Scenic Byways: Abo Pass Trail, Billy The Kid National Scenic Byway, Corrales Road Scenic Byway, Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway, Dry Cimarron Scenic Byway, El Camino Real National Scenic Byway, Geronimo Trail National Scenic Byway, Guadalupe Back Country Byway, High Road to Taos, Jemez Mountain Trail National Scenic Byway, La Frontera del Llano, Lake Valley Back Country Byway, Mesalands Scenic Byway, Narrow Gauge Scenic Roadway, Native Heritage Trail, Puye Cliffs Scenic Byway, Quebradas Back Country Byway, Route 66 National Scenic Byway, Salt Missions Trail, Santa Fe National Forest Scenic Byway, Santa Fe Trail National Scenic Byway, Socorro Historical District Scenic Byway, Sunspot Scenic Byway, Trail of the Mountain Spirits National Scenic Byway, Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway, Wild Rivers Back Country Byway
Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway
Marti Niman
Follow the high road, not the highway, between Santa Fe and Albuquerque and trace the trail forged centuries ago by Native Americans, miners and Spanish Conquistadores. The Turquoise Trail Scenic Byway winds through rustic villages as quirky as the goblinesque rock formations that jut from its roadside. This 52-mile backway offers a glimpse of life modes both past and present that are far removed from the flat line of the Interstate.
Named for the rich turquoise deposits found in the area, the Turquoise Trail quickly launches travelers into the wild and wooly West just south of Santa Fe, where it passes a herd of resident buffalo. Known officially as N.M.14, the trail carves through pinon, juniper and bizarre rock outcrops sheltering both rough-hewn and futuristic off-the-grid homes.
A short jaunt west on Santa Fe C.R. 57 leads to the dirt streets and adobe houses of Cerrillos, established in 1879 as a tent camp amid the Cerrillos Mining District. A combination trading post, petting zoo and mining museum displays everything from live llamas to lapidary tools. Along the quiet streets of the village are art studios, galleries, antique shops, a cafe, a church and possibly a passing cowboy on horseback or a small herd of sheep.
From Cerrillos, drive about a half-mile to the 1,100-Acre Cerrillos Hills Historic Park (505-992-9867), one of the oldest mining areas in North America. Turquoise mining dates from at least 900 A.D. and the blue green stones found their way to Chaco Canyon, the Crown Jewels of old Spain and likely the ruins of Chichen Itza and Monte Alban in Mexico. The hills were a source of lead used for glaze paint by Rio Grande Pueblo potters from A.D.1300 – A.D. 1700. Gold-hungry Spanish explorers settled for its galena-silver lodes between 1598-1846. Santa Fe County Open Space now runs the park as a hiking, biking and equestrian area. A kiosk at the entrance boasts a noon analemma – a figure-eight sundial marking the sun's path as it shines through the aperture of the “infosculpture.”
The 1, 350-acre Ortiz Mountains Educational Preserve (505-428-1684) is a spectacular high desert geological and natural area about two miles east of N.M. 14 on Santa Fe C.R. 55. Owned by the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, the area is open for guided hikes by advance reservation only.
In the coal mining-cum-artist's colony of Madrid, visitors might best park their cars and venture on foot – the better to view the quirky and fanciful adorning the clapboard homes and company stores descended from its mining era. Gilt angels, iron elk, Stonehenge gates and old gas pumps encircle fountains and rock gardens. Dating from the town's mining heyday of the early 1800s, the buildings now house artisan shops, galleries and sculpture gardens. Once a boomtown mining both hard and soft coal from shafts dropping 2,500 feet, Madrid supplied coal for the Santa Fe Railroad, local consumers and the U.S. Government. Today the town hosts a melodrama in the old engine house, a blues festival in the ballpark, a tavern and a wood-planked country store.
As the road slices through tiny Golden, capricious sculptures of welded steel wildlife and twisted geometric prisms adorn hills and homes. The Ortiz Mountains dominate the eastern horizon – mere stumps of their former volcanic glory. Some 29 million years ago, these mountains likely resembled Mt Fuji at more than twice their current height, now eroded by wind and water into pillowy hills.
Several miles south, N.M. 536 intersects the Turquoise Trail and curls through the wooded Cibola National Forest to the 10,678-foot summit of Sandia Crest. Vast vistas stretch westward across the desert floor to Albuquerque, the Rio Grande and sacred Mt. Taylor beyond. Intrepid visitors may get the urge to leap into the spiked granite cliffs below, but there is no need for such extreme adventures. The Sandia Peak Tram (505-242-9052) accommodates that urge with a 15-minute lift that travels 3,819 feet across four life zones – from the Hudsonian at the top to the Sonoran at the 6,500-foot base. Sandia means watermelon in Spanish and the jagged peaks turn vibrant pink at dusk, defining the skyline of Albuquerque below. For those who prefer terra firma, a restaurant, observation deck and information center are clustered near the tram deck.
