Strike Valleys

The road number on the panel is out of date. In New Mexico's sweeping highway renumbering of the late 1980s the Las Vegas to Mora road became NM 518, which runs on toward Taos, and State Road 3 was cut back to a route that ends north of Ribera after passing Villanueva State Park. The rocks have not moved. Beyond La Cueva the highway leaves the strike valley and crosses the hogbacks through the Mora River's water gap, part of the same hogback belt that I-25 cuts south of Las Vegas.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Strike Valleys Between Sapello and Mora, State Road 3 follows a narrow strike valley eroded into soft shale between ridges of resistant sandstone called hogbacks, both the result of uplift of the Rocky Mountains. To the east stretch the Great Plains, and to the west, the Sangre De Cristo mountains, rising to elevations exceeding 13,000 feet. The Elevation here is 7000 feet.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Montezuma Castle — 12 mi
  The railroad's turreted resort at the Las Vegas hot springs, burned twice in its first years, empty for most of a century, and now home to an international school.
• Fort Union National Monument — 14 mi
  Three forts in one prairie valley where the two branches of the Santa Fe Trail met: a log post, a star-shaped earthwork, and an adobe supply town that fed the army's wars.
• Pecos National Historical Park — 31 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.

More markers nearby

• La Cueva National Historic District — 8.5 mi
• Curanderas-Women Who Heal — 12 mi
• Fort Union National Monument — 12 mi
• Fort Union Arsenal — 13 mi