The Sacramento Mountains are a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

in the south-central part of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

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, Ker ...

, lying just east of

Alamogordo Alamogordo () is the seat of Otero County, New Mexico, United States. A city in the Tularosa Basin of the Chihuahuan Desert, it is bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains and to the west by Holloman Air Force Base. The population was ...

in Otero County (small portions of the range lie in Lincoln County and Chaves County). From north to south, the Sacramento Mountains extend for , and from east to west they encompass .These figures are derived from the official description of the range by the

Board on Geographic Names The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a federal body operating under the United States Secretary of the Interior. The purpose of the board is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the federal governm ...

, see the for the range.

Geography

The Sacramentos can be divided into two sections: a main, northern section, encompassing most of the land area and all of the terrain above , and a smaller southeastern section, contiguous with the

Guadalupe Mountains The Guadalupe Mountains ( es, Sierra de Guadalupe) are a mountain range located in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The range includes the highest summit in Texas, Guadalupe Peak, , and the "signature peak" of West Texas, El Capitan, both ...

. Neighboring ranges and landforms include the

Tularosa Basin The Tularosa Basin is a graben basin in the Basin and Range Province and within the Chihuahuan Desert, east of the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico and West Texas, in the Southwestern United States. Geography The Tularosa Basin is located prim ...

, immediately to the west of the main section of the range; Sierra Blanca and the

Capitan Mountains The Capitan Mountains are a mountain range in Lincoln County, in south-central New Mexico in the southwestern United States. The range is about 20 miles (32 km) long from east to west being about 6 miles (10 km) wide and were formed fr ...

to the northwest and northeast; the Border Hills and the western edge of the broad

Pecos River The Pecos River ( es, Río Pecos) originates in north-central New Mexico and flows into Texas, emptying into the Rio Grande. Its headwaters are on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range in Mora County north of Pecos, New Mexico ...

valley to the east; the Guadalupe Mountains to the southeast; and

Otero Mesa Otero Mesa is a plateau in the Trans-Pecos. The plateau extends north from Hudspeth County, Texas into Otero County, New Mexico. Otero Mesa is the dominant landform in Hudspeth County, composing 70% of its land area. Otero Mesa has a more limited ...

, which lies south of the main section and southwest of the southeastern section. The

Rio Tularosa Rio or Río is the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese word for "river". When spoken on its own, the word often means Rio de Janeiro, a major city in Brazil. Rio or Río may also refer to: Geography Brazil * Rio de Janeiro * Rio do Sul, a ...

and the

Rio Ruidoso The Rio Ruidoso is a long river located in the Sierra Blanca and Sacramento Mountains in Lincoln County and Otero County, New Mexico in the United States and is part of the Rio Ruidoso Watershed. The Spanish term, ''río ruidoso'', translated ...

(and hence

U.S. Route 70 U.S. Route 70 or U.S. Highway 70 (US 70) is an east–west United States highway that runs for from eastern North Carolina to east-central Arizona. It is a major east–west highway of the Southeastern United States, Southeastern, Southern Unite ...

) separate the Sacramentos from Sierra Blanca and the Capitan Mountains.Some sources include Sierra Blanca, Carrizo Mountain, and the

Jicarilla Mountains The Jicarilla Mountains are a mountain range in Lincoln County, New Mexico, Lincoln County, New Mexico in the southwestern United States. The Jicarilla Mountains were named after the Jicarilla Apache, Jicarilla Apache Nation. The Sacramento Mount ...

under the term "Sacramento Mountains," but this usage is not official. See e.g. ''New Mexico Atlas and Gazetteer'', DeLorme Mapping, 2000. Located at the foothills of the Guadalupe Mountains is

Carlsbad Caverns National Park Carlsbad Caverns National Park is an American national park in the Guadalupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico. The primary attraction of the park is the show cave Carlsbad Cavern. Visitors to the cave can hike in on their own via the natural ...

, a series of caverns scattered throughout rugged terrain. The western edge of the main section of the Sacramento Mountains forms a series of dramatic

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. The terms ''scarp'' and ''scarp face'' are often used interchangeably with ''escar ...

s leading up to a high ridge, which includes the highest named point in the range, Cathey Peak, 9,645 feet (2,940 m). From this ridge the mountains slope gently down to the east, merging gradually into the Pecos Slope to the west of Artesia. There are actually two unnamed highpoints of the range, both approx 9,695 ft. One is near Sunspot above Corral Canyon and FR 64. The second highpoint is on the crest of Benson Ridge.Benson Ridge
(listed at ) on a list of prominent New Mexico peaks at listsofjohn.com

Geology

The range is a wide east-dipping

fault block Fault blocks are very large blocks of rock, sometimes hundreds of kilometres in extent, created by tectonic and localized stresses in Earth's crust. Large areas of bedrock are broken up into blocks by faults. Blocks are characterized by rela ...

