The Magdalena Fault and the Mountains to the West

The mountains rising to your west are the Magdalenas, a fault-block range tilted up along faults on the western edge of the Rio Grande Rift. South Baldy, the highest peak, stands at over ten thousand seven hundred feet. The range takes its name from a Spanish colonial tradition: Spanish soldiers saw a rock formation on the mountainside that looked like a woman's face, and the range took the name of Mary Magdalene.

Below the summit, water carved canyons that once fed ranches and mining camps throughout the La Jencia Plain stretching east. The town of Magdalena, a few miles down this road, was a major cattle and sheep shipping point on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway through the early twentieth century. Cowboys drove livestock over the Magdalena Stock Driveway, one of the last long cattle trails still in use when it finally closed in nineteen seventy-one.