Wagon Mound, New Mexico

The flat-topped butte rising above this small town was one of the most recognized landmarks on the entire Santa Fe Trail. Travelers following the Cimarron Cutoff could see it from miles away, and its silhouette, the profile of a covered wagon with a canvas top, told westbound freighters they were approaching the final stretch to Santa Fe. The nearby Santa Clara Canyon held a reliable spring, making Wagon Mound a standard campsite for wagon trains crossing an otherwise dry stretch of high plains.

The town that grew at the base was founded in the eighteen eighties and became a ranching and farming community in Mora County. The butte was declared a National Historic Landmark, recognizing its role as the westernmost major navigation point on the entire Santa Fe Trail. Today the town has fewer than three hundred residents, but the butte still shoulders above the plains, unmistakable from the highway just as it was from the wagon road.