EL CAMINO REAL DE TIERRA ADENTRO

Designated in October 2000, El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail traces the primary route between the colonial Spanish capital of Mexico City and Spanish provincial capitals elsewhere in Mexico and what is now New Mexico between the 16th and 19th centuries. The “Royal Road to the Interior Lands” introduced Europeans, their institutions, and their goods  to long-established indigenous Pueblo communities as well as their nomadic neighbors.

PREVIOUSLY FEATURED SITES

MACKAY MINE HILL, IDAHO

Prospectors found copper ore near present day Mackay in southeastern Idaho in 1879. For more than 50 years, mining was the major industry and a way of life in the Mackay area. Today, more than half a century after the end of the mining heyday, the Mackay Mine Hill is once again bustling with activity. 

Sixty miles southeast of Burns, Oregon, Steens Mountain rises nearly a mile above the valley floor of the Alvord Desert. The mountain offers a diversity of natural systems unique to the northern Great Basin region. For centuries people have visited this oasis in the high desert. Little is known about the first inhabitants of Steens Mountain.In 2003 an archaeological excavation of the Mortar Riddle Site was begun that hopes to uncover some of its past. 

Sprawling across the rolling high-desert grasslands of BLM-Arizona’s Las Cienegas Natural Conservation Area, the Empire Ranch is both a historic treasure and a modern-day, working cattle ranch. Located about 45 miles southeast of Tucson , the Ranch, begun as a modest 160-acre spread in the 1870s, was at one time almost one million acres in size. The Empire Ranch House, a 22-room mansion, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.