by road.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Southern Rockies The foothills and higher peaks to the north are part of the Southern Rocky Mountains, which extend from southern Wyoming through Colorado and New Mexico. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains (Spanish for "Blood of Christ") trend from Salida, Colorado, in the north to Santa Fe in the south. The highest peak in New Mexico is Wheeler Peak northeast of Taos at 13,167 feet in elevation. Galisteo Basin The Galisteo Basin is a lowland of 730 square miles that has been continuously occupied since the Archaic period. It is bounded by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the north, Glorieta Mesa on the east, the San Pedro Mountains on the south, and La Bajada escarpment and the Rio Grande on the west. Due to its location between mountain ranges, the basin serves as an important transportation route between the Rio Grande Valley and Great Plains.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pecos National Historical Park — 13 mi
  The red walls of a 1717 mission church inside the foundations of a far larger one, beside the kiva Pecos people dug in front of the old church during the revolt of 1680.
• Palace of the Governors — 15 mi
  The long adobe on the north side of the Santa Fe plaza, called the oldest public building in continuous use in the country, though its own founding date is in dispute.
• Bandelier National Monument — 30 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.

More markers nearby

• Galisteo Pueblo — 5.7 mi
• Route 66 — 6.4 mi
• Hispano New Mexicans in the US Civil War — 6.9 mi
• Cañoncito at Apache Canyon — 6.9 mi