01The Landforms, Located
The Rio Grande rift has produced a remarkable variety of landforms across a span of perhaps 400 kilometres, each the direct product of crustal extension, volcanism, or the erosion that follows both. What follows is every landform treated in this guide, placed on the ground.
Albuquerque Basin
35.15°N, 106.65°WThe central structural depression of the rift in New Mexico — a graben bounded by fault-block ranges east and west, filled with kilometres of its own eroded debris.
Sandia Mountains
35.13°N, 106.45°W, summit Sandia CrestA tilted fault block rising abruptly east of its escarpment, exposing Precambrian granite below Pennsylvanian limestone along a single dramatic face.
Manzano Mountains
34.63°N, 106.40°W, summit Manzano PeakThe same fault-block structure continuing south, structurally continuous with the Sandias and equally legible in cross-section.
Ladron Peak
34.40°N, 107.05°WAn isolated uplifted block standing well into the basin, exposing very old metamorphic and igneous rock far from any range front.
Jemez Mountains
35.87°N, 106.57°WA large volcanic field on the rift's western margin, built over more than ten million years and punctuated by two caldera-forming eruptions in the Pleistocene.
Valles Caldera
35.87°N, 106.52°WThe 22-kilometre resurgent caldera produced by the Toledo and Valles eruptions, the structural heart of the Jemez volcanic field.
Cerros del Rio
35.83°N, 106.22°WA basalt plateau north of the basin, dissected by the Rio Grande into a gorge that exposes individual flow sequences.
West Mesa and its escarpment
35.10°N, 106.75°WA basalt-capped mesa whose eroded eastern edge provides the boulder field at Petroglyph National Monument.
Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks
35.67°N, 106.40°WHoodoos of pumice-rich tuff eroded from Bandelier Tuff deposits, each cone preserved by a harder caprock fragment.
Socorro magma body
34.06°N, 106.89°WNot a surface landform but the active crustal structure beneath Socorro; geodetic measurements confirm ongoing inflation detectable at the surface.
The New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources publishes maps locating all of these features within the broader geological framework of the rift.
