Abó Pass: Ancient Road Through the Manzanos

The gap you see cutting through the southern edge of the Manzano Mountains is a long-used travel route in New Mexico. Long before any European set foot in the Southwest, this pass connected the Salinas Pueblo communities to the east, including Abó, with the Rio Grande Pueblos to the west. Traders moved beans, dried buffalo meat, cotton, and salt through here, and the exchange wove together communities separated by very different landscapes.

The Spanish used the pass to link the Rio Grande valley with the salt missions to the east. In the American era it became a railroad and highway corridor. Today the old route roughly parallels modern roads through the same gap, carrying traffic between the Rio Grande Valley and the eastern plains just as it has for a thousand years or more. The Pueblo of Abó, whose people used this trail most heavily, now survives as a ruin preserved within Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, a few miles to your east.