Quemado

West-central New Mexico ranching village near radio telescopes, lava fields, and Gila wilderness.

Quemado is a tiny ranching community on US-60 in west-central New Mexico, the kind of place where you stop because there is nothing else for fifty miles in any direction. The town has a gas station, a couple of small motels, and a cafe or two -- just enough to keep a traveler going. Its name means "burned" in Spanish, reportedly a reference to a fire-scarred tree that once stood nearby.

What makes Quemado worth knowing about is everything around it. The Very Large Array, one of the world's most iconic radio telescope installations, sits about 50 miles east on the Plains of San Agustin. To the south, the Gila National Forest stretches across vast mountain wilderness. Quemado Lake, a few miles south of town, offers decent trout fishing in a peaceful setting. And the El Malpais lava flows and sandstone bluffs lie to the north and east.

If you are driving US-60 across New Mexico -- one of the emptier, more beautiful highways in the state -- Quemado is where you fill up your tank and appreciate just how much open country still exists in the American West.

Guide

Getting There

Quemado is on US-60, about 90 miles east of Show Low, Arizona, and 100 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. There is no public transport. The nearest towns with services are Datil (25 miles east) and Reserve (50 miles south). A full tank of fuel is advisable before driving into this part of New Mexico: distances between services are long and the terrain unforgiving if you run dry.

Socorro (on the Rio Grande, about 90 miles east) is the nearest town with motels, restaurants, and a full range of services, and makes a more comfortable base if you want to visit the VLA without staying in Quemado itself.

Guide

Things to Do

Quemado itself has nothing in the way of sights. What makes the area worth knowing about is what surrounds it: the Very Large Array radio telescope installation to the east, Quemado Lake to the south for fishing, and the vast open landscape of the Plains of San Agustin and the surrounding national forest. This is high desert at around 7,000 feet — the air is thin, the skies are huge, and the silence is absolute.