Wheeler Peak

The peak across the valley was not always taken for the state's highest. For years the Truchas Peaks to the south held the title, until a 1948 survey by Harold D. Walker settled it on this summit; a lower point to its north, named Walker Peak, is still often mistaken for Wheeler. The mountain carries the name of George M. Wheeler, the army officer whose surveys mapped much of New Mexico in the 1870s. It stands in Taos County; this panel stands across the line in Colfax.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Wheeler Peak Across Moreno Valley stands Wheeler Peak, 13,161 feet, high- est peak in New Mexico. Rocks of Wheeler Peak and the Taos Range are highly resistant gra- nites and gneisses of Precambrian age. Moreno Valley is underlain by soft sandstones and shales which are covered by stream and glacial deposits. Placer gold was mined at Elizabethtown north of here during the 1860's.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Taos Pueblo — 16 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.
• St. James Hotel — 20 mi
  Henri Lambert's 1872 inn and saloon on the Santa Fe Trail at Cimarron, a stage for the Colfax County War, where the old saloon ceiling still shows 22 bullet holes.
• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — 21 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.
• Rio Grande Gorge Bridge — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• Elizabethtown — 3.3 mi
• Eagle Nest Lake State Park — 3.4 mi
• Vietnam Veterans National Memorial — 4.7 mi
• Palo Flechado Pass — 7.2 mi