Abo Canyon (elevation 5771 ft.), also known as Abo Pass, is a
mountain pass at the southern end of the
Manzano Mountains
The Manzano Mountains are a small mountain range in the central part of the US State of New Mexico. They are oriented north–south and are 30 miles long. The center of the range lies due east of the town of Belen. The name "Manzano" is Spani ...
of central
New Mexico
)
, population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano)
, seat = Santa Fe
, LargestCity = Albuquerque
, LargestMetro = Tiguex
, OfficialLang = None
, Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ...
in the
Southwest United States
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorad ...
.
History
From
pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...
times, the pass provided the most direct trading route through the mountains between the plains Indians of the
Estancia Valley to the east and the
Pueblo
In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...
cultures of the middle valley of the
Rio Grande to the west. The route these traders took led past
Abo Pueblo, dating from the 14th century, strategically located near a cluster of springs on the eastern slope of the pass. The old footpath is now the Abo Pass Trail Scenic Byway (see External Links below).
The Spanish arrived in the 16th century, and used the pass as a route between the Rio Grande valley and the three “salt missions” they constructed northeast of the pass, now ruins preserved as part of the
Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument
The Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument is a complex of three Spanish missions located in the U.S. state of New Mexico, near Mountainair. The main park visitor center is in Mountainair. Construction of the missions began in 1622 and was com ...
.
Railroad
In the early 20th century, the
Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and ...
wished to find an alternative route to its existing
mainline over
Raton and
Glorieta Passes, to avoid the
gradients
In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the grad ...
of up to 3.5% on these passes. The company surveyed a route through the Abo Canyon, which could be achieved with a gradient of no more than 1.25%. Known as the
Belen Cutoff, the route was completed in 1908, connecting to the AT&SF system at
Belen, New Mexico and at
Amarillo, Texas
Amarillo ( ; Spanish for "yellow") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Potter County. It is the 14th-most populous city in Texas and the largest city in the Texas Panhandle. A portion of the city extends into Randall County ...
. The Cutoff rapidly took on the bulk of the AT&SF's
transcontinental
Transcontinental may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* "Transcontinental", a song by the band Pedro the Lion from the album ''Achilles Heel''
* TC Transcontinental, a publishing, media and marketing company based in Canada, a subsidiary o ...
freight traffic (Most of the Santa Fe's through passenger service remained on the old Raton Pass route, due to its connections in
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...
, as well as tourist traffic serving the railroad's namesake city). Passenger service through Abo Canyon ceased in 1971 with the cancellation of the
San Francisco Chief
The ''San Francisco Chief'' was a streamlined passenger train on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway ("Santa Fe") between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. It ran from 1954 until 1971. The ''San Francisco Chief'' was the last new st ...
, when
Amtrak
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...
took over all of the Santa Fe's passenger operations.
Now part of the
BNSF
BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...
system and known as the Clovis subdivision of the
Southern Transcon
The Southern Transcon is a main line of BNSF Railway comprising 11 subdivisions between Southern California and Chicago, Illinois. Completed in its current alignment in 1908 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, when it opened the Belen C ...
, the rail corridor is one of the most heavily trafficked routes in the western US. An average of almost 90 trains daily passed through Abo Canyon in 2006, each typically 6000 to 8000 feet in length.
The four-mile route through the canyon remained a single-track bottleneck until March 2011, when a second track was completed at a cost of $85 million.
Highway
The
Atlantic and Pacific Highway The Atlantic and Pacific Highway was an auto trail in the United States, essentially eliminated by the U.S. Highway system in the late 1920s. It connected New York City on the Atlantic Ocean with Los Angeles on the Pacific Ocean.
Routing
Using the ...
was established through the pass in 1921, and was designated as
U.S. Route 60 in 1931.
New Mexico State Road 47
New Mexico State Road 47 (NM 47) is a state highway in Bernalillo, Valencia, and Socorro Counties in New Mexico. NM 47's southern terminus is at an intersection with U.S. Route 60 (US 60). The highway then proceeds north inters ...
joins the highway from Belen on the west side of the pass.
Abo Pass Trail
On July 31, 1998, the Abo Pass Trail was made a
New Mexico Scenic and Historic Byway
Scenic and Historic Byways are highways in New Mexico known for their scenic beauty or historic significance. The New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Department Scenic and Historic Byways Program was made effective July 31, 1998 to establi ...
. It is a 31 miles scenic drive through the Salt Missions area along
New Mexico State Road 47
New Mexico State Road 47 (NM 47) is a state highway in Bernalillo, Valencia, and Socorro Counties in New Mexico. NM 47's southern terminus is at an intersection with U.S. Route 60 (US 60). The highway then proceeds north inters ...
and
U.S. Route 60.
Abo Pass Trail - New Mexico Scenic & Historic Byway.
Wildernet. August 10, 2014.
Transportation and Highways. New Mexico Legislation. Filed February 27, 1998. Effective July 31, 1998. Retrieved August 10, 2014.
References
Benner, John “Abo Arroyo", CTC Board Railroads Illustrated, July 1996.
External links
Abo Pass Trail
{{coord, 34, 26, 08, N, 106, 27, 32, W, display=title
Rail mountain passes of the United States
Mountain passes of New Mexico
Transportation in Socorro County, New Mexico
Landforms of Socorro County, New Mexico
U.S. Route 60