4 Best Sights in Socorro, Southwestern New Mexico

Hundreds of different types of birds, including snow geese, cranes, herons, and eagles, can be spotted from viewing platforms and directly through your car window at the popular Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Besides serving as a rest stop for migrating birds, the Bosque del Apache also shelters mule deer, turkeys, quail, and other wildlife. Photo opportunities abound on the 12-mile auto loop tour; you can also hike through arid shrub land or bike through the refuge or take a van tour. October and November are the months the cottonwoods show their colors. In winter months, the refuge echoes with the haunting cries of whooping cranes flocking for the evening. Snow geese are so thick on lakes at times that shores are white with feathers washed ashore. Whether you're a bird-watcher or not, it is well worth bringing binoculars or a spotting scope to get some idea of how many varieties of birds land here (nearly 400 species have been spotted since 1940). The Festival of the Cranes () in mid-November draws thousands of people.

Only a monument remains at Trinity Site, where the world's first atomic bomb exploded, on July 16, 1945. The resulting crater has been filled in, but the test site and monument are open for public viewing and self-guided tours two days of the year (the first Satudays in April and October). The McDonald ranch house, where the first plutonium core for the bomb was assembled, can be toured on those days. Picnic tables are available. It's wheelchair-accessible.

There are no vehicle services or gas at the site, and visitors must bring their own food and water.

Not far from the Camino Real Center, Fort Craig National Historic Site was established after the New Mexico Territory became part of the United States to prevent raids by the Apache and Navajo peoples and to secure the trade routes within the region. The growth of Socorro and what is now Truth or Consequences can be traced to the protection the fort provided between 1854 and the mid-1880s, when it was decommissioned. Battles west of the Mississippi River during the American Civil War were relatively rare, but in 1862 the Confederate army crossed the Rio Grande and headed to Valverde, north of Fort Craig, with the goal of cutting off the fort from the Union military headquarters in Santa Fe. Confederate forces first were sent into retreat but later won a few battles and made the Union forces withdraw. The rebels later occupied Santa Fe for a few months. Today, signs describe the various buildings and solitary life at the outpost, where only a couple of masonry walls and numerous foundations remain. Historic markers are very informative, however, and a well-maintained gravel trail winds among the ruins. The roads to Fort Craig, which is about 35 miles south of Socorro, can become hard to pass during rainy weather. During the closest weekend to significant dates of February 21 and 22, historical reenactors re-create the Civil War Battle of Valverde and even "capture" the nearby city of Socorro in a grand finale.

More than 2,000 mineral specimens are on display at the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources' Mineralogical Museum, among them samples from the area's ore-rich mining districts of Magdalena, Santa Rita, and Tyrone. Exhibits cull from the museum's fabulous collection of more than 15,000 items, which has been called Coronado's Treasure Chest, as it contains everything the explorer wished he'd found in New Mexico but didn't. There is an excellent fluorescent minerals display, as well as mining memorabilia and some fossils. Tours can be arranged.