Historical October 1986 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
We have become used to earthquakes along the California coast and around the New Madrid fault.
We look upon the Central southwest region as calm high desert.
In fact, it is one of the most tectonically active regions of North America.
In the northeast corner of New Mexico, just off the main highway over Raton Pass, is the only spot from which five states can be seen at the same time.
From the rim of Capulin Mountain one can see Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Capulin Mountain is one of the most perfectly shaped cinder cone volcanoes along the eastern edges of the Sangre de Christo Mountains.
From the edge of its crater over one-hundred other volcanoes are immediately visible. Standing in the middle of that volcanic field is one of the most awesome experiences on earth. • Less than eight miles north of Capulin Mountain is the little village of Folsom, New Mexico.
It is not a pretty place; just a collection of a few buildings in the middle of a highly volcanic and poor agricultural region. Several years ago a discovery of major archeological importance happened near Folsom.
A cache of prehistoric Indian arrowheads along with the bones of numerous now extinct large mammals was discovered by university researchers.
The Indian site was active about ten thousand years ago — the same time that Capulin Mountain was formed when the earth coughed up a cindercone nearly one thousand feet high in a period of less than a few months.
The volcanic field of eastern New Mexico is part of the Rio Grande rift system.
The river rises just north of Taos, New Mexico, and carves a path over and through volcanic and cinder ash as well as tortured tectonically heaved stone to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Taos Pueblo, just on the southwest corner of modern Taos, has the Rio Grande River rushing through it no wider than perhaps a dozen feet and not three feet deep.
The highway on the edge of the Pueblo goes southwest; not ten miles out of town the famous Rio Grande Gorge bridge passes over a remarkably different river.
The chasm of the gorge is brutal and abrupt.
It appears out of nowhere on the high desert plain.
The river is nearly seven hundred feet straight down.
The bones of various boats and canoes litter the rocks along its edges. Looking both south and north from the bridge, the nature of a rift valley emerges clearly.
The river is flowing where the earth is parting into two land masses. Geologists expect an ocean to fill the area some time in the future. Words cannot convey the utter massiveness of the gorge of the Rio Grande just west of Taos. About halfway down the river in New Mexico, the Rio Grande flows through a series of cinder and sandstone bluffs carpeted with pinion pine and sage brush. Back in one of these canyons is Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The public science museum of Los Alamos Laboratory has a seismograph which records the action of the rift forces of the Rio Grande Valley.
In a typical day, at least two quakes greater than three on the Richter Scale are recorded within a five hundred mile radius. Los Alamos is less than one hundred miles northwest of Santa Fe.
The road to Santa Fe winds in chasms washed down and pulled down by the action of earth and water Past Santa Fe, the road again takes the appearance of high mountain desert, but volcanoes continue to punctuate the horizon on every side.
The Rio Grande Rift Valley is massive, active, and still widening as it prepares for the day when the sea takes back its own.
The names of the many mountains and rivers in the Rio Grande rift valley are Spanish.
The central mountain range, the Sangre de Christo Mountains, is also Spanish in name.
Even though it is one of the southern ranges of the Rocky Mountains, its name seems to set it apart from the Wind River Range or the Bitterroots of Oregon and Montana.
In fact, the rift valley itself is just the southern most active region of the Rocky Mountain cordillera.
The most recent quake in Mexico which caused so much death and destruction in Mexico City was part of the convergence area where the San Andreas fault system abutes with the Rio Grande rift valley.
The entire area makes the New Madrid fault rather tame.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, October 1986.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Source geography/geology claims concerning the Rio Grande headwaters, Taos Pueblo stream, Capulin timing and 1985 Mexico City earthquake are retained as author’s period account, not independently verified modern geological findings.
Original source: SD_Times1986_10.pdf, printed page(s) 4; PDF page(s) 4.
