New Mexico
Possibly the only school constructed entirely underground, simultaneously serving as a fallout shelter. Built in 1962, at the height of Cold War fears. Said to have a capacity of 2,000. An above ground school has been built adjacent to it.
One of Intel's seven large manufacturing locations in the country, and one of the largest single employers in the state, this plant employs around 6,000 people at its peak, making memory chips for computers. Located on a mesa above the Rio Grande in Rio...
Inside this geometric mound, with a skin of coarsely crushed rock, is a demolished uranium mill and its radioactive tailings. The mill was buried in 1992 by the Department of Energy, one of around 20 uranium mill tailings sites in the US that were remediated...
The southeastern New Mexican town of Artesia is the location for one of the principal campuses of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). The FLETC, headquartered in Glynco, Georgia, serves as a law enforcement training organization for more than...
Albuquerque may be the ballooning capital of the USA, as this large museum and adjacent ballooning park assert. At least part of the reason is Ben Abruzzo, a pioneering balloonist and local businessman, who has broken several ballooning records, such as being...
These remarkable ancient cliff dwellings in Frijoles Canyon, next to Los Alamos National Lab, many accessed only by ladders, are eroding due to time and traffic. The cliff dwellings were occupied by as many as 800 Anasazi, who had departed by 1550. Adolph...
A "nuclear waste" site, as it was called by its owner, Ed Grothus, a former worker at Los Alamos Lab, who quit bomb work there for ethical reasons in the 1960s, and became a celebrated and entertaining antinuclear activist. The Black Hole is a dense...
A uranium mine operated here from 1953 to 1982, owned by the Anaconda Copper Company, which was later bought by ARCO. The mill was decommissioned in 1989, and the demolished structures and tailings were contained in three adjacent disposal cells by 1995. The...
The tailing's impoundment dam failure, across the road from United Nuclear's uranium mill at Church Rock, on July 16, 1979, is referred to as the largest accidental release of radioactive waste in the USA, and is second only to Chernobyl in the amount of...
Controlled Recovery Inc. operates a hazardous waste site in the southeast corner of New Mexico. It serves primarily the oil and gas industry of the region, which extends into the oil fields of the Permian Basin in adjacent Texas. The 284 acre site contains...
Dulce is one of a few areas in New Mexico with a number of UFO reports and notions. According to some, north of town, a mountainside is said to be able to open up to accommodate space craft into an underground genetics lab run by aliens and the shadow...
The Elephant Butte Reservoir is the largest reservoir in New Mexico, and one of the few in this arid state. It is named after the unusual - and some say elephant-shaped - rock jutting out of the water. The reservoir is formed by the 300 foot tall Elephant...
This facility is one of the foremost explosives and explosion effects research laboratories in the world. In its 32 square miles of restricted terrain, all sorts of things have been blown up under intense scientific scrutiny. Facilities include a...
Fort Bliss is an artillery testing and training installation, and with 1,119,700 acres, one of the largest Army posts in the country. While the main post and cantonment area is located north of El Paso, most of the land crosses the state line into New Mexico...
The Gasbuggy Nuclear Test Site is the location of a 1967 underground nuclear explosion, conducted to test the viability of using a nuclear device to aid in natural gas extraction. It was part of the Plowshare Program, the program to develop peaceful uses of...
This remote site, a former gravel pit, is probably the largest grouping of "earthships" in the nation - a uniquely northern New Mexican style subdivision. It is comprised of more than a dozen homes built in the energy and material efficient style known as "...
A uranium mill was built here in 1958 and operated until 1993. The tailings mound is 200 acres in size, 100 feet tall, and contains 21 million tons of tailings, one of the largest uranium tailings piles in the nation. Its final closure is being addressed....
Located inside the old movie theater on Main Street, the main attraction in Roswell is the 8,000-square-foot UFO museum, with library, theater, private research rooms, and gift shop. The building is full of articles, dioramas, paintings, and other displays...
An artificial lake built in the shape of the name of the southeastern New Mexican town where it is located, Jal. The name comes from the initials of a former rancher, and Ranch's brand, JAL. A rare example of words visible on the land from high altitude....
John Brinkerhoff Jackson was an iconoclastic academic known as the "father of cultural landscape studies". He taught at Harvard and Berkeley, sometimes driving his motorcycle between them. He wrote numerous essays, published in several books, mostly about the...
Kirtland Air Force Base is one of the most vital and active military facilities in the country, with over 20,000 people working within its secured perimeter, at the south end of Albuquerque. The heavily built up part of the base, generally north and east of...