, made up almost entirely of

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

Gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. ...

deposits washed from the range are a main source of the gypsum sand that makes up the dunes in

White Sands National Park White Sands National Park is an American national park located in the state of New Mexico and completely surrounded by the White Sands Missile Range. The park covers in the Tularosa Basin, including the southern 41% of a field of white sand dun ...

. The Sacramento Mountains form the easternmost part of the rift system centered on the

rift valley A rift valley is a linear shaped lowland between several highlands or mountain ranges created by the action of a geologic rift. Rifts are formed as a result of the pulling apart of the lithosphere due to extensional tectonics. The linear dep ...

of the

Rio Grande The Rio Grande ( and ), known in Mexico as the Río Bravo del Norte or simply the Río Bravo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The length of the Rio G ...

. The rock strata in the Sacramentos were originally contiguous with those of the

San Andres Mountains The San Andres Mountains are a mountain range in the southwestern U.S. state of New Mexico, in the counties of Socorro, Sierra, and Doña Ana. The range extends about 75 miles (120 km) north to south, but are only about 12 miles (19 ...

on the other side of the

, and have been separated because of down-faulting of the basin. Unlike the Sacramento Mountains, the neighboring Sierra Blanca is an extrusive

igneous Igneous rock (derived from the Latin word ''ignis'' meaning fire), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or ...

complex. The mountains contain multiple perched aquifers over a deeper regional aquifer. Precipitation (mostly in winter) on the high elevations of the mountains provide most of the

groundwater recharge Groundwater recharge or deep drainage or deep percolation is a hydrologic process, where water moves downward from surface water to groundwater. Recharge is the primary method through which water enters an aquifer. This process usually occurs in ...

in the Roswell Artesian Basin.

Land use

Most of the main section of the Sacramento Mountains are part of the

Lincoln National Forest Lincoln National Forest is a unit of the U.S. Forest Service located in southern New Mexico. Established by Presidential Proclamation in 1902 as the Lincoln Forest Reserve, the forest begins near the Texas border and contains lands in parts of ...

, though the northern part of the range is included in the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation. Evidence of Apache presence dates back to the fifteenth century.Butterfield, Mike, and Greene, Peter, ''Mike Butterfield's Guide to the Mountains of New Mexico'', New Mexico Magazine Press, 2006, The range includes the town of Cloudcroft, a popular resort; the town of Ruidoso, also popular for recreation, lies on its northern edge, and Timberon at the southernmost end. The range also includes the

National Solar Observatory The National Solar Observatory (NSO) is a United States public research institute to advance the knowledge of the physics of the Sun. NSO studies the Sun both as an astronomical object and as the dominant external influence on Earth. NSO is headq ...

Sacramento Peak Cathey Peak is a peak in the Sacramento Mountains (New Mexico), Sacramento Mountains, in the south-central part of the U.S. State of New Mexico. It lies in Otero County, New Mexico, Otero County, southeast of the community of Alamogordo, New Mexi ...

, midway down the western ridge, just southwest of Cathey Peak. There are numerous hiking trails in the portion of the range that lies within the Lincoln National Forest, there is officially designated

wilderness Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally re ...

Wildlife

The mountains are the only home of the Sacramento prickly poppy (''Argemone pinnatisecta''), a federally listed

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...

plant species, and the Sacramento Mountains thistle (''Cirsium vinaceum''), a threatened species.''Cirsium vinaceum''.
Center for Plant Conservation.

Image Gallery

File:Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico, United States.jpg, alt=Many mountain ridges recede in the background, growing dinner due to atmosphere. The foreground ridge is covered in evergreens., Looking south from the Sacramento Mountains File:Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico (16075698517).jpg, Aerial View of the Sacramento Mountains. File:Wild Horse (Mustang) in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, United States.jpg, alt=A wild horse, brown, looks at the camera while in a forest., A wild horse in the forest of the Sacramento Mountains File:Sacramento_Mountains_in_New_Mexico.jpg, Fresh Snow on the Sacramento Mountains

References