Returning to the offbeat world of N.M. 14, Tinkertown Museum (505-281-5233) is an oddball treasure trove displaying 40 years of one man's hand-carved wooden miniatures. A western town springs to life with rowdy, animated characters while a three-ring circus shelter the Fat Lady and a teeter-totter polar bear.
On a more erudite note, the Museum of Archeology and Material Culture (505-281-4745) in Cedar Crest offers a 12,000-year timeline relating the story of North America's earliest inhabitants through the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee.
N.M. 14 ducks under I-40 into Tijeras, the southern gateway The Turquoise Trail, where travelers may visit the Cibola National Forest Sandia Ranger District (505-248-0190) for maps and additional information. Shops and restaurants abound in both Tijeras and Cedar Crest to refresh travelers before their highway reentry through Tijeras Canyon and urban Albuquerque beyond.
Highlights
- Sandia Crest Scenic Byway*
- Tinkertown
- Golden
- Madrid
- Cerrillos
- Cerrillos Hills Historic Park
- Ortiz Mountains Educational Preserve
- Garden of the Gods
*Sandia Crest Byway was originally a U.S. Forest Service Byway. What Turquoise Trail was designated a national byway, Sandia Crest wa included in the nomination an they now comprise one national byway The Turquoise Trail Scenic Byway.
Sandia Crest Scenic Byway
Laurie Frantz
The Land of Enchantment derives much of its character and charm from contrasts. Brisk winters in the north, burning sands in the south, bright blue skies and parched, brown earth, high mountains and flat grasslands, Rio Abajo and Rio Arriba. Sandia Crest Scenic Byway (New Mexico 536) is one of the high points.
From State Road 14 at Sandia Park, the road travels up 3,828 feet to Sandia Crest. Its humble beginnings lie in a series of wood-cutting and logging trails which were connected in the 1930s. A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp located in Sandia Park from 1933 until 1940 provided labor for improvements, but not until 1982 did the road take the shape it retains today.
Tinkertown Museum (505-281-5233) is about a mile and a half up on the left. Tinkertown is a fantasyland made up of over 20,000 carvings, most of them arranged to create intricate dioramas, among them a traveling circus and a western town. A sign on the wall says that this is what Ross Ward "did while you were watching television". Originally exhibited at county fairs and carnivals, they are now housed in a building whose walls are made up of 51,000 glass bottles.
Another half-mile and the Cibola National Forest begins. The byway passes through the four vegetative zones in the Sandia Ranger District (505-281-3304). Pinon and juniper give way to Ponderosa pine and mosaics of multicolored Gambel oak - maroon, brown, golden yellow. Farther up, the white trunks and bright yellow leaves of aspen punctuate stands of dark, majestic Douglas and White fir. Engelmann spruce, Corkbark fir, and Limber pine live near the Crest.
The Sandia Peak Ski Area (505-856-7325), at 8,678 feet, operates year-round. A chair lift does double duty by taking visitors to the Peak during the summer. The Forest Service agreed to develop this area in 1937, where the Albuquerque Ski Club had skied the year before. The CCC cleared the runs in 1938 and built a lodge, which was replaced in 1983 by the existing lodge.
About halfway to the top is the first glimpse of a forest of another kind - the white, red, and silver of cell towers of the Sandia Crest Electronic Site. A New Mexico State Police transmitter placed at the Crest in 1945 was the beginning of a major communications center for the Southwest. The electronic forest is now populated by FM/AM radio stations, two-way radio repeaters, weather radars, electric utility radio systems, Forest Service radios, military base services, long distance carrier repeater stations, and public safety and emergency medical services.
There are breathtaking views all along the fourteen miles of the byway and parking and picnic areas from which to enjoy them, but the whole picture enfolds at the top. The La Luz, North Crest, and South Crest trails lead away from the Sandia Crest Gift Shop and Restaurant (505-243-0605), built in 1954.
From the viewing platform at 10,678, the smell of evergreens and aspen scents the breeze. To the north and east, the Sangre de Cristo, Jemez, and Ortiz Mountains unfold. Santa Fe is visible in the distance. The Estancia Valley stretches out for miles to the east. In the far distance Mount Taylor stands sentinel over Grants.
Between the Crest and Albuquerque, the rocky tops of blade-edged cliffs stick up out of stands evergreens which somehow manage to find purchase on the forbidding surface. Tufts of yellow aspen leaves show above the green, creating the illusion of fantastically tall and exotic desert plants. Albuquerque, flat and brown at the base of the Sandias, is cut by the Rio Grande, snaking through like a molten river of pewter or lead. Humble metal buildings shine like cut diamonds in the sun. The undulating terrain of undeveloped Sandia Pueblo land looks like chocolate pudding.
The intensity of the experience fuels the drive back down. With every switchback, the Crest gets farther away, but the exhilaration lingers.
Highlights
- Tinkertown
- Sandia Peak Ski Area
- Capulin Snowplay Area
- Doc Long Picnic Area
- Sandia Man Cave
- Cibola National Forest
- Sandia Crest
- Sandia Peak Tramway
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