Jornada del Muerto

Jornada del Muerto is the upper third of the image, oriented with the top to the northwest.
The Tularosa Basin is the lower half of the image, and the dark streak of lava north of White Sands is the Carrizozo Malpais. The Trinity atomic site is northwest of the Malpais. The forested Sacramento Mountains are to the right-east.[1]
Rocky areas and lava flows punctuate the flat desert landscape.
A railway has followed the course of the Jornada del Muerto trail since the 1880s.

Jornada del Muerto was the name given by the Spanish conquistadors to the Jornada del Muerto desert basin, and the almost waterless 90-mile (140 km) trail across the Jornada beginning north of Las Cruces and ending south of Socorro, New Mexico. The name translates from Spanish as "Dead Man's Journey" or "Route of the Dead Man".[2][3][4] The trail was part of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro which led northward from central colonial New Spain, present-day Mexico, to the farthest reaches of the viceroyalty in northern Nuevo México Province (the area around the upper valley of the Rio Grande).

Spaceport America is located in the middle portion of the Jornada del Muerto at an elevation of 4,700 ft (1,400 m). The Trinity nuclear test site, the location of the first test of an atomic bomb in 1945 is in the northern portion of the Jornada.

  1. ^ Earth Sciences and Image Analysis, NASA-Johnson Space Center. 29 December 2003
  2. ^ Wislizenus, Frederick Adolph (1969) Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico: Connected with Col. Doniphan's Expedition, in 1846 and 1847 Rio Grande Press, Glorieta, NM, page 38, OCLC 51436, originally published in 1848 by the U.S. Government, Tippin & Streeper, printers, Washington, D.C.
  3. ^ Simmons, Marc (1978) Taos to Tomé: True Tales of Hispanic New Mexico Adobe Press, Albuquerque, N.M., page 28, ISBN 0-933004-04-4
  4. ^ Wormser, Richard Edward (1966) The Yellowlegs: The Story of the United States Cavalry Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., page 70, OCLC 